Come on, show us your ash stash
Wednesday is the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
To mark this once- in-a-quarter-century occasion, The Spokesman-Review is reprinting the original special section we published the week after the mountain went postal.
Not to downplay our cool keepsake, but I think I can go one better. Just like 25 years ago, I say we all strap surgical masks to our mugs and stay home from work.
OK. I’m not stupid. I realize only lucky stiffs with union jobs could use a volcano anniversary scam as grounds for taking a sick day.
So how about this: We all meet downtown Wednesday during lunch hour and re-create the May 18, 1980, ash fall.
This is definitely doable.
Based on the telephone calls and e-mails I’ve received, I’ll wager half the residents of the county have an ash stash tucked away. So why not spread it all over the business core in a glorious reenactment?
Two worthy purposes would be served:
1. Kids who weren’t alive during the fallout could get a glimpse of what the eruption was really like and finally be able to tell their parents to shut up about it.
2. All the poor deluded souls who have stubbornly held onto volcano ash as if it were powdered platinum would be finally able to purge themselves of their dusty burdens.
Teresa Fowler, of Naubinway, Mich., says she keeps her ash in an old Samsonite suitcase that “I’ve been moving with me since I finished my journalism internship at The Spokesman-Review in August 1981.”
Denise Gerlitz says her husband keeps a substantial amount of ash in their basement. “We were newlyweds living in Steptoe” when the eruption took place, she says. “A couple of years later we moved to Endicott – with ash in tow!!”
Muriel Stopher keeps the family ash in a metal home delivery milk box. “Don’t know what we’ll do with it,” notes the Greenacres woman, “but maybe our heirs can sell it at the estate sale they will probably have when we pass to the Great Beyond.”
This outpouring of ash confessionals was triggered by my recent column on Steve Springer. The Spokane man has a garbage can of ash stored in his South Hill garage. It’s been there since Springer swept it off his driveway on May 19, 1980.
Springer hopes to make big bucks auctioning off his supply on the Internet.
Good luck. On Monday morning I spotted a dozen or so ash sellers on eBay. The bidding hovered somewhere between apathy and disinterest.
Jim Johnson struck me as the most egregious example of wishful thinking. He put a “buy it now” price of $950 on what he described as an 18-pound “Prime Clean Uncontaminated Sample” of ash.
Last time I checked, the number of bids was zero.
The Spokane Valley man told me during a phone call that, unlike Springer’s less refined driveway scrapings, his product was truly unadulterated. Knowing the ash was coming, Johnson says he spread a plastic sheet out on his lawn.
The next day he carefully sealed his virgin ash (18 pounds of it!) into a box that he wrapped with a vintage Spokesman- Review.
How did he come up with the price?
Johnson says another seller was offering a small amount of ash for $29 plus shipping. Using that formula, Johnson figured his ash would be worth about $8,000.
I don’t want to paint every ash hoarder as living on the planet Neptune. Some claim credible uses for the stuff, like using ash for glazing pottery.
Bonnie Evans of Newport has a completely practical use for her ash. She keeps it in a fancy whiskey decanter that holds up cookbooks on a pantry shelf. Evans says her daughter one day told some friends that the bottle was actually filled with the cremated remains of her dear departed grandmother.
Taken aback, the friends asked the obvious: Why would anyone keep granny’s ashes in a pantry?
“She liked to cook and she liked to eat,” she replied.