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Sometimes It's Just A Rock...


Frank Menser

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Back in 81 I was exploring the west with my old friend, Harry Lafferty. We had driven south from San Antonio to visit the famous Courthouse of judge Roy Bean in Langtry. The place was facsinating, though surprisingly small as so many old places seem to be. There was a gorgeous cactus garden there-heavily populated by Collared Lizards of a lovely blue shade. They stood out magnificently, little Dinosaurs hiding in the yellow flowers and red earth.

When we left town we stopped at a dry river bed to see what we could find in the gravel. Harry found several psuedomorphs that looked to be Limonite after Halite (nice small hollow iron cubes)and some small agates.

I went further up the river and came upon a this rock. It weighs around twenty pounds and is nothing mineralogically exceptional, but sometimes it's just about the rock. It came home with me and I have kept it in my office these last 28 years. A momento of a good friend and a great trip.

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Be true to the reality you create.

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to me, langtry is still pretty special. if you drive down the side street going south from the roy bean place, it dead ends at a canyon, and you're looking across into mexico. here's a view looking to the southeast, just as the sun was trying to go down.

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The whole Trans-Pecos is all about the rocks; "intimate grandeur" I call it...

What happens when rock is allowed to season in solitude.

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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Sounds like it is more then a rock to you.

Galveston Island 32 miles long 2 miles wide 134 bars 23 liquor stores any questions?

Evolution is Chimp Change.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain!

"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." Ernest Hemingway

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The whole Trans-Pecos is all about the rocks; "intimate grandeur" I call it...

What happens when rock is allowed to season in solitude.

you're such a poet at heart.

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There is certainly nothing at all wrong with collecting a rock simply because you like it, despite that it is of no real geologic or paleontological significance. Heck, my wife brings home all sorts of 'just plain' rocks for the back and side yard decor in her flower gardens. Some of them are real nice too. Some are also tied to memories of neat places we have been. :)

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Nice greybands indeed!

Harry and I belonged at the time to a rock & Mineral club sponsored by Broward Com. College. Our standard "Joke" was to bring back a pebble for the Geology Professor. Of course this usually mean't some outrageously big thing like a pegmatite boulder that weighed nearly two hundred pounds and was covered in garnets fom Crabtree NC. The Prof placed it on his TV stand the joke being no one could steal it.

On that trip west we picked up for him a chunk of red sandstone from Monument Valley that was over three feet long.

Edited by Frank Menser

Be true to the reality you create.

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