Beautiful Mineral Stories

Stories of Rockhounds - Tales of Bravery, Delight and Foolishness*
*Do not necessarily try any of the following activities

Send your true (or slightly exaggerated) stories, memories and adventures.
Include a statement to the effect that I can publish them. Then I'll put them here in a permanent archive. Stories give our rocks their flavor! Send some. Email your stories to me: johnnash at beautifulminerals.com

"The things that happen. I once found 30-40 old Franklin mine run specimens on the side of a drug store parking lot in Union, N.J. (far from Franklin!). I was 16 and had a job sweeping the parking lot. Piled them in my car and still have them, great esperite, barite, phosphorescent willemite, etc. Found out some time later a big rock collector lived in the neighborhood. I got to see his collection, which truly was huge. On my way out, I happened to see his wife in the side yard. I commented that her husband and she certainly had an incredible mineral collection! His wife stormed and scowled (the collector wasn't around outside, he had stayed in the house) and told me she got so disgusted with how he'd filled the house and garage up with the "DAMN ROCKS", she'd started throwing them over the fence. Into the drugstore parking lot! In order to help the couple avoid further marital strife (one can only imagine what revelation of the woman's activities would have done to the man's heart as well as his marriage), I kept my mouth shut about my new Franklin collection! - JN

"I get those "senior moments" from time to time and think about those fun days and sometimes scary days back when we were young and foolish.  I remember I used to be bad about going out into the wild and crawling off into these abandoned mine shafts by myself and not telling anybody where I was going.  It wasn't unusual for me to leave after last class Friday and not show up until time for Monday class.  I'd get down in some old mine and spend the weekend in there.  I fell in one once and spent 3 days trying to get out, finally made it, came out on the other side of the mountain, dark of night, completely disoriented, miles from the car, lost as a goose, -- fun times. (Taught me a lesson though,  I always left a note on the car windshield or told my roommate where I was going from then on.)" - CC

"So one time I was on the way back home in my  '53 Chevy wagon (the kind with fake wood sides) from the Buckwheat Dump at Franklin with three of my friends. We were about 17. We'd made a 'portable' UV lamp out of my UV plus a car battery and a vibrating dc/ac converter. We had a pressurized water pump for dusting off the specimens . I'm driving along this dark country road, when all of a sudden a car pulls in front of me from a driveway on the left. Had to slam on my brakes. So my friends start going 'Pass him!', so, being 17, I did. They rolled down the window, pumped the water pump up and fired on this guy as I passed him. He was pissed. Got his blue shirt and badge all wet! Yep, he'd just pulled out of the police station on my left. Omigod. So on goes a little red light on his dashboard. He hauls us back to the station. This was about 1963. Scared silly were we. God, we thought they'd call our parents! Kept us there for about two hours, deciding what to do about us. I guess they finally decided we were scared enough not to do something that dumb again and told us to get on home." - JN

"I speak pretty good Spanish and did a lot of collecting back in those college days (late '50's) of Mexican specimens.  Had a lot of contacts and friends in the mines down there back then and I have a lot good stuff from Mapimi and all the Chihuahua mines from those times.  Nice compared to the stuff we get today.  They used to bring train car loads of ore (lead,zinc & silvers) up to the AS & R smelter in El Paso and leave them set outside the gate overnight sometimes. I would crawl up on them and throw galena, pyrites and everything else off on the side of the track then pick them up after they took the cars inside the smelter grounds.  Easy field tripping. And too, the miners would bring crates of wulfenites from Los Lamentos up to Juarez to sell for extra cash. I would buy these and store them in the back room of a bar over there and bring them across few at a time under the front seat of the car.  ( wulfenite was on the Lead Import Duty Act quota list and couldn't bring it across legally)..." - anonymous

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