Little Adventures

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Fossil

On special Sundays in the 1950s, after we had all been to Mass, my parents and we six kids would pile into our red, white and green Dodge station wagon and drive the twelve miles out to my grandfather's camp. The camp building contained a large living area, off of which were numerous small sleeping rooms filled with musty bunk beds. On rainy days we did our playing inside, and to this day I associate the smell of mildew with afternoons spent rereading ancient comic books, playing "bored" games, and praying that the rain would stop.

When the rain did stop, we kids would explode into the outdoors to build dams on the brook behind the cabin, take Jeep rides without seat belts on barely passable logging roads, explore the dank and steaming forest which surrounded the place, and lift the lid of the camp spring in search of camel crickets and other outlandish dwellers in the dark. If the day was warm enough, we would walk down the camp road for a quarter of a mile to the old swimming hole on Toby Creek. The road was covered with river gravel, to keep it from turning to mud, and as we walked we look neither to right, nor to left, but always downward, searching for the small fossilized shells and marine plants, and the pieces of rose quartz that could be found mixed in with the gravel of the road. When we got to the swimming hole, we waded and splashed in its dark red waters, dyed that color by dozens of abandoned gas wells upstream. At the end of the day, we would make our way wearily homeward, our small bodies scratched and bitten and covered with red goop and our pockets full of fossils and other mementoes of a glorious day.

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In 1959 I started attending Clarion-Limestone High School, having completed the elementary grades at the Catholic school in Clarion. The first day was a very nervous one for me. I got on the yellow school bus and rode eight miles out into the country to where C-L stood in the midst of corn fields and cow pastures. A kid on the bus told me that C-L stood not for Clarion-Limestone, but rather for Cattle and Livestock, and by the end of that first day I had begun to think this might be true.

I found my home room, which was presided over by Mr. George Keener, and he introduced me to my classmates, most of whom were from farms and small villages. They thought of me as a city kid, since I was from Clarion, a town of 5000 people. Still, they were friendly enough, and it was some compensation that, whereas I had been no better than an average student at Immaculate Conception, here I was viewed as a brain. As with all such beginnings, the first moments were the worst, and as the day progressed, I steadily got more comfortable with my new school. Mr. Keener was the Agriculture teacher, and just off our home room was the agriculture shop, where he taught the maintenance and use of farm machinery. At the end of the day, he showed me around his domain and asked me how my first day had gone. As we walked along, he picked up a fossil he said was part of a complete fossil fern tree he had found lying in the field of a nearby farm. The fossil was about six inches long, brown, and shaped like half of a cylinder. The round part was covered with a symmetric pattern of scales, and indented into the flat back of it you could see where the inner stem of the plant had been. I really liked this fossil, and, with much apprehension that he might refuse, I offered to trade him some of my marine fossils from camp for it. Good man that he was, he agreed. Today, this fossil lepidodendron sits on my book shelf, and every once in a while reminds me of that first day at a new school.

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I started college as a geology major, and though I didn't end up one, I have always retained an interest in matters geological. My one memento from those days in geology is a small book called Fossil Collecting in Pennsylvania, which gives instructions on where to find fossils in 63 of the state's 67 counties. Pam and I have occasionally used this little book as a guide to adventure.

After choosing our destination, we round up a hammer and a cold chisel, some bags and some newspapers, and go hunting for fossils. Over the years, we have found Ginkgo leaves in Green County, trilobites down around Harrisburg, and brachiopods right here in Clarion County. Every one of theses outings has been a day worth remembering. You can go to any museum of natural history and find fossils that are better than any you are likely to find searching on your own, but these "tame" fossils make little impression on me. I much prefer my own little collection that I can see every day and that was collected by exploring the river beds, quarries, and strip mines of Pennsylvania. Each fossil takes me back to the day of its discovery and, for some reason that I don't quite understand, even further. Holding one of these fossils in my hand, I seem to sense a very faint echo of the life and prehistoric times that it represents.