PudlJumper2001


PudlJumper2001



Welcome to my personal web site! This site is still very much under construction...I am barely started. If you come across some writings that seem a bit strange, it might just be a place holder waiting for me to personalize it. Be patient...and if you have something you would like to see posted on the web site, be sure to send it to me. And please go to the bottom of this Home Page and sign my Guest Book! If "View Guest Book" and "Sign Guest Book" are not visible just below the Guest Book logo, click below the logo..."View" should appear. Click below that, and "Sign Guest Book" should appear. Weird, huh! Mt. St. Helens - Aug 99 (Photo by Buzz Brake)

My name is Perry Brake, better known to family and friends as "Buzz." So why the PudlJumper2001 name for my web site? Webster would probably define a puddle jumper as a plane that flies short routes, from "puddle to puddle." When I was growing up in rural Washington, old jalopies were also called puddle jumpers. I drove such a machine during my CB radio days, and my "handle" was Puddle Jumper.

It was a logical transition to choose the same name when I joined AOL and later, ATT Broadband. Several alternative spellings of puddle jumper were already taken, but PudlJumper was available, so I became PudlJumper1@comcast.net.

Continuing the same thought, but upgrading for the new Millennium, I tacked a 2001 on the end and my web page became PudlJumper2001.

And why the photo of Mount Saint Helens above? I grew up in the shadows of the mountain, 20 miles down the North Fork of the Toutle River from Spirit Lake. If you know the history of Mt. St. Helens catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980, you will remember that a mud flow from the mountain and Spirit Lake wiped out everything along the banks of the Toutle River for many miles downstream. So it was with my boyhood home. Fortunately, my parents, Jim and Gladys Brake, were forced to evacuate a couple weeks before the big blow.

Two weeks after the eruption, and after hiking cross country to avoid police road blocks keeping people out of the "red zone," I was the first human to walk on the land where the house had been. It looked like a lunar landscape with no sign of humans ever having been there. I have posted a couple photos below to give you an idea of the situation.

I took the above photo of Mount Saint Helens in August 1999 at the 5000 foot level (hence the Indian paintbrush) about ten miles north of the mountain, directly in the path of the May 80 blast.

This photo shows a family 4th of July reunion at my boyhood home, sometime before May 18, 1980. The acreage surrounding our home was thick with fir, cedar, maple, alder, and cottonwood trees. We loved having the Toutle River and its never-failing bounty of salmon, trout, and steelhead...and its sandy beach...literally at our back door. That peaceful, enchanting river was to become a monster on May 18, 1980.

On May 18, 1980, things changed...drastically. A wall of mud estimated to be 40 feet high or higher came charging down the Toutle River valley, flattening everything in its path. Weyerhaeuser's Camp Baker, about six miles up river from our home, was wiped out. Ours was the closest permanently inhabited home to the mountain that was right on the river, and therefore the first family home to disappear in the mud flow. The photo above is taken from the same place, and looking in the same direction, as the photo above it. No sign of human habitation nor any living thing remained...only sand, ash, and boulders.

House in river

In this photo taken by a neighbor from a hill above our property, you might be able to see our house floating down the river of mud. It had started its journey to the sea somewhere near the tip of the upper arrow.

The Toutle played a very important part in our lives as we grew up on the place we called "502" because a Weyerhaeuser camp called "Camp 502" had been there in the past. This is a shot of our "swimmin' hole." They say still water runs deep, and that was true for the swimmin' hole as you can see the calm waters with a natural platform for diving on the left. What you can't see in this shot is a spacious, sandy beach on the right side. Starting in the spring as soon as ice quit floating down the river (well...almost!) until the first frost hit the pumpkin in the fall, the swimmin' hole was a high priority attraction for family and friends.

Upstream and around a bend from the swimmin' hole was the "mouth hole," so called because it was where the "mouth" of the Green River entered the Toutle which is coming into this photo from the right. The mouth hole was one of the best salmon and steelhead holes on the Toutle. The big ones seemed to congregate there while deciding whether to go up the Green or the Toutle. We did our best to avoid an overcrowding situation!

Dad Fishing

This is my Dad, Jim Brake, fishing at the mouth hole, probably for salmon because he is using his salmon/steelhead rod, and he did most of his steelhead fishing in the middle of the winter. The mouth hole was also a top producer of searun cutthroat, or harvest trout as we called them, which were the main attraction in late summer. Those we caught on flies, with the Royal Coachman Bucktail being the only one we needed.

Dad peacefully joined his Lord on November 15, 2001. I will be building a memorial page soon, but in the meantime, you can read my eulogy to him by clicking on the link below.

A Tribute to Jim Brake

Am I just blowing smoke? Or did we really catch fish? This photo might help convince you...and I promise that I have not used my photo enhancement software on it! These are harvest trout caught in one evening at the mouth hole. I caught three, Dad caught two, and my pipsqueak (at the time) little brother, Jack, caught NINE! Dad and I didn't tell him until years later that the reason we eased off when we did was that the limit was three! Warden John Lund...here's proof!! Jail him!

And this is me, taken at sister Sal's place in December (Christmas) 1999. If you would like to see what I did during my vacation in Vietnam, click on the link below.

Click here to see One Soldier's View of the Vietnam War

Click here to visit sister Jan's page

Click here to see sister Sal's page

Click here to see how Mt. St. Helens' eruption influenced my life

Click here to visit the Brake Family History Web Page

Click here to see my Fletcher Connection

Click here to see my hobbies

Click here to contact me.

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