The Weirdest Day of My Childhood

The 40th anniversary of it is Tuesday–as today is the 40th anniversary of Mt. St. Helens blowing itself to bits out in Washington.  Back then it was weird, today it remains so, but I am also in more awe of the destructive forces within the Earth.

So back in 1980, I was in sixth grade and we were within three weeks of the end of the year.  The volcanic eruption was big news, but being in Iowa, you don’t think it’s going to have any effect on you.  True enough, right up until noon on the 19th.

I was in Mrs. Beltz’s room before we were going to lunch and recess and we had big windows facing north so you could daydream all you wanted.  The room was usually bright, but as late morning arrived, the sky was growing darker until the room lights were on before we went to lunch.

That’s why it’s weird–clouds were rolling in and there was going to be a storm.  That’s no biggie.  What made this different was the sky wasn’t gray or black.  It went from a clear day to khaki, then beige, and by the time we went out at recess (it still wasn’t raining), the sky was brown, the yellow of the sun barely coming through the brown sky.  Calling it brown isn’t even the right description–the color was…apocalyptic.  You could still tell the tops and bottoms, the different shades, but all shades of brown and when the lightning started (we were back inside by then), it, too, was shaded by the color of those clouds and when it flashed in the distance, it made even the air seem brown.  Tons of thunder, massive amounts of lightning, and…I have no memory of it ever actually raining and I don’t think it did–my brain tells me I had baseball practice that night and the sky was back to normal by then.

All of that was part of what that Washington mountain threw miles into the sky 1,500+ miles away two days earlier.  I’ve never seen a brown sky before or since….just a weird day now in my memory.