A Tampa Nugget cigar box. Circa 1965. I kept it on a shelf in my bedroom closet. I didn’t show it to anyone. I was pretty sure if I ever told my friends about it, they would think I had lost my ever-loving mind. Sometimes at night, after my parents turned out the lights, I’d get my flashlight, go to the closet and take my cigar box back to my bed. Quietly, I’d dig through and admire its contents.

The box was where I kept my rock collection. Nerd alert!

But I always thought that rocks were cool. Some of them had black and white stripes. Some of them had pink colorations in them. Some looked like a layer of pancakes. And some were light as a feather and full of little holes. I even had a piece of pyrite I found somewhere, Fools Gold.

One of my favorites were the semi-large sheets of mica. Flakey little specs of glass-like mineral, somehow glued together in layers near the surface. Hard but bendable. It glittered in the sun from a hundred feet away. Carefully, I’d pull it from the ground trying not to break it.

I was kind of crazy about rocks. I didn’t know much about them. Had I known that they tell the history of the world, I might have paid more attention in science class. Igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. They all give hints as to what seismic forces occurred millions of years ago right beneath our feet.

When you think about it, rocks are the basic building block of the universe. Rocks are older than the dinosaurs. They’re older than human language. They’re even older than Willie Nelson.

Did you know that the Apollo astronauts all had to study geology as a part of their training before going to the moon? The reason was that scientists strongly suspected that the moon was not actually made of cheese, but of rock. And they wanted the astronauts to bring back the best rocks.

“We don’t need dumb rocks,” they said.

So they sent these men to places like Iceland and Arizona for intense geological training. They needed to be able to differentiate between the rocks that give clues and the ones that ones that didn’t have much to say. And when they graduated, they each got a Tampa cigar box to take with them to the moon.

I tell you all that to get to this part of the story.

Since I have known Marion, I have known that she is a collector of rocks. All around her house, there are rocks lying in random places like on the kitchen counter, the hall table, and the bathroom shelf. She has a wire stand on the back porch where she keeps several rocks lying right next to the turtle shells she also collects.

Wherever she travels she brings home two things. Refrigerator magnets and rocks. She pays for the magnets. The rocks are free. I’m pretty sure there are rocks from every state she’s ever been to. I know there are rocks from Maine because I saw her squatted down over the shoreline at Moosehead Lake, duck walking along the water’s edge.

“What are you doing?” I thought maybe she had dropped something.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m looking for rocks,” she says.

So, of the many things we have in common, one is our shared fascination with rocks. We don’t always have the same tastes in music. There are several foods over which we have a sharp disagreement. We certainly don’t drink our coffee the same. But we both like rocks, her probably more so than me.

We took our muck boots to North Carolina last weekend for the sole purpose of getting in the creek to look for interesting rocks. Neither one of us really knows what we’re doing. We always have more questions than answers. But it’s an easy way to amuse oneself for hours at a time. And it’s like a free date.

We’re sitting by the creek on Sunday afternoon, long sleeves on because it’s cool.

“You know what we haven’t done yet?” I ask.

“What’s that,” she says.

“We haven’t looked for rocks. Let’s put our boots on and get in the creek.”

She was up before I could move out of my chair.

Creek walking is a slick and treacherous endeavor for a fella about to turn 70. There are several factors to keep in mind. One. Rubber boots have no grip on moss covered rocks. The black ones under water are slicker than owl excrement. Two. Just because I can see the bottom does not mean that the water is shallow. Make the wrong step and you find out real quick that calf-high boots ain’t tall enough.

“I told you to bring your waders.” She gives me the stink-eye with one eyebrow raised.

I actually never got wet, but I came really close a couple of times which forced me to breakdance my way out of a situation that may have looked like I was trying to walk on water. What saved me was the shovel I was carrying which I used like a prop stick to get my balance.

We stayed in that creek for a couple of hours I suppose. Our plastic grocery sack got heavier and heavier. Every now and then we’d stop and call out to each other.

“Hey. Look at this one. Wha’cha think?”

“Not sure, but let’s keep it.”

When we got done, we spread out our treasures on the picnic table by the camper. Modern day geologists. We used our phone cameras and AI to try and identify our findings. Apparently, we have in our collection several pre-historic hand tools made for grinding grain and scraping hides. We have a petrified dinosaur bone fragment. A chunk off a meteorite. And just plain rocks.

“You know, AI might be wrong.”

I don’t want to bust her bubble. She’s pretty excited about our rocks. So am I, but I have a hard time believing we could be this lucky on one two hour expedition of rock hounding.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says.

I have a buddy, who has a buddy who is an actual geological scientist with the local university. He can look at one rock and talk for hours about the story it tells. The plan is to try and get our “rocks” to him to see what he can tell us. Maybe we have some real treasures. Maybe we just got ourselves a sack of rocks.

I wonder sometimes what happened to my cigar box. I don’t remember tossing it. I probably left it behind when I moved out, and my parents tossed it with the rest of my childhood treasures.

I’m thinking that maybe I should start me a new box. I have a few Tampa Nugget boxes which I’ve bought in junk stores over the last few years. It would be like old times.

I worry though. It might give credence to those who say, “That fella is as dumb as a box of rocks.”

Humph! Not if we have us a genu-wine-sure-as-shooting, authentic petrified dinosaur bone.