A bucket of rocks

THE OLD BUCKET OF ROCKS resting in a dark corner of the garage has been part of my life since I was a kid. 

You might say it was handed down from my dad, who was neither a paleontologist nor mineralogist, but a Kentucky farmer who liked rocks. 

Our farm wasn’t covered with rocks—just enough to make it interesting. Dad taught me early how to skip rocks across the wide, shallow creek that bordered the back of our place, and he often picked up unusual rocks and fossils in its riffles while fishing. After work in the fields, he’d sometimes come through the back gate at sundown carrying an interesting rock or “Indian relic” that had been unearthed by the plow. 

Some were kept in a shoebox, but the rest went into the 5-gallon galvanized bucket that once held livestock feed at the barn, or bundles of tobacco plants pulled from plant beds in the spring. 

During his younger days, Dad had gone west prospecting for gold in the Arizona mountains with his friend, Joe, who was reputed to have studied geology at Harvard. Dad said they found just enough gold to “get by.” He moved on after one year, eventually returning to his native Kentucky. And while Joe continued prospecting in the mountains, Dad, a longtime consumer-member of Inter-County Energy, settled for the simple treasures found in his own fields and streams—some of which he left in the old bucket. 

As a kid, I played with the rocks in a building we called “the smokehouse.” Its interior still wore the familiar fragrance of hams that were cured there by my grandparents in years long past, and where the bucket of rocks sat in the corner. To my disappointment, my favorite rock, one that I thought was a chunk of jasper, is now the only one missing.

When my parents retired and moved to a place in town, I moved the bucket of rocks to their garage. And when Dad died in 2011, I brought it home with me. 

Not long ago, I moved the bucket into the light and began examining the rocks, one by one, for the first time since I was a small boy. Dad and I never talked much about the rocks back then, but I had a good idea what he’d say about them now. 

The heavily-pitted dark rock, about the size of a baseball, looked to him like a meteorite, but it probably wasn’t, he’d say. He’d tell me where he found some of the fossils, and would lament the damage to a few stone relics that were left ages ago by unknown hands on land where they since have been broken by plows and bulldozers. 

There were well over 50 rocks in the bucket, resting on a bed of straw. Until Dad was gone, they were only some rocks that he’d saved from the fields and creeks back home. 

Now, they are touchstones of rare moments remembered.