Saturday Stuff...............

I shared a different photo of these rocks on Friday at my Photo a Day blog.  I didn't go into much detail about them but they are wonderful when the action of Lake Superior sands them down to smooth.  It takes a lot of time and energy from the water to get them looking like this. 

When I though more about that posting I recalled all the times that I had picked up things as a kid and young adult and kept them.  Somehow we like to pick up things that preserve a part of the memory of the experience at the time. I remember picking up stones in Colorado as the rocks there are made up so differently the rocks in Iowa.  Seashells from the Pacific Ocean of course always came back to Iowa along with the smelly rotten seaweed that needed to be thrown out once it had been in the trunk of the car too long.

 An unknown history of a nice brick that I found in the parents garage. I will never know why and where of the thing.

As I cleaned out my parents house I found so many things that were physical records from their lives.  My mom had large jars of shells from oceans and lakes.  She and dad also were rock collectors and interesting stones were everywhere. Leaves also was a big thing for my mom as I would find ferns pressed in old books or dried out violets.  I will never know what the dried flower arrangement was from, its history, that was hidden in the back of a photo album.  My dad loved picking up bones and teeth from the ocean also to keep as precious items of times gone by.  My parents stopped traveling in their later years and the postcards and found items did help them to remember.

One other story of rock finds along the Minnesota north shore is the one near Silver Bay.  Young and foolish I was so fascinated with an area that you could visit along Lake Superior and walk on the beach of small round stones everywhere.  It was so neat and so unusual.  A few years later the brain of mine did figure out that it wasn't a beach of stones at all but spilled iron ore pellets that were being made near by and loaded onto the ships.  It was a lot of area that they covered so they did look like a natural covering along the shore.  Today the company blocks that access to the lake and you can't go walk the iron ore shoreline. The small pellets are called taconite and it is iron with some limestone mixed in to make them hold their shape.  It is easier to ship a load of small pellets rather than crude shapes of iron filled rocks.

While talking about round things and found items, I had my glass container of marbles out to look at  them. I did get a few shots to add variety to my posts.  I am going to try to take photos of most of my antique toy collection as winter sets in on the prairie.  I like to examine them and see which ones are older.  I know that the ones that I had as a kid makes them old. I know some cat eye marbles are old and yet there are new ones out there today.  My collection is meager in size compared to a lot of people who collect them but they marbles are like rocks on the ground.  One can walk around in this world and find them everywhere.

I am still amazed with the experience of crawling around in  my parents dirt floor basement and seeing five marbles that had apparently fallen out from a box stored down there.  I find marbles in my garden along with the bisque clay ones that are from an earlier time of history.  I gleaned as many marble that I could find at my parents home when I was shutting it down.  My parents had moved from the farm bringing in a lot of the toys with them but the second move and grandchildren thinned out their collection as they made a second move in town.

 

I am sure there is a resource reference book about marbles out there. If not, there should be. Their history and the material that was used to make them should be recorded to help us enjoy them.  I do know that there are may collectors out there now as one can't casually pick up marbles at garage sales anymore. 

I do remember the larger marbles that are lost in the history of moving that I use to have.  They are all a small item of little importance but for some reason a lot of us take them seriously and enjoy having them.  They are more valuable than gold when you pick them up from off of the ground and clean them up to appreciate their shape and color.  It is amazing how they can cheer you with their shape and color. They really do help us to remember our childhood with marbles rolling and bouncing all over the floor. I do replay the fun of having the whole set of them rolling from one end to the other end of the living room floor as the house was old and slanted. What really is remarkable as I get older and start loosing my marbles that it is difficult to construct good paragraphs about them without rambling around all over the subject.  By now I am sure you have stop reading this post. 

A warm sun shiny day today with not bad weather in sight.  I am glad my lawn is already mowed and I will be glad to be done serving Saturday school with my regular bad boys.  We are becoming family as we sit together for four hours each Saturday.  I think the one guy will be done serving today and the other has one more week.  A girl didn't show this morning so she will be in next week for sure. A couple of junior high boys have figured it is better to behave than spend their time with me so they did well at staying out of trouble.  

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope all of you are well out there or at least are on the mend. Take care.