I was ten years old; it was the beginning of my 5th grade year, and I was walking home from Lieser School, in Vancouver, Washington. I noticed that the air was very odd. The sky looked yellow and everything was still and silent. Heavy. It was very odd. I stood at the corner of Lieser Road and MacArthur Blvd., where my street, St. Helens Ave., intersected, and I remember looking in all directions, noticing and wondering about the strange weather, and walking on home.
Fast forward a few hours and I was finishing up my ballet class in downtown Vancouver. My parents picked me up and we were going out to dinner. We went to a Chinese Restaurant not far from the dance studio. I remember that I was very very hungry and I couldn't wait for the chow mien. My stomach was growling. It was getting dark outside.
We ordered, but it seemed like it was taking forever for the food to arrive. There was a group in another booth, but they left before getting their food and my parents said they must have been worried about getting home in the storm. But we decided to stick it out. Suddenly the lights went out -- everything in the restaurant was pitch black. We wondered if we were going to get our food. But food had been prepared, so we got to eat. It may have been something different from what we ordered, but we didn't mind. We couldn't really see the food anyway; it was too dark. They brought out candles and we hastily ate our chow mien. Our family -- my dad, mom and younger sister and I -- were the only customers. At that point, with food finally going into my belly, it all seemed like an interesting adventure.
It was windy when we went in, but storms and power outages weren't all that uncommon. I was just a child, but I don't believe my parents or the other adults in the community had any idea of what was coming.
By the time we left, it was getting very very windy. We ran to the car (1951 Ford) and as we drove out of town, store front windows were "popping" left and right. "Look, that window just popped!" "Look! there's another one!" We drove home in blackness; there was no electricity anywhere in the city. Our headlights illuminated flying leaves, branches, and black snake-like power lines, freed from their poles, that whipped across our path and slapped at the car. We were stopped at one point by a huge Douglas fir that had fallen across the main boulevard; we had to drive around it and take another route home.
I don't remember the sounds. It must have been crashing all around us. I think my parents must have had the car radio on, too, trying to get the news.
Our single story home on St. Helens Avenue had been brand new when my parents bought it in 1954. It was one of those 3-bedroom track homes build to accommodate the growing ranks of post-war baby boom families. Behind it rolled an empty field and our dining room had a panorama view of the city of Portland across the Columbia River. We didn't have a basement. The four of us huddled in the darkness, together in my parents' bedroom. I don't remember being frightened, but I think my 9-year old sister was. My parents must have been scared, too, but I didn't know it.
The next morning we awoke to crystal clear blue skies and sunshine. It was such a beautiful day, and we toured the neighborhood, surveying the damage. We were lucky. The only thing we lost was a young tree my dad had planted the year before. Some people lost entire roofs off their houses. Many lost shingles and huge trees that blocked roads and crushed homes and cars. We were warned to stay away from downed power lines, and we thought of all the potential live wires we had come in contact with the night before.
Back at school stories were exchanged. The one I remember most vividly was about the family a few blocks from us, gathered for dinner when a tree fell through the roof, right across the middle of their dining room table, and no one was hurt!
It is interesting to read what other people have to say about their experiences that day. So few seem to remember, or even know that it happened at all. But around here it used to be said that everyone remembers where they were when President Kennedy was shot, and on the day of the Columbus Day storm.
Terry Benge
October 14, 2007
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