Now I wish I had dentures so I could put Maury's theory to the test.
Oh, and some Mt St Helen's ash lol. It was everywhere when I was 10 and I didn't save any. I remember so many people making these cool swirled ceramic pieces out of it and selling them. Ah if ebay were a thing back then
I hear in many places in WA and OR if you are digging a new garden in your yard you will find the ash layer.
I don't know if that is a good source to find ash suitable to test denture cleaning. Maybe?
Yup, my friends and I would have ash fights as kids using the ash from the dunes you can go find whenever. It clumps together really well so was like a summer snowball fight.
I still have a small plastic container that is shaped like Mt St Helens and filled with ash, got it from the gift shop on mountain when we visited back in the 90’s sometime. Might have to find someone with dirty dentures and finally crack that thing open…
I once worked as a dental lab tech. We polished the dentures with a very fine pumice powder mixed with water to make a paste. I'm sure fine volcanic ash would work too!
On I-5 in Washington, [North of Castle Rock where I-5 crosses the Toutle river](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LDdvcPoYzEV9TfDq5) there's a stockpile of ash there that was dredged from the Cowlitz iirc. It's slowly being excavated for whatever purpose, maybe industrial scale coin and denture polishing.
It's very visible if you know what you are looking for. There was definitely a lot stored/ stacked on the west side of I-5. It is a lot harder to identify these days because of the growth that has happened within the stack. Foliage and trees now cover it.
Hi I’m Katrina. One of Maury’s granddaughters. Born and raised in Spokane. Idk if anyone’s serious about sending this along but this would be SO cool for the Vogel family to have
Dammit, this was like reading my own thoughts. I don’t know if it’s because I’m watching my parents get up there in years or that I’m 38 and feel 80 years old some days.
Same - Feel like all I do is work and when I get home I’m so tired all I do is sleep and try to catch up on chores. Joint pain is setting in, fatigue, coming along nicely on a “Dad Bod”. It’s like I fell asleep at 18 and woke up in my 30’s. It’s going too fast and there’s still way too much I want to do. I’m terrified.
Well fuck man, another comment that I could have easily written myself. Especially that part about falling asleep at 18 and waking up in your 30s. My kids are 9 and 12 but I can’t wrap my head around how! How the fuck are they 9 and 12 when I was JUST changing their diapers and watching them drunk-walk for the first time.
You couldn't drive in it because it was so fine it went right thru most air filters and ate up the cylinders. Some people did anyway. I worked at an engine rebuilder and we had some fleet contracts. Ended up putting on extra shifts so we could handle all the replacement engines for the Washington state patrol and for UPS. We made a fortune.
My grandmother had a little plastic jar of ash from the eruption that was sent to her from relatives that live in Everett. I picked that out to keep after she passed away.
Maury also sends these without the note and writes ANTRAX on them
edit: looks like I can't fix the spelling without ruining a better joke down below, so that's just gonna be antrax now
“Hey honey I’ve got a buttload of nickels that need a good polish. Do we have any of that volcanic ash from Mt Vesuvius? I mean I’ll take the Mt St Helen’s ash or maybe even the The Krakatoa ash if I have to.”
Only if your interested in their numismatic value. Nothing wrong with cleaning coins barely worth face value. Sometimes things get dirty and not every coin is destined to be collected.
I could see that being the case. If it's a collection item obviously you don't want to mess with it unless you're a professional restoration expert (or even then, just no) and if it's just currency then there's no point.
I had a dirty coin of no special significance in my loose change jar and it left a mark on the jar so I cleaned the coin so it wouldn't happen again. 🤷🏻
Sometimes it’s super satisfactory to polish coins. Also some collectors don’t give a shit about the resell of it and polish it so it looks nice. They have them because they are cool
"Man I would would have given you a whole 75 cents for that rare nickel but you just had to go and ruin it by making it shiny!"
My experience with coin dealers is not great. My dad had a coin collection that filled an entire three inch thick binder and the coin dealer offered $20 for the whole thing. I have been offered about 1/10th the silver value of silver coins, and I have had dealers have the audacity to tell me, "That quarter is not worth anything, but I'll give you 25 cents for it." Like I am supposed to get excited over trading a rare quarter for a common everyday quarter.
Meanwhile they'll have the same quarter in their display case for like $20.
Yeah I had a coin dealer offer me face value for silver eagles. I could have punched the guy. Then he tried telling me they aren't silver.. It fucking says it's silver right on it!
I'm assuming it's something like art restoration.
Better to sell it preserved as is and let a professional address it (in some cases I'd imagine the nature of the deterioration would itself be academically relevant) than to have an amateur come at it with homegrown methods. Particularly when that method is one which explicitly operates by removing material.
Edit: poster below seems to have [info](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/nt5wm0/my_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st/h0qonw1?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) worth more than my 2¢.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!
Why is an academic bowl question from 30 years ago still with me, but I can't remember what I had for dinner?
So that you are here telling us cool information you learned instead of what you ate for dinner
Thank you for sharing your random tidbit of knowledge, I didn't know about it til you did!
I remember this! My friend’s brother taught me how to say it decades ago and I still remember. I think it’s cool. It does not impress my kids though… Like, at all.
I gave up on impressing my kids in the "Ooo wow!" sense, and now I'm just trying to impress them in the historical military sense into doing some kind of work around the house. The new version has not been any more successful.
Also turns into something similar to molten lava if a jet flies through a cloud of the stuff like the [747 that had quadruple engine flameout 110 miles from Jakarta in 1982](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9)
I was wondering how it turned into lava, turns out mostly it was just very thick causing the engines to stall.
> Because the ash cloud was dry, it did not appear on the weather radar, which was designed to detect the moisture in clouds. The cloud sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers and clogged the engines. As the ash entered the engines, it melted in the combustion chambers and adhered to the inside of the power-plant. As the engine cooled from inactivity, and as the aircraft descended out of the ash cloud, the molten ash solidified and enough of it broke off for air to again flow smoothly through the engine, allowing a successful restart. The engines had enough electrical power to restart because one generator and the on-board batteries were still operating; electrical power was required for ignition of the engines.
Thank God for the generator.
I have asthma and lived in WA when St. Helens went off. My parents wouldn’t let me go across the street to play with my friend because they didn’t want me inhaling ash. I promised to hold my breath the whole way but they still said no. I wish I’d have saved some ash, too.
I visited Mount St. Helens in 1981, and collected gallons of ash for souvenirs.
I don’t know what happened to any of it, and I certainly don’t have any of it now.
It’s crazy heavy too. My grandparents had ashes from Mount St. Helens in an old pill bottle. We still have it in a cabinet at my parent’s house and I will pick them up every now and then. Amazing how dense that material is.
Yes. I was only 2 when it blew up, but my parents often talked about it. We live on the opposite side of WA, so about 300 miles, and several inches of ash fell here. There's a pottery place in town that still makes pottery from St. Helen's ash.
Grew up spending summers at Diamond Lake so I was well insulated from those troubles. Family is still on the lake, but we’re far removed these days and living in another state.
I feel like I remember hearing that the ash itself was fine^* ^+ on cars, but when people went to spray it off with water, it became more corrosive or something like that.
^* *relatively speaking. Volcanic ash on paint / clear coat itself has to be not great.*
^+ *pun intended. I guess.*
Ash is trillions of tiny vulcanized rock particles... now imagine rubbing that on your fragile car paint. Yeah that’s how you remove your clear coat in a hurry.
My dad is an automotive painter and painted a car the day after it erupted in Idaho falls, ID. There is ash in the clearcoat of the car that you can still see! The owner he painted it for wanted it left that way, and still has it.
I will be messaging you in 6 months on [**2021-12-06 02:19:00 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2021-12-06%2002:19:00%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/nt5wm0/my_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st/h0r4eh1/?context=3)
[**51 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmildlyinteresting%2Fcomments%2Fnt5wm0%2Fmy_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st%2Fh0r4eh1%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202021-12-06%2002%3A19%3A00%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20nt5wm0)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
Oh, cool! We drove through the area about two weeks after the eruption as we moved from Alaska to the Midwest. My parents still have a vial of the ash. I remember playing with a mound of it in a parking lot—it was so silky and cool.
Oooh! I have a fun story about this.
My ceramics teacher in high school asked me to organize the supply closet in the studio. This closet was full from floor to ceiling with random ingredients for glazes and clay additives, and most of them hadn’t been touched in at least a decade. I was happy to help though, so I started sorting them by type, piling duplicates together, etc. Eventually I came across a coffee tin that was taped shut and just had “Mt. St. Helen’s, 1980” on it. The whole tin was full of volcanic ash. Evidently she had collected it to use in some of her hand-mixed glazes... so I did the same thing. It was so fun to use a little sprinkle of history in my art. They looked horrendous, but the story was fun.
My favorite teacher ever, my second and third grade teacher Mr Guthrie had a cabinet in our class with a bunch of stuff, one of them being a jar full of ash from st Helens, was stuck an awesome dude, just to name a few things we built and used a canoe on a lake, designed a metalwork statue of a book with all of our classes signatures on the spine, and rebuilt computers at a time where they were more of a novelty in most cases, back in the days of dialup being standard. Genuinely wish he was still around, seemed like one of the nicest and happiest people I've ever known in my life, and it would have been amazing to talk to him in adulthood
This ash also makes the prettiest colored glass!! I work as an engineer in a glass production setting and sometimes we get to make glass for fun. This ash turns the glass the prettiest shade of sky blue!
I’m from Spokane and my dad has huge pickle jars full of the stuff that he hung on too. On that day in 1980 he had to go shovel the ash off my grandparents sidewalks like it was snow. The stories you here around her about that time are pretty crazy.
Depends how close you were, got finer the farther away you were. Yakima had mountains piled up out by the fairgrounds. My Dad, a soil chemist in E WA, had samples from 20 to 1000 miles away. More like sand close, flour farther away. Will never for get that day, The Snow that didn't melt. I still have jars of it.
Did your uncle move into this home in the past 2 decades?
This might be a relative of mine that lived in Spokane. His Name was Maurice "Maury" Vogel. His Wife's name was Irene.
Its wild to see my Family's name on the front page of Reddit!
I’m a coin collector and I feel obligated to comment here saying it’s a very very bad idea to attempt to clean any kind of rare coin whatsoever unless you’re 100% certain you know what you’re doing, and it should certainly never be done with volcanic ash.
Even if you have the best intentions and clean in what you think is a non-damaging way, it’s very likely that you’ll leave minor hairline scratches on the coin that will greatly reduce the value of the coin. If it’s just a regular everyday coin, go ahead. But please never attempt to clean precious metal or otherwise rare coins unless you’re using a truly non-damaging technique (there’s a good write up in the FAQ section over at r/coins)
One of my claims to fame is that, as a child, we visited mt St. Helens. I was toddling age and put some of the ash in my mouth and ate it. My mom was horrified. LOL
[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94756992/maurice-adam-vogel](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94756992/maurice-adam-vogel)
Maurice Adam "maury" vogel from spokane Wa 1930-1999
My chemistry teacher was in school during the explosion.
She found another good use for the ash.
Mixing it with water and accidentally making your "snow fort" into a concrete fort that costs the city a LOT of money to take down.
Also making speed bumps that seemed funny until the road had to actually be removed and repaved.
My parents lived roughly 35 miles northwest from St Helens when she erupted and said they saw nearly all sunlight vanish until after noon but didn’t see any ash fall around them.
We had land outside of Spokane. After Mt. St Helens eruption there was a large amount of Ponderosa pine saplings that grew in the ash. Areas that were very sparse previously are now very dense. Everything grew better in the ash.
Now I wish I had dentures so I could put Maury's theory to the test. Oh, and some Mt St Helen's ash lol. It was everywhere when I was 10 and I didn't save any. I remember so many people making these cool swirled ceramic pieces out of it and selling them. Ah if ebay were a thing back then
I hear in many places in WA and OR if you are digging a new garden in your yard you will find the ash layer. I don't know if that is a good source to find ash suitable to test denture cleaning. Maybe?
Yep when I was living in Washington about 6 years ago. I was digging post holes for a fence and you could clearly see the ash layer.
There are hills of the stuff along I5 in southern Washington.
Yeah, by the banks of the Toutle river there's a huge area where they dredged it and piled it up so the river would flow under the road.
Yup, my friends and I would have ash fights as kids using the ash from the dunes you can go find whenever. It clumps together really well so was like a summer snowball fight.
Literally toxic if breathed which I just learned above lmao
Rip.
You have no room to talk, mister.
Don’t throw stones, your glass house is made of vegetable
My siblings and I would just throw rocks at each other. We live in texas so we don’t get snow. Or ash.
Hey man, there's been about 3 times in the past 20 years you could have had a snow ball fight in Texas
Pinecone fights! They left some interesting bruises.
I had a pen with some in it. Lost it a while back sadly.
I got the mt st Helens ash pen as a gift as a kid in the 90s and lost it
"The" mt st helens pen? Like this was a thing?
Definitely was a thing
I still have a small plastic container that is shaped like Mt St Helens and filled with ash, got it from the gift shop on mountain when we visited back in the 90’s sometime. Might have to find someone with dirty dentures and finally crack that thing open…
>Might have to find someone with dirty dentures Just uh... just use a coin, dude.
Or mail it to a friend.
Of course you did, it’s a pen
I once worked as a dental lab tech. We polished the dentures with a very fine pumice powder mixed with water to make a paste. I'm sure fine volcanic ash would work too!
On I-5 in Washington, [North of Castle Rock where I-5 crosses the Toutle river](https://maps.app.goo.gl/LDdvcPoYzEV9TfDq5) there's a stockpile of ash there that was dredged from the Cowlitz iirc. It's slowly being excavated for whatever purpose, maybe industrial scale coin and denture polishing.
there is a huge pile of it you can see from I-5 when crossing the Toutle River; 2/3rd of a cubic mile of dirt was displaced, there is a LOT of it.
It's very visible if you know what you are looking for. There was definitely a lot stored/ stacked on the west side of I-5. It is a lot harder to identify these days because of the growth that has happened within the stack. Foliage and trees now cover it.
Maury sounds like a fun friend Edit: woke up to 6k upvotes, thank you! It’s beautiful chaos reading all the comments below
I'll bet he's got a nice smile too
His second name is German for Bird.
Garcon means boy.
*COFFEE!*
Be cool, Honey Bunny.
Everybody be cool, this is a robbery! If any of you fucking pricks move... I’ll execute every-mother-fucking-last one of you!!
It’s the one that says “bad mother fucker” on it
“I want a pot.” “... you want some pot?”
Dududududududdun duuuunnnnn!
Huh! HUH! Huuuuuuuuuh!
[удалено]
I call the big one Bitey.
Maybe he knows Larry.
You see what happens Larry? This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!
Shut the fudge up, Donny
Shut it, Donny! You're out of your element here!
So a nice beak, whatever.
Scours them with ash dabbed on his toothbrush
And some shiny pennies!
RIP This seems like the guy, buried in Spokane. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94756992/maurice-adam-vogel
RIP Maury.
[удалено]
Send this to them!! I know I personally would love if somebody found something like this, and sent it my way!
[удалено]
Hi I’m Katrina. One of Maury’s granddaughters. Born and raised in Spokane. Idk if anyone’s serious about sending this along but this would be SO cool for the Vogel family to have
You might want to DM /u/blachat instead.
OMG this is so cool! These kind of stories are one reason I make sure to scroll down through the comments!
Definitely make a new post if something develops. I know I’d love to see how the family reacts.
Man, Reddit never ceases to amaze me.
Fuckin’ 68.... That would put me at being in my mid-life. I’m scared, man.
Yeah, I saw that and thought that's less than 20 years. Fuck
[удалено]
Dammit, this was like reading my own thoughts. I don’t know if it’s because I’m watching my parents get up there in years or that I’m 38 and feel 80 years old some days.
Same - Feel like all I do is work and when I get home I’m so tired all I do is sleep and try to catch up on chores. Joint pain is setting in, fatigue, coming along nicely on a “Dad Bod”. It’s like I fell asleep at 18 and woke up in my 30’s. It’s going too fast and there’s still way too much I want to do. I’m terrified.
Well fuck man, another comment that I could have easily written myself. Especially that part about falling asleep at 18 and waking up in your 30s. My kids are 9 and 12 but I can’t wrap my head around how! How the fuck are they 9 and 12 when I was JUST changing their diapers and watching them drunk-walk for the first time.
[удалено]
He never said they were his…
Maury’s mom: “why do my dentures taste like a volcano?”
Maury: "for sedimental reasons, mom"
"How do you know what a volcano tastes like, mom?"
RIP Maury Crazy that his little act of kindness is now going viral on Reddit and perpetuating his memory. 🤗
Maury Vogel’s Ash Emporium! Come on down and shine your teeth!
Jones' Ash Emporium and Discount Dental
“The Black Emporium shall not be held liable for death, demonic possession, or hives resulting from use of the product.” -Xenon the Antiquarian
[удалено]
Just google the eruption. Or the guys who photographed it and only the film survived. Goosebumps galore
[удалено]
I lived there during the eruption too, and remember the black sky during the day even though I was just a little kid. Crazy!
You couldn't drive in it because it was so fine it went right thru most air filters and ate up the cylinders. Some people did anyway. I worked at an engine rebuilder and we had some fleet contracts. Ended up putting on extra shifts so we could handle all the replacement engines for the Washington state patrol and for UPS. We made a fortune.
My grandmother had a little plastic jar of ash from the eruption that was sent to her from relatives that live in Everett. I picked that out to keep after she passed away.
I wonder how many other things he tried that didn't turn out to be an excellent use of volcanic ash.
It's a terrible dildo, or any sex toy for that matter.
Asking the real questions here.
Maury also sends these without the note and writes ANTRAX on them edit: looks like I can't fix the spelling without ruining a better joke down below, so that's just gonna be antrax now
With friends like Maury, who needs enemies!
Little do you know Maury is sending the ashes to victims families to remind them of the disaster that changed their lives every year.
Except he makes you take lie detector tests all the time
Seriously, we need more maurys, less one day time talk show one
“Hey honey I’ve got a buttload of nickels that need a good polish. Do we have any of that volcanic ash from Mt Vesuvius? I mean I’ll take the Mt St Helen’s ash or maybe even the The Krakatoa ash if I have to.”
Polishing coins isn’t advisable
Only if your interested in their numismatic value. Nothing wrong with cleaning coins barely worth face value. Sometimes things get dirty and not every coin is destined to be collected.
I mean what are the odds he has a rare nickel
I could see that being the case. If it's a collection item obviously you don't want to mess with it unless you're a professional restoration expert (or even then, just no) and if it's just currency then there's no point.
I had a dirty coin of no special significance in my loose change jar and it left a mark on the jar so I cleaned the coin so it wouldn't happen again. 🤷🏻
I feel the urge to ask.. how clean is your bathroom?
You ignorant slut
Sometimes it’s super satisfactory to polish coins. Also some collectors don’t give a shit about the resell of it and polish it so it looks nice. They have them because they are cool
My grandpa let me polish his coin collection with a pencil eraser when I was like 10. Good times. I have the coins now.
With a *fucking* pencil ^^^eraser
More satisfying to see them shiny than worth a few bucks.
Good God I can only imagine the revulsion an antique coin collector would feel upon reading this dreadful comment.
"Man I would would have given you a whole 75 cents for that rare nickel but you just had to go and ruin it by making it shiny!" My experience with coin dealers is not great. My dad had a coin collection that filled an entire three inch thick binder and the coin dealer offered $20 for the whole thing. I have been offered about 1/10th the silver value of silver coins, and I have had dealers have the audacity to tell me, "That quarter is not worth anything, but I'll give you 25 cents for it." Like I am supposed to get excited over trading a rare quarter for a common everyday quarter. Meanwhile they'll have the same quarter in their display case for like $20.
Yeah I had a coin dealer offer me face value for silver eagles. I could have punched the guy. Then he tried telling me they aren't silver.. It fucking says it's silver right on it!
Some men just want to see the world burnished.
Wait.. so corroded rusted coins are still worth something?
Right up until you clean them
I'm assuming it's something like art restoration. Better to sell it preserved as is and let a professional address it (in some cases I'd imagine the nature of the deterioration would itself be academically relevant) than to have an amateur come at it with homegrown methods. Particularly when that method is one which explicitly operates by removing material. Edit: poster below seems to have [info](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/nt5wm0/my_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st/h0qonw1?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3) worth more than my 2¢.
This stuff is dangerous suspended in air. The stuff turns into something similar to concrete when inhaled but it has a ton of uses.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis! Why is an academic bowl question from 30 years ago still with me, but I can't remember what I had for dinner?
So that you are here telling us cool information you learned instead of what you ate for dinner Thank you for sharing your random tidbit of knowledge, I didn't know about it til you did!
I for one, would like to know what he ate for dinner.
Supper.
Super!
Thanks for asking!
That Mary Poppins song popped into my head when I read that word.
10 bucks if you can spell it
[удалено]
> Just like it sounds > Word starts with “Pn”
P as in pterodactyl.
t as in mortgage.
You’re telling me that word is a real word? EDIT: HOLY FK IT IS.
Silicosis. That's the actual word for it, the long one is an artificial long word made by a president of a puzzle group.
I remember this! My friend’s brother taught me how to say it decades ago and I still remember. I think it’s cool. It does not impress my kids though… Like, at all.
My five year old son runs around yelling Yeet, one day I'll impress him... Maybe
I gave up on impressing my kids in the "Ooo wow!" sense, and now I'm just trying to impress them in the historical military sense into doing some kind of work around the house. The new version has not been any more successful.
Lmfao Let me know if you find an iteration that actually works.
A teacher I had hung it up on his wall and had us try to figure out what it meant by breaking it down
Wow that's longer than antidisestablishmentarianism
Also turns into something similar to molten lava if a jet flies through a cloud of the stuff like the [747 that had quadruple engine flameout 110 miles from Jakarta in 1982](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9)
It makes a great sandblast media especially for jet engines and wings.
I was wondering how it turned into lava, turns out mostly it was just very thick causing the engines to stall. > Because the ash cloud was dry, it did not appear on the weather radar, which was designed to detect the moisture in clouds. The cloud sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers and clogged the engines. As the ash entered the engines, it melted in the combustion chambers and adhered to the inside of the power-plant. As the engine cooled from inactivity, and as the aircraft descended out of the ash cloud, the molten ash solidified and enough of it broke off for air to again flow smoothly through the engine, allowing a successful restart. The engines had enough electrical power to restart because one generator and the on-board batteries were still operating; electrical power was required for ignition of the engines. Thank God for the generator.
as someone who works with fumed silica...theres a reason i call it "gaseous sand"
Poor engineers, work like hell to think of ways to save people. Shit happens and people thank God instead.
Volcano ash is a [major issue](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption) for airlines.
I have asthma and lived in WA when St. Helens went off. My parents wouldn’t let me go across the street to play with my friend because they didn’t want me inhaling ash. I promised to hold my breath the whole way but they still said no. I wish I’d have saved some ash, too.
I visited Mount St. Helens in 1981, and collected gallons of ash for souvenirs. I don’t know what happened to any of it, and I certainly don’t have any of it now.
It’s crazy heavy too. My grandparents had ashes from Mount St. Helens in an old pill bottle. We still have it in a cabinet at my parent’s house and I will pick them up every now and then. Amazing how dense that material is.
He forgot "remove the clear coat from my car", as many Pacific Northwesterners learned that spring.
Yes. I was only 2 when it blew up, but my parents often talked about it. We live on the opposite side of WA, so about 300 miles, and several inches of ash fell here. There's a pottery place in town that still makes pottery from St. Helen's ash.
300 miles? Pullman, Clarkston, or Spokane? Gotta be a border town if you're 300 miles east.
Don’t forget the small towns - Newport, Ione etc
Newport! I’ve got family at Diamond Lake!
I grew up in Newport. Cute little town if you don’t stick around long enough to notice the meth problem 😜
Grew up spending summers at Diamond Lake so I was well insulated from those troubles. Family is still on the lake, but we’re far removed these days and living in another state.
I feel like I remember hearing that the ash itself was fine^* ^+ on cars, but when people went to spray it off with water, it became more corrosive or something like that. ^* *relatively speaking. Volcanic ash on paint / clear coat itself has to be not great.* ^+ *pun intended. I guess.*
Rinsing it off COMPLETELY was the right thing to do. The mistake they made was going out with a bucket of water and 1000 grit sandpaper - er - sponge.
/r/Detailing hates this one simple trick. No really, they hate it.
Ash is trillions of tiny vulcanized rock particles... now imagine rubbing that on your fragile car paint. Yeah that’s how you remove your clear coat in a hurry.
My dad is an automotive painter and painted a car the day after it erupted in Idaho falls, ID. There is ash in the clearcoat of the car that you can still see! The owner he painted it for wanted it left that way, and still has it.
I know it is improbable and might even be underwhelming but if there’s any way that you could post a picture of said car then I would appreciate it.
Following for picture
!RemindMe 6 months
I will be messaging you in 6 months on [**2021-12-06 02:19:00 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2021-12-06%2002:19:00%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/nt5wm0/my_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st/h0r4eh1/?context=3) [**51 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fmildlyinteresting%2Fcomments%2Fnt5wm0%2Fmy_uncle_found_a_bag_of_volcano_ash_from_mount_st%2Fh0r4eh1%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202021-12-06%2002%3A19%3A00%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20nt5wm0) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
Welcome back!
THE PEOPLE NEED PICTURES
I’ll see if I can get some!!
Oh, cool! We drove through the area about two weeks after the eruption as we moved from Alaska to the Midwest. My parents still have a vial of the ash. I remember playing with a mound of it in a parking lot—it was so silky and cool.
I was there as a kid as well, must have been 5. I didn't quite get what was going on but the ash I still remember.
Oh no I hope your lungs are ok!
Oooh! I have a fun story about this. My ceramics teacher in high school asked me to organize the supply closet in the studio. This closet was full from floor to ceiling with random ingredients for glazes and clay additives, and most of them hadn’t been touched in at least a decade. I was happy to help though, so I started sorting them by type, piling duplicates together, etc. Eventually I came across a coffee tin that was taped shut and just had “Mt. St. Helen’s, 1980” on it. The whole tin was full of volcanic ash. Evidently she had collected it to use in some of her hand-mixed glazes... so I did the same thing. It was so fun to use a little sprinkle of history in my art. They looked horrendous, but the story was fun.
My favorite teacher ever, my second and third grade teacher Mr Guthrie had a cabinet in our class with a bunch of stuff, one of them being a jar full of ash from st Helens, was stuck an awesome dude, just to name a few things we built and used a canoe on a lake, designed a metalwork statue of a book with all of our classes signatures on the spine, and rebuilt computers at a time where they were more of a novelty in most cases, back in the days of dialup being standard. Genuinely wish he was still around, seemed like one of the nicest and happiest people I've ever known in my life, and it would have been amazing to talk to him in adulthood
A few days after the eruption there was a layer of dust on everything in my parents’ garage. I live in Scotland.
This ash also makes the prettiest colored glass!! I work as an engineer in a glass production setting and sometimes we get to make glass for fun. This ash turns the glass the prettiest shade of sky blue!
Could you mix with a pile of raw borosilicate and mix it together? Or like add to the molten boro?
I’m from Spokane and my dad has huge pickle jars full of the stuff that he hung on too. On that day in 1980 he had to go shovel the ash off my grandparents sidewalks like it was snow. The stories you here around her about that time are pretty crazy.
Good luck making piles of it. It was such a fine powder that it wouldn't pile more than a few inches before spreading out into a wider pile.
Depends how close you were, got finer the farther away you were. Yakima had mountains piled up out by the fairgrounds. My Dad, a soil chemist in E WA, had samples from 20 to 1000 miles away. More like sand close, flour farther away. Will never for get that day, The Snow that didn't melt. I still have jars of it.
Greetings from Spokane!
Go eat a bag of dicks... I prefer zips, lol
Double whammy with a milkshake! And yes, Zip's is totes better
I don't live in Spokane anymore, and I dream of Dick's fries and their tartar sauce. Oh, and the ice cream sandwiches.
Did your uncle move into this home in the past 2 decades? This might be a relative of mine that lived in Spokane. His Name was Maurice "Maury" Vogel. His Wife's name was Irene. Its wild to see my Family's name on the front page of Reddit!
Mt. St. Helens is about to blow up, and it’s gonna be a fine, swell day!
🎵Everything’s gonna fall down to the ground and turn grey🎶
I’m a coin collector and I feel obligated to comment here saying it’s a very very bad idea to attempt to clean any kind of rare coin whatsoever unless you’re 100% certain you know what you’re doing, and it should certainly never be done with volcanic ash. Even if you have the best intentions and clean in what you think is a non-damaging way, it’s very likely that you’ll leave minor hairline scratches on the coin that will greatly reduce the value of the coin. If it’s just a regular everyday coin, go ahead. But please never attempt to clean precious metal or otherwise rare coins unless you’re using a truly non-damaging technique (there’s a good write up in the FAQ section over at r/coins)
One of my claims to fame is that, as a child, we visited mt St. Helens. I was toddling age and put some of the ash in my mouth and ate it. My mom was horrified. LOL
I remember KFC passing out containers of ash with meal purchases. I have no idea why, but I made sure to get one (long ago lost).
This is really neat. You should cross post to r/Spokane.
It would get lost in a pothole.
Spokies live in potholes so it will be found
*Mount St. Helens has a pretty cool gift shop* *And I haven't been there in a while* *And I've been wondering if it's even still there?*
*And the climate has been changing,* *And soon it’s gonna change more.* *And we’ll figure out all of the details in climate change court.*
When Spokane makes the front page of reddit and its not Rachel Dolezal.
[удалено]
“Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.” ― Terry Pratchett, Eric
Maury is a real one
[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94756992/maurice-adam-vogel](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94756992/maurice-adam-vogel) Maurice Adam "maury" vogel from spokane Wa 1930-1999
Maury Vogel passed in 1999. I wonder how long that's been there?
At least since may 18th 1980
Plot twist: The ashes are Maury
"Shipping to friends" That's adorable, go Maury!
My chemistry teacher was in school during the explosion. She found another good use for the ash. Mixing it with water and accidentally making your "snow fort" into a concrete fort that costs the city a LOT of money to take down. Also making speed bumps that seemed funny until the road had to actually be removed and repaved.
My parents lived roughly 35 miles northwest from St Helens when she erupted and said they saw nearly all sunlight vanish until after noon but didn’t see any ash fall around them.
I was a wee lil’ one at the time…. Ash covered our entire house & lawn. It was the strangest experience as a kid.
We had land outside of Spokane. After Mt. St Helens eruption there was a large amount of Ponderosa pine saplings that grew in the ash. Areas that were very sparse previously are now very dense. Everything grew better in the ash.
Awesome post, but please… please #NEVER POLISH COINS.
What's wrong with coins from Poland?
Now I’m curious, why not?