Monday, April 12, 2021

JACKSTRAWS, CERUSSITE AND ATLAS MISSLES: I"M READY FOR THE TIMES TO GET BETTER

 

Life in the fast lane in Tescott, ca. early 1950s.  Life was good.

As a kid growing up in rural 1940s-50s Kansas “the boys” essentially had the run of the town and created their own “fun.”  No electronic games, no TV, and not much money in the families.  But virtually everyone in town was on the same level and my brothers and I really did not notice much of a socio-economic difference in the population of maybe 396 (that is a stretch), plus numerous dogs, only a few cats (no dog was a “house pet” and they all loved to chase cats), and one yellow canary who laid eggs and pined for a mate. We knew the local bankers had more monetary resources than most, but on the other hand, my family was able to borrow money to keep my father’s business above water. Well, not always above water since the town usually flooded about every five years (and still does).  I always thought the village was a Ford and Chevy (always used vehicles) town with a scattered Mercury or Plymouth and an occasional Hudson, Packard or Studebaker thrown in the mix.  In other words, a non-wealthy small town much like the others in rural farm/ranch Kansas.  Most families had provided a father and/or a brother to World War II and Gold Star mothers proudly hung the medallion in the front window (and grieved for the remainder of their lives). Korea sort of came and went (for a kid) but I do remember the WWII vets talking about the “commie reds” trying to take over the world.  At 10 years old I was too busy climbing trees, swimming in the local ponds, fishing, and trying to blow things up with firecracker powder to think much about the “commies.”

I've got to tell you I've been rackin' my brain
Hopin' to find a way out
I've had enough of this continual rain (substitute any word--shooting, war, virus)
Changes are comin', no doubt

It's been a too long time
With no peace of mind
And I'm ready for the times
To get better
                                                                        Crystal Gayle

I think if you question persons of my age and ask what changed their life as they lost their carefree “kidhood” and moved to adulthood, they will answer “Vietnam.”  I have prefaced numerous other Blog postings about my childhood and college days and will not repeat them.  However, my change was almost immediate—the day they moved the giant Atlas Missile down the highway to a large hole in the ground about a mile from town (Operational Base #10 assigned to 550th Strategic Missile Squadron).  I thought, wow, maybe those “commie reds” really want to “kill us.”  I dreamed about some guy in the Kremlin with a map and a red pin stuck into Tescott, Kansas, noting a hole in the ground there housed a really big missile.  I feared that if those Kremlin boys pushed a button the people in Tescott did not have much of a chance.  I also wondered where our big Atlas was pointed.  Was it aimed at Moscow, or perhaps at a podunk small, rural town in Siberia? Dad didn’t know the answer; however, he was also worried.  And then it all hit, Cuba, eastern Europe, and some unknown jungle in southeast Asia called Vietnam or French Indochina.  Our country is still suffering the effects of that jungle today.  Will it ever go away?  By the way, that ole hole in the ground is still in the pasture covered with some big steel doors—at least that is the rumor.  I think there were 12 of these missile silos surrounding a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base at Salina.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.    Lyndon Johnson

Now, how do all these rattling words connect to geology?  It has been a long story, but I am getting there. As I noted, kids in my small town did not have electronic gizmos to play with and our games were pretty simple—dominos, board games like Monopoly (not my favorite), building “things” with Tinkertoys or Lincoln Logs, and something called Pick-up-sticks or Jackstraws.  If you can imagine a number, 50 or so, of ~9-inch-long colored toothpicks that are held in a “bunch” with one end touching the floor, and then gently released to form a “pile” of sticks, you have the basics of the game!!! Participants tried to remove a single stick without disturbing the others.  Big clumsy hands like mine were not overly successful and my final count was usually low.

I suppose that today’s children would be quite bored with the game—I was!  Jackstraws takes its name from the straws in a scarecrow or child’s doll—individual straws going in many different directions.

In rockhounding and mineralogy the name jackstraw is now applied to long prismatic crystals of several different minerals that appear in sprays or masses in which individual crystals are haphazardly arranged in “every which direction”—a jackstraw aggregate of crystals.  Among the best-known Jackstraw Crystals are orange-red crocoite from the Adelaide Mine, Tasmania, millerite from Halls Gap, Kentucky, stibnite and tourmaline group minerals from a variety of locations, and epidote from the Green Monster Mine, Alaska. However, to most rockhounds the descriptor jackstraw brings up connotations of cerussite from the Flux Mine, Santa Cruz County, Arizona.



Jackstraw cerusssite on limonite/goethite (iron oxide) matrix.  Width FOV Top: 1.2 cm.; Middle: 9 mm.; Bottom: 7 mm. 

Interestingly the Mine is very near Alum Gulch in the Patagonia Mountains, the area that produced halotrichite described in the Posting July 24, 2020. The Flux, at one time, produced copper, lead, zinc silver, manganese, and minor gold from a complex of Paleozoic rocks intruded by Mesozoic igneous rocks, and a Tertiary rhyolite.  I believe most of the mineralization is associated with intrusive dikes and sills connected with both the granite and the rhyolite.  Small scale mining was present in the middle 1800s while larger production centered on 1884-1993.  Claims and ownership have been sort of haphazard since the end of large-scale mining in 1963 and active claims are still present.

The major mineral commodities from the Flux were zinc and lead with the latter entering into the jackstraw picture.  Cerussite is a secondary lead carbonate [PbCO3] most often associated with primary galena [lead sulfide] and anglesite [lead sulfate].  In most instances the galena [PbS] oxidizes to anglesite [PbSO4] and then to cerussite [PbCO3] with exposure to carbonated water.

Cerussite, or white lead ore, has a variety of crystal habits including massive, reticulate, tabular, thin plates, equant, fibrous, prismatic, and others.  The colors are also varied but are mostly colorless and pale pastels and all leave a white streak.  The hardness is ~3.5 while crystals have a greasy to adamantine luster, a conchoidal fracture, and are translucent to transparent.  Because of the lead content the mineral is “heavy” with a high specific gravity (~6.5).  As a carbonate, cerussite will “fizz” in weak hydrochloric acid

The Jackstraw crystals from the Flux Mind are snow white in color and form spiky brittle crystals or very tight parallel bundles in a limonite/goethite matrix. Why do these jackstraw crystals form? I don’t have the slightest idea why. That is one of life’s persistent questions that always are better described than easy answers.

Jackstraw cerussite or the game of Jackstraws is not to be confused with the song Jack Straw by the Grateful Dead!!!

Leavin' Texas, fourth day of July,
Sun so hot, the clouds so low, the eagles filled the sky.
Catch the Detroit Lightnin' out of Sante Fe,
The Great Northern out of Cheyenne, from sea to shining sea.

No comments:

Post a Comment