No matter what I tell them, my wife and kids just cannot understand my infatuation with Mount St. Helens, the volcano in southwest Washington.

While I have never been there, it seems like the mountain and I are old friends.

Mount St. Helens blew its top on May 18, 1980. It was a Sunday.

I did not have to look up the day of the week because that eruption, which blanked Butte with ash, occurred on Family Day at the Highland View Golf Course. While the volcano started erupting early in the morning, we didn’t know about it until late in the afternoon.

It was, after all, way before social media and 24-hour cable news.

For nearly two months, we knew there was a chance the volcano was going to erupt in a big way, though nobody probably believed it would blow up with an explosion that was 1,600 times the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

I found out about the eruption from Jack Crowley, the golf pro at the course we affectionately called “the Muni.”

Jack, who was the world’s oldest little kid and a man I loved like a grandfather, was warning everyone as if we were about to be overcome by a wall of ash and lava in any minute. He was making himself a mask, which I believe included a garbage bag and a coffee filter. 

Even as a 6-year-old boy, I knew that mask was nothing short of ridiculous.

Family Day happened once a month, on a Sunday, from May through September during Jack’s magical 29 seasons as the pro. It included a potluck lunch, a scramble, a duffer’s derby and a whole lot of fun.

That one day each month was probably why the Muni was like one big family. Everyone knew everyone at the golf course.

The derby was always the last event of the day, and Jack ran out to warn all the golfers about Mount St. Helens as they made their way down the ninth hole. He was wearing his mask.

He told everyone that Mount St. Helens erupted, and everyone had to go home immediately. You could see the dark clouds approaching. They were looming in the distance like a major thunderstorm. 

I don’t remember if I witnessed ash falling that night, but I remember that I woke up to our yard and car covered with what looked like gray snow. 

School was canceled. Even though I was in kindergarten and I still liked school at that stage in my life, that was welcomed news.

I watched everything I could about Mount St. Helens. A year after the eruption, the movie “St. Helens” was released on HBO.

We had a descrambler on the back of our TV, so we could watch the movie. I watched and watched and watched.

At the next Family Day — or it could have been any Family Day in the next two years — I remember playing in the mud where they were adding on a section on the north end of the old clubhouse.

I was playing with the Murphy brothers — Scott, Tim, Art and Ryan — as we made mountains in the mud. I made Mount St. Helens.

At first, I had the pre-1980 version of the Mountain, then I made the booming sound effects as I made it erupt out the north side, leaving it kind of look like a horseshoe from the top.

It was one of my favorite memories from the Muni, and about 90 percent of my good times as a boy came from that golf course.

Most of those good memories involved Jack, who would wow us with magic when he wasn’t showing us a trick on the golf course.

My family was so close to Jack that I thought we were related when I was little. We might as well have been. He was one of my grandpa’s best friends.

My grandpa could easily find the fault in anyone, but not Jack. He was untouchable. He was as good as they come.

Jack was at the Muni every day during his 29 seasons as a pro from 1969 through 1996. He opened the clubhouse shortly after the sun came up, and he was there to close it at dark.

In his song “River Kids,” the great musician Tim Montana sings, “Take me back. Take me back, back when we were river kids.” I sometimes find myself singing that song, but about Muni kids.

I would give anything to go be a Muni kid again. A million perfect things came together just right to make it such a magical place, and the No. 1 thing was Jack.

He poured his whole life into that golf course.

Over the last couple of months, I have been thinking about the old golf pro quite a bit. That is because I have been looking forward to this Saturday at noon when the new Jack Crowley Clubhouse at the Muni will officially be dedicated in honor of the pro who passed away in 2010. He was just 74.

Jack’s family, including his son John and his daughters Jodi and Paula, will be there for the dedication, as will hopefully 100s of former Muni kids who knew the greatness of the old course and the old pro.

Coincidentally, I have also been thinking about Mount St. Helens.

I have been reading a ton about the mountain, and I have watched countless videos. I even watched the movie “St. Helens” for the first time in 40 years. The movie is available for free on YouTube — no descrambler required — and it is awful.

Like with the movie “Titanic,” the movie makers had a great true story to tell. Instead, they chose to insert fiction into it. Terrible fiction.

Instead of honoring the great David Johnston, the volcanologist killed in the eruption, it featured a fictional “rebel” geologist named David Jackson. As if there was ever such a thing as a “rebel” geologist.

But I will probably watch the movie again, just for the eruption scenes. 

Mount St. Helens came back into my life thanks to my new friend Robert Lester, the mountaineer who finished his canoe journey from Butte to the Pacific Ocean this past weekend.

Robert was a guest on my podcast a while back, and he was talking about some of his greatest adventures. One story Robert told was about the time he climbed up the south side of Mount St. Helens.

I told him how I was always fascinated by that mountain and the story of its eruption.

A couple days later, Robert showed up at my house with a photo he took from the top of the mountain, looking down into its crater.

You can see down to Spirit Lake, where Harry R. Truman, a World War I veteran who would not leave his home during the evacuation orders, lived. In the distance looking north you can see Mount Rainier.

I put the photo, which is 20 inches wide and 30 inches tall, in a frame and hung it on the wall above my computer. 

Sometimes, I just sit back and stare at the photo for an hour or more. It really is that great. The photo is truly one of the best gifts I have ever received.

In addition to its beauty, it is a reminder of some of the best days of my life.

Every time I look at the photo, I think about the greatest golf pro to ever live wearing a mask that was completely ridiculous.

— Bill Foley, who knows what it is like to look ridiculous, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 before that weirdo billionaire destroys it. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.