The Sky is Falling

 

     On the evening of Friday, May 16, 1980, I attended a party in the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho. Why I remember the date so clearly will emerge. Most of the celebrants were younger than I, including Gail, a twenty-something blond woman. She and I were chatting about nothing when she got beer teary, saying that she was supposed to graduate from the University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, on the next night but was afraid to make the 300 mile round trip because she was sure that her Volkswagen bug would break down and strand her in bumfudge nowhere, of which there is an abundance in those hills.

    I had been working in Idaho for eight years but had not visited the University. I did know a little something about the operation of a VW, though, so I volunteered to accompany her to Moscow as her driver and mechanic. 

     On Saturday morning we putted off the mountains down onto the Salmon River, then up onto the Camas Prairie, down onto the Clearwater River, and one long last pull up onto the rolling wheat and lentil and chickpea prairies of the Palouse where the University of Idaho and Washington State University sit within howitzer range of each other. 

     It has been over 11,000 days, one day at a time, since I last tasted alcohol, but back then I was a party beast (double shot of Jim Beam with a beer back, please) and don’t remember much about Saturday night. I asked Gail to drop me off at a downtown bar while she graduated. She fetched what was left of me at midnight and we flopped on couches in an off-campus houseful of young women. 

    Sunday morning the 18th came down wrinkly, fuzzy, and cotton-mouthy, but my alter-ego Perky Rabbit, whose job it was to cover how shitty I felt, suggested that we attend a renaissance faire in a park above town where some pals from back home, the Long String Valley Band, were to perform and where we might be able to purchase whatever disguise a donut took in 1500.  

     We left the VW on the edge of the park while dark clouds boiled on the western horizon, the types that signaled weird windy weather back in my Motherland, the Sandhills of Nebraska. By the time we threaded our way through the Hey-nonny-nonny assemblage of college people in baggy garments and pachouli perfume up to a flat part of the park where the band was setting up, the clouds were closer and had darkened considerably. 

      Jazzmo the fiddle player wore a black velvet sport coat and I noticed while we chatted that there were gray flakes on his shoulders. He brushed them off. Five minutes later they were back. We began to think something strange was happening with the trees. That is when a self-appointed town crier came bustling through the festivities to announce that Mt. Saint Helens had blown its wad and some serious ashfall was headed our way. A night-activated Conoco sign down in the main part of town lit up and began to spin. Time for us to head home.

     By the time we crawled out of Moscow gulch and up onto Highway 95 South, the ash was falling like snow but not so gently. Traffic on the road stirred the ash into a whirly mess that was difficult to drive through. Five miles into our diaspora, the VW began to cough and wheeze. I stood out in the ash storm, opened the engine hood, and saw that the air cleaner was clogged with crud that had been Mount St. Helens only hours before. It was tough to shake out of the filter’s nooks and crannies. At minimum we were in for a long day. 

    In a rare fit of inspiration I asked Gail if she had worn pantyhose to her graduation. She fished a Leggs container out of her luggage and I fitted the contents around the VW air filter. For the next sixty miles we pulled to the side of highway 95 every few miles, I popped the engine cover of the little red rig and untied the makeshift filter. I don’t know what my fellow drivers thought of me waving pantyhose in the wind, but I didn’t care. The trick worked. By the time we climbed back up onto the Camas Prairie we were out from under the ash cloud, the Leggs were on the back seat floor, and the car was breathing on its own again. We made it home safely. 

     Meanwhile, my folks were snowbirds living in a camp trailer where it was warm, working the desert flea markets, vending little homemade doohickies to the tourists. My Mom told me that by the 21st of May small vials of Mt. Saint Helens ash were being sold for ten bucks each in Apache Junction, Arizona. 

    

     

     

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