May 1961. High School graduation: I spent my post graduation summer working, playing baseball, fishing, and did I say working. Kansas summers are hot and dusty but the summer after high school graduation was different and sort of magical for the girls were beautiful and dreamy and my mind was full of wondering--what would college bring? Where would my friends settle? Would I see them again? Was I prepared for college (not so much the first year)? What would it mean moving out of "home"? Would I make the college basketball team (not a chance but the program paid for my tuition and books)? All summer long I listened to the Hot 100 hits on an AM radio (no FM around)---mostly at night on that magic station in Oklahoma City, KOMA, 1520 on your dial.
Think left and think right and think low and think
high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! Dr. Seuss
As one ages, they begin to contemplate on what has been, and what could have been, in their life. What sort of regrets does one have? What were the good things, and the bad things? I certainly have not led a perfect life but do have very few major regrets about how it has played out. Thoughts about my past have been in my mind “big time” this week since it has been 60 years since my high school graduation. Wow, 60 years have zoomed by since 17 bright eyed, small town kids marched across the stage to pick up their diploma and flip their tassels. Of course, kids across the country were doing the same things, many on that particular night in May. After the event I zipped home, collected graduation cards, often with a couple of bucks, from several aunts and uncles gathered to drink coffee and eat my mother’s cake, and then off I went with my friends to eat chicken fried steak at Bettys Fried Chicken restaurant in Salina, about 25 miles away. The next day I dutifully reported to work at my father’s gasoline station and that started a summer like most---6.8 days of working each week with baseball games many nights and “dad can I borrow the car” on Saturday nights. I also was anticipating attending college in the fall.
For other classmates, graduation meant different events---some chose wedding bells, a few males enlisted in the Armed Forces, some went to “Business College” or a college/university and others “found a job.” All 12 males in the class were very aware that if you continued on in higher education you “made you grades” or expected to get drafted. Those who chose the work route had an even shorter time of freedom from Uncle Sam calling.
My current thoughts are revolving around how I lost track of many/most of my classmates—all 16 of them. How could that happen? Well, we each just went our separate ways. Oh sure, the first few years I attended a couple of weddings and saw a few over the Memorial Day Holiday, but most just seemed to fade out of my life and moved on with theirs. There were a few that I never saw again after that post-graduation summer! At our 50th year celebration there were 12 of us present---but again none of those that I had not seen in 50 years; none were deceased. The 60th was a smaller event with 6 alums present; two were deceased. (I was absent due to earlier arranged plans).
Four years after the 1961 event, it was much the same as a small-town kid walked across the stage in front of his parents and two brothers, received his college diploma and flipped his tassel. That graduation was sort of sad for me as I fully realized that I would never see many of my close friends again. The scattering of classmates was far and wide. However, by this time I had a career path in mind as almost immediately I headed for Colorado State University to attend summer geology field camp in preparation for graduate school at the University of South Dakota.
It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much
rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure. Ernie Harwell
The decision to attend USD was one of those that was a “good one.” Absolutely no regrets. I was a small-town kid who attended a smaller state undergraduate college and USD was situated in a small town and was full of small-town kids and a small graduate program—I think there were five of us. One got much attention from the faculty.
My memories of USD are many; however, they would fill many pages of this posting and drive away most readers. I will share that my roommate was a great fit and went on to have a notable geology career in a well-known university. Our immediate problem was housing and so he sent his mother over to find an apartment. She picked out a basement in a house in a nice part of town that was being remodeled into an apartment and signed us up. We arrived and found that the remodeling was several weeks behind schedule, so we washed dishes in the bathroom sink and laid our closet clothes on chairs. One night we came home, and the apartment owner and his buddy were nailing up ceiling plasterboard---sort of. They had finished a big bottle of Four Roses and had much trouble hitting the nails. The ceiling was full of round holes! That called for a midnight escape!
Our next domicile was a small mobile home with a fuel oil heater that needed to be started by throwing in a hunk of lighted toilet paper. Yep, that was quite the stove. One morning I awoke really cold and my roomie had moved his single bed/cot to a location in front of the oven trying to keep warm. Seems as if the ole oil heater was not working, and snow was drifting in around the windows and doors. That situation called for?---another midnight escape.
After couch surfing for a few days, we finally picked up a suitable dwelling but at an inflated rate. We paid, went hungry a day each week, but survived until summer work came along with the State Geological Survey. Since our work was out of town, we received $5 per day for motel lodging. The geological work was interesting as we were looking at past and future landslides in the Cretaceous Pierre Shale in preparation for the construction of Interstate 70. I also discovered a young lady that is still an important part of my life---one of those no regrets item.
I have noted before in this Blog that the Black Hills
of South Dakota are sort of magical for me.
That first year at the University my friends would invite me to spend a
weekend with them at their parent’s home in the Hills. Wandering around the Hills was a fascinating
experience for a flatlander like me.
Even today I still find time for a yearly camping trip to western South
Dakota.
All of this irrelevant chit chat leads me to the geology part of this posting. The Hills are full of old mines and prospects and glory holes. Some are available for prospecting and collecting while others are off limits. The granite and pegmatites around Custer in the southern Hills were often mined for mica (often muscovite, both scrape and large crystals), feldspar (mostly potassium feldspar), and beryl (beryllium). A short journey to the north lithium, found in spodumene, was a major mineral commodity while tin was found in a few mines and later tantalum/niobium. Rose quartz, used as decorative stone, was available at many localities, but especially just to the south of Custer. Today I believe Pacer Minerals operating out of Custer is the only mineral commodity mining operation in the southern Hills, and perhaps the entire Black Hills. They produce high purity muscovite for use in industry, lost circulation mica for the oil drilling companies, and high-grade potassium feldspar for the ceramic industry. It is the only large K feldspar mine in the country and uses the marketing name Custer Spar.
Rockhounds that explore the Hills today not only collect the easily accessible pegmatite minerals like schorl tourmaline, quartz, and feldspar but pound the Paleozoic limestones looking for Teepee Canyon Agate, the source rock for the famous Fairburn Agates found out on the adjacent plains. However, some of the more serious collectors scour the old pegmatite pits looking for minerals suitable for micromounts---the really tiny crystals, and especially for the often brightly colored phosphates.
Perhaps the pegmatite most studied in the Hills is one exposed at the Tip Top Mine in the Custer Mining District. This former beryllium mine is the Type Locality for something like 12 colorful phosphate minerals and tens of others are mostly hidden away in vugs and fractures; most are microscopic, but all seem to have beautiful crystals. I have written about several of these phosphates in this Blog. A couple of years ago I had a personal tour of the Tip Top with noted mineralogist and mine owner, Tom Loomis. I was looking for some of the tiny Tip Top phosphates but especially for a nifty spray of tiptopite! But alas, no luck in acquiring this rare mineral specimen. What I did acquire, however, was several pounds of quarry rock for later examinationas back in Colorado.
Periodically I bring out a rock or two and examine the surface with a loupe and if no nifty minerals are present then pound it with a crack hammer and start over with a new examination. Sometimes you win, most times you lose! However, the wins are often fantastic if a small phosphate is present (I am still looking for tiptopite).
All phosphates have the PO4 anion with an oxidation state of 3- (phosphorus with a 5+ and 4 oxygens each with a 2- state leaves a total anion state of 3-). Among rocks and minerals (to differentiate from chemically synthesized forms) primary phosphates crystalize from fluids in late-stage magmatic crystallization, for example the mineral triphylite (a lithium iron phosphate). Secondary phosphates form many colorful specimens from the primary phosphates as they are altered by aqueous solutions and oxidation into minerals like strengite (hydrated iron phosphate).
One of the rare secondary phosphates is the beryllium-rich mineral roscherite [Ca2Mn5Be4(PO4)6(OH)4-6H2O]. Like other rare secondary phosphates in the southern Black Hills, roscherite is found in miarolitic cavities in the complex granitic pegmatites.
Roscherite spheres on quartz. Width FOV ~5 mm.
Roscherite usually appears as tiny rounded spherical
grains with a variety of colors possible—red, orange, brown, brownish yellow,
yellowish green. They have a measured
hardness of ~4.5 (Mohs), sort of a greasy to resinous luster, and leave a white
streak. Tom Loomis at Dakota Matrix has
stated that the
Roscherites at Tip Top are crystallized in a range of colors and the lilac
colored crystals may be Zanazziite, the Mg member…I
have never seen better Roscherite than the Tip Top mine. The Roscherite group
is growing, but as of yet, all Roscherites from the Tip Top mine remain plain
Roscherite. It is difficult to discern the different Roscherites based on color
alone, and there are several colors at the Tip Top mine (purple, orange,
black). My specimen recently brought to light has tens of tiny
greenish spheres clustered together on a quartz matrix.
A second specimen removed from the rough matrix revealed small crystals of montgomeryite, again a rare secondary phosphate perhaps best known from the Tip Top Mine [Ca4MgAl4(PO4)6(OH)4-12H2O]---see Posting December 19, 2018.
Mostly transparent, striated, and terminated crystals of montgomeryite. Some have shades of salmon red-orange. Width FOV ~5 mm. The matrix of microcline feldspar has a druse of really tiny (submillimeter) rhombohedral crystals of whitlockite (tricalcium phosphate) with some crystal faces reflecting light.
Montgomeryite generally occurs as small lath-like crystals that are flattened, striated, elongated and capped by a pyramid. Crystals are translucent, have a vitreous luster, and a hardness of ~4.0 (Mohs). At the type locality at the Little Green Monster Mine in Utah the crystals are generally colorless to pale green and occur in nodules that are of sedimentary origin. At the Tip Top Mine the lath-like crystals are colorless to some sort of a red to orange to salmon to pale yellow color and are associated with several other secondary phosphate minerals found in oxidized phosphate nodules occurring in granite pegmatites (associated with the Harney Peak Granite).
MAY 1961 MAJOR EVENTS
(from Wikipedia)
Graduation ceremonies were held at Tescott High School (Kansas).
The federal minimum wage was raised to $1.25 per hour.
Civil rights activists started their Freedom Ride via bus through the South.
Alan Shepard became the first American in space--non orbital 19 minute ride.
Nikita Khrushchev accepted President Kennedy's invitation to meet in Vienna (June 3) to discuss the future of Berlin).
President Kennedy gave his famous speech to Congress committing the US to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
I've enjoyed reading your blog. Lots of wisdom and good mineralogy there. Thanks for the invite.
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