About Alpine Mineral Company (and me)

I started collecting rocks probably before I can remember. My first vivid memory involving a particular rock is from one evening when I was about 4 years old and I found a piece of gravel in a neighbor's driveway with (what I now understand was probably) some chalcopyrite embedded in it. It was the most beautiful rock I had ever seen, and I just knew I had struck GOLD! I put it in a place on the driveway where I was sure I'd be able to find it, went back to searching for more pretty rocks, and never saw it again, even after days of searching. Many memories from so long ago have blurred or evaporated, but that one has never faded. I was hooked.

Growing up in the midwest, I didn't have many options when it came to rockhounding. Digging fossilized shells out of limestone and sandstone has always been fun, and today my children are learning that hobby among dozens of others. We're lucky to have one particular roadcut near our home that has one particular vein of large clamshells that are filled with particularly lovely calcite crystals, often water-clear, up to 1". Let me know if you're interested and we'll go dig some up for you.

When I was 10 years old, I started my first club, the Beaverdale Rockhounds Club. We were all of 5 members strong, and we spent many happy hours digging for gold in creek-cut hillsides and looking over each others' collections. Our favorite field trip was to Whitey's Rock Shop, a tiny shack behind a moderate old house not far from our Des Moines neighborhood, that was filled with a couple of lifetimes' accumulated treasure.

Whitey was an old man who, we were sure, spent most of his time sitting on his front porch waiting for us to arrive. The tiny sign in his front yard probably went unnoticed by most of the travelers down his busy street, but he would roll out the welcome mat when he saw us piling up his long driveway on our bikes. He was waiting at the shack's door by the time we got there, unlocking the ancient padlock with shaky white hands, and becoming another one of us kids as soon as the magic door opened.

Inside it was dark–it took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust. The smell of dust and oil and old, really old stuff was enchanting, even to a bunch of kids. Whitey would usually nab a couple of us right away off to the dark(er) room, the one with the black curtains, where his ever-changing display of fluorescent minerals never ceased to amaze us–and him–under the UV lights. I would usually begin a visit by gingerly stepping around the boxes, saws, tumblers and polishing wheels that were piled and crammed everywhere to get to the bench where the "good stuff" was laid out - individual specimens in beer flats on a plywood workbench. I focused on the Bisbee and Mexican copper minerals - green and blue rocks fascinated me for some reason then, as they still do today.

After a couple hours of examining everything we could reach in the shack, Whitey would mysteriously disappear to be replaced by his son, also an old man. We never knew Whitey's son's name–he was just the lanky guy with the big adam's apple and the speech impediment whose eyes shined even more brightly than Whitey's in the magic shack. From him, we learned that "six bits" meant 75 cents, and that the big smoky quartz points behind the cracked glass were not for sale. We were ususally content to leave with a few paper sacks full of tiny Keokuk geodes, and for me, the occasional druzy green or blue malachite or azurite thumbnail. I still have those. In fact, I still have one ratty old bag of geodes that our kid-sized hammers never met.

I discovered real gold for the first time in 1972 with another crusty old man who lived in a shotgun shack and had a sign out by the road. It was a family vacation to South Dakota where, in Mitchell (our first stop in the state–raise your hand if you've been to the Corn Palace or Wall Drug), I bought a kid's book on Old West Gunfighters. By the time we reached Rapid City, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane (nice name–Jane...) were my heroes. We spent a week touring caves and mines and ghost towns and finally, right before the re-enactment of Wild Bill's Demise (held every Saturday night at the time, complete with gunfire and riders on horseback) the highlight of the trip: panning for gold!

Our host was as old as the hills, and twice as rugged. He wore bib overalls that wouldn't stay up on one side, and used lots of words I'd never heard before. He was simply the crustiest old fart I'd ever met in my young life. But like Whitey and his retarded son, this old curmudgeon was transformed at his magic place: the sparkling, clear section of Rapid Creek that bodrered his property. He spent hours–it seemed like days–teaching me and my sisters to pan for gold. His patience was amazing and our bounty was rich: a two-inch long vial of water and a few tiny flecks of gold–PURE GOLD!

At the end of the evening, back at our campsite along Rapid Creek in town, the steady rain convinced my parents that it had been a good week, and well, rather than fight the rain, let's just leave a day early and head for home. By the time we again reached Mitchell, with thunderstorms and the static crackle of lightning interrupting AM radio broadcasts, we began to gather the horror we had just unknowingly escaped. The 1972 flood that night killed 238 people and injured more than 3,000. It destroyed 770 houses, 565 mobile homes and 5,000 cars and trucks. We never knew for sure, but that crusty old guy and his rusty old trailer were probably among the first to be washed away.

Thanks, crusty old guys.

Like a lot of people who got interested in rocks at an early age, I completely forgot about them for many years, first when I discovered girls, and after rediscovering rocks, when I discovered I couldn't afford the ones I wanted. After a few years of college and chasing the Grateful Dead, in 1989 I married a Jane of my own (nice name, Jane...) and actually got her halfway up Mount Antero on our honeymoon (until she reminded me that Aquamarine was not what that trip was about).

Around 1990, I began gathering specimens for resale in the retail store I owned. I made a number of connections through ads, the internet, and going to shows, many of whom have become friends over the years. As time has progressed, I've narrowed my focus to Alpine and Gem Pegmatite minerals - the rocks that I find the most fascinating and the ones I could never afford as a kid.

I've been continuing the visits to rock shows ever since,and I've enjoyed getting to know many talented rock delaers and miners. And that leads to today – I'm ready to start cutting loose some of the collection.