Then one day when I was 10 years old, an interest in rocks and minerals quite unexpectedly blossomed. There was a new housing development going up in the neighborhood, and my mildly-hoodlum-oriented friends and I would sneak into the unfinished houses and, uh-hmm, “scavenge” bits of leftover building materials. We weren’t overly delinquent, taking nothing big or valuable, but we did hunt for bits and pieces of whatever scrap might appeal to curious and bored 10-year-old boys blessed with inadequate parental supervision (and that characterization is not to diss my folks… after all, it was the 1970s, well before the unfortunate modern era of helicopter parenting). Among the artifacts I discovered was a slab of broken marble leftover from the installation of a bathroom countertop. It was polished on one side and rough on the others, snow white in color, with delicate, almost ethereal bands and wisps of pale brown.
This rock greatly intrigued me, for it was so remarkably different from what I’d ever seen before (and yet unbeknownst to me then, so eerily related, by little more than temperature and pressure, to the widespread limestone just underfoot). I knew, or at least quickly figured out, that this rock was marble, and that it wasn’t locally quarried. It was exotic, in every sense of the word. In time, with the aid of a magnifying glass and several new beginner mineral books, I discovered that the thin brown wisps were actually bands of many tiny, shiny, golden-brown flakes, which I discovered were mica (and indeed almost certainly phlogopite). With this rock thoroughly studied, to the degree a pre-teen with limited resources could accomplish, I was inspired enough to expand my collection. But local collecting opportunities in the swampland were still extremely limited. A nearby abandoned and partially flooded gravel pit, which in Florida real estate jargon is called a “lake”, offered the occasional geode filled with crystals of a pale golden calcite (which I discovered, in conjunction with my first UV lamp, to be fluorescent and phosphorescent… very cool!) To my parents’ extreme apprehension, my next collecting locality was the train tracks near my dad’s business, where I found abundant anthracite that had fallen off the overloaded coal cars, as well as the ubiquitous cobbles of presumably Appalachian granite and gneiss that served as the ballast to hold the railroad ties in place. By that time, I had learned enough to understand that these kinds of igneous and metamorphic rocks might have interesting minor and accessory minerals, and I examined them closely in search of rare and valuable crystals. But alas, my train track rock collecting was largely fruitless, although I can say, to my parents’ great relief, that at least I never got hit by a train.
Then in the summer of 1980, my family once again undertook the age-old American ritual of the family road-trip. Whereas the usual narrative is probably that most vacationers flock to Florida for travel, those of us relegated to the flat endless landscapes of sand and palms were actually quite excited at the prospect of seeing real deciduous trees and topography, and hence that year planned a vacation to western North Carolina. I knew this was my chance at real mineral collecting. With Jay Ellis Ransom’s “Gems and Minerals of America” checked out from the library as the unofficial trip guidebook, I pretty much co-opted the family vacation for my own single-minded collecting desires, only tossing in enough scenic overviews to placate the rest of my then less-than-enthusiastic family.
Fortunately, some of the best collecting was also in some of the prettiest countryside, so in the end the trip was enjoyed by all. Stops in Cowee Valley, Spruce Pine, and Hiddenite were of course a must, and even random stops along little roadside creeks to pan for gold and discover those elusive alluvial diamonds (yes, I had high expectations!) were on the agenda.
In the photos below, I’m panning for gold and screening gravel for gemstones (North Carolina, 1980). ↓
And while I didn’t find any gold or diamonds, I did bring home vials of small rubies, sapphires and rhodolite garnet from Franklin, rutilated quartz from Hiddenite, and even a small emerald from Spruce Pine (which I subsequently lost between the sofa cushions at home… grrr). As for the little roadside creeks at which I panned and sieved, all I found were endless mosquitos, and the creepiest encounter I’ve ever had with what seemed like thousands of ticks.
The photo below is of one of the mining operations in the mineralized pegmatites of the Spruce Pine area. I’m not 100% sure which particular mine this is (we visited several), but I think it’s the Bon Ami Mine in what now appears to be a tourist center called “Emerald Village”. ↓
Back in Florida, I realized that for my mineral collecting to truly expand, realistically it would have to grow by mail-order. Dr. David Garske was the dealer I best recall buying from, first from when he was still in Illinois to later when he moved to Bisbee [update: I had the fortunate pleasure to finally meet Dr. Garske in person during the 2017 Tucson mineral show. He had a dealer booth set up at the old Century 12 Theater along with a few other vendors, and apparently it was the first time in many years that he’d set up a booth]. I still have most of the purchased specimens from those days, although some fell victim as starting materials to my increasing interests in backyard chemistry (another one of my 1970s/1980s edutainment activities that by more cautious modern standards might now not seem so appropriate for a kid… lol). Perhaps it was the early necessity of having to buy minerals growing up in a place with so few local collecting opportunities, but even when self-collecting was actually an option: my high school senior year in the outback mining town of Mount Isa in Australia, college in mineral-rich Colorado, and eventually graduate school in the porphyry-copper province of southern Arizona, collecting my own samples always took a back seat to simply buying them. First it was through mail order, but then finally I graduated to Heaven on Earth: the annual Tucson Gem & Mineral show and all the even better satellite hotel shows scattered around town. For all the mountains and mines I was surrounded by in my late teens and thereafter, I guess my self-collected Lake Corella iolite, Table Mountain zeolites, and Old Yuma Mine vanadinites were just never quite as attractive as what I could buy at the show, even with just my paltry budget.
So those childhood experiences were the roots to what grew from a hobby to a career. Indeed, what started out as just a curiosity about a piece of stolen marble from a construction site ultimately turned into a now over forty year passion for all things mineral. Over the years my uglier or more compositionally-unique samples became fodder for my chemistry experiments, and today I’ve melded my interests in chemistry and minerals into my specialty area of analytical mineralogy. As a professional mineralogist, I still occasionally crush up minerals for chemistry experiments, but these days I’ve typically bought them just for that express purpose, and the experiments tend to be a bit more sophisticated and controlled than those of my youth. In recent years, I’ve reinvigorated my long-time enthusiasm for the seemingly lost skill of petrography, and so I’ve become that odd buyer at the mineral show who asks dealers not for showy display samples, but rather for those small ugly ones representing unique and interesting assemblages. Unlike the proud displays afforded to those always-sought finest specimens, the misfits of the mineral collectors’ world I now purchase are resigned to a much more gruesome fate, however, first sawn into billets and then made into polished thin sections. Unattractive in bulk, but fittingly beautiful under the microscope and chemically fascinating under the microprobe, examples of these thin sections may be found among my photo collection [on mindat.org], but most extensively at my personal website [you’re here], where I’ve uploaded paired scans, in both unpolarized (or plane polarized) and crossed polarized light, of now close to 450 thin sections that currently comprise my teaching collection of rare and “exotic” igneous, metamorphic and metasomatic rocks.
Somewhere in one of the unpacked boxes I lug around the country from move to move, I believe I still have that original piece of marble. And I’m much less wild these days than I was in my youth; I haven’t looted any construction sites since I was 10 years old… 🙂 .”
By spanky 4 April, 2015 - 19:39
still trying to figure out how to get notifications emailed to me about new comments.
By spanky 4 April, 2015 - 19:44
ok, this is starting to look promising. Although it got delivered to the folder that shall remain nameless, it did indeed show up. Here’s a 2nd try.
By spanky 29 April, 2015 - 23:00
I’ve turned off site registration. Visitors can comment and access site features without having to register.
By spanky 5 May, 2015 - 00:19
testing a new filter to minimize fake comments that have flooded the site in recent days
By Greg McLoughlin 24 August, 2016 - 00:43
I knew you didn’t have rocks in your head, they were under your feet! Hello old friend. I am pretty impressed by all you have achieved. I was just doing the rounds on the earthquake that hit Italy today and watching a video on USGS about predictions and thought about you. Like i said your journey from Ft Lauderdale has been impressive and i am going to use a little of your story for my kids at school. I now teach Primary Year 2 ..lol I must be doing penance for something I did in a past life.
By spanky 24 August, 2016 - 01:53
Greg, great to hear from you, bud… yeah, it has been a few years! Happy belated birthday too! Thanks also for the first real comment here (all the rest are just me testing everything out… lol) I’ll drop you an email tomorrow and we can exchange updated contact info (I think my mobile plan might even allow international texting???) Fingers crossed, I’m hoping to get back to Australia by mid-2017. Congrats on the teaching position & hope all is well with you and the family… 🙂
By Michael Cox 14 October, 2016 - 11:30
Greg,
My gosh, this is fabulous work. Thank you so much!!!
My Dad moved to Lauderdale from NY in 72, and I enjoyed honking around the phosphate pits. Some friends took me “noodling” in the swamps, but I was too chicken to shove my hand and arm into the mouth of a large catfish. South Florida in the 70s was a “crazy place” for a kid to grow up, if you know what I mean, especially a kid with a small motorboat.
Please email me if you’d like me to mail you, free of charge, any of the following:
1- small slab of greenschist with pure end-member jadeite from location described by Coleman, 1961 et al., Clear Creek Recreational Area, San Benito Co. CA;
2- small slab of end-member white jadeite with diffuse garnet “staining” from Zacapa, Guatemala; and,
3- small slab of mineralized blueschist from the famous Gem Mine, also in Clear Creek, CA.
If you are seeking any high PT rocks from California, I have a contact that might have some surplus material.
best regards,
Mike Cox
mercury_miner
an old mercury mining geologist and enthusiast
By Michael Cox 14 October, 2016 - 11:32
Sorry, I typed Greg, but I meant Frank. Greg, please ignore. Frank, my message is for you.
Mike Cox
By spanky 15 October, 2016 - 02:13
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the kind words.
Yeah, south FL back in the 70s, especially way out west (Davie, Plantation… well before they went and “built” Weston) was certainly a wild place to grow up. Didn’t have a motorboat myself but a couple friends had canoes to explore the canals. Still, despite living on the water, I spent more time on land, roaming the wide open fields and the piney and hammocky thickets that would years later all become new housing developments. At one time or another, largely before my interest in minerals had fully matured, I probably had a pet of every local (non-venomous) snake and turtle, including a baby snapper, who lived in a styrofoam esky until his daring (but unfortunately ultimately ill-fated) escape to under the back porch.
As for the small slabs, I certainly never turn down donated samples of unique materials from classic rock localities. As you probably noticed from among the thin section scans here, blueschist and whiteschist facies rocks from a number of global localities feature prominently in this collection (including even a few from CA), though my current jadeite-bearing samples are all from Burma and Greece.
February and March are usually when I prepare my year’s batch of new samples (corresponding to TGMS, when I pick up the most new materials), so I’m not actively looking for new samples quite yet. But if you have a spare a billet-sized fragment or two you don’t mind parting with, I’d certainly consider one or more for an upcoming thin section batch, particularly if any of them show an interesting assemblage or an unusual texture. And of course you’d get a grateful shout out in the text if a rock ends up added here… :). In any case, can be reached c/o the UofA Geoscience Department.
Thanks again, and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed checking out the website!
Frank
By spanky 27 July, 2017 - 16:59
trying out a few new security protocols
By Vandall T King 22 December, 2018 - 16:46
Love your website. I discovered it through Mindat. I’m a manager and on the board of directors. Your discovery of a new species for the Franklin Mineral district is awesome! I’m leading the Mineralogy of Franklin and Ogdensburg, New Jersey book project. We’d like to invite you to have a chapter of your thin sections.
By spanky 22 December, 2018 - 18:16
Hi Van,
thank you for the kind words about my website! I’m always happy to hear when visitors find content of interest here, and encouraging notes like yours inspire me to keep building!
As for my fortuitous discovery of epidote-(Sr)-dominant bands within zoned epidote-hancockite crystals (in sample FKM-88), that was definitely an exciting surprise! I’d certainly always assumed that the Franklin area had been so thoroughly studied that any new discoveries would be few and far between; that luck would allow me to scribble my name in tiny letters at the end of the noteworthy list of mineral discoverers at Franklin is quite an honor and fills me with great pride!
Your Franklin/Ogdensburg book project sounds very interesting, and I’d certainly love to contribute content for a chapter on thin sections of rocks from the area. I’ll follow up with an email to you after the holidays to learn more about your vision for the project, and what input you might like from me (photos, text, analyses, etc.) to make this happen.
Thank you again and happy holidays!
Frank
By Lauri 27 April, 2019 - 13:09
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By spanky 27 April, 2019 - 13:32
Although the comment I’m replying to almost certainly was originally filler for a spam message, I’ve removed the commercial link and anonymized the poster but kept the message content, and so now I can address its unintentionally valid (although probably fake) criticism:
My website hosting is awful, but moving to a new host has been too daunting of an effort to deal with at present. However, another likely bigger issue is that the content here is very image intensive, and I probably haven’t found the ideal balance between offering high image quality and still having reasonable loading speeds. While of course I want to feature high on SEO efficiency, there’s no advertising or marketing here so I’m not too concerned about losing “customers”; this is a niche educational site and those looking for this kind of content might still put up with a bit of slow loading. That being said, however, as I become more proficient with my website development skills, I will hopefully be able to continually improve the user experience as I also add new content.
By Jill Schneiderman 16 March, 2020 - 12:01
I would like very much to access you IgMegPet syllabus and tutorial. I’m scrambling what with my college’s move to online teaching because of the coronavirus. I see the site is password protected. Would you be wiling to share that with me?
Many thanks,
Jill
By spanky 16 March, 2020 - 20:56
of course… not a problem. During this challenging time of uncertainty, if I can help make this sudden transition to online-only education a bit less hectic for my colleagues and their students, I certainly will try. My best wishes for a successful transition, and stay well!
By Doug Crowe 24 June, 2020 - 06:46
Hi Frank- I am really happy to have found your site, I’m teaching optical mineralogy this fall, and have the ominous “we may have to go to online teaching” axe hanging over me. What you’ve put together is wonderful, the videos will really help me provide my students with a realistic environment in the absence of actual microscopes. And I know how much time you’ve put in on this – lots. Something like this webpage doesn’t happen overnight, but rather as a result of sustained, year-to-year dedication, you’ve done a great job. Echoing Jill above, if possible I would really love to see what is contained in your online syllabus and tutorial, if it’s not too much trouble I’d love to have access.
Cheers,
Doug
By spanky 26 March, 2021 - 03:19
Hi Doug, my apologies for missing your post… it apparently got shunted to the spam comments folder for some reason, and I just found it today as I was finally deleting a few hundred accumulated viagra ads and fake “I love your blog (but now go to my totally unrelated site)” posts. Seeing as it clearly should not have been labeled as spam in the first place, I’ve manually approved it to show up (better late than never, I hope). I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you in time for your class… I hope it ended up successful in any case! For anyone in the future that has a time-sensitive need to get in touch with me, I recommend dropping me an email over posting a comment here.