The year was 1965, Kennedy had already been gone for two years. As with children, we already moved on with our lives.
" David, what do you think you are doing?", asked my teacher. You know you shouldn't stare at the sun, you'll burn out your eyes and go blind. I quickly turned my face towards the ground, blinking two or three times to vanquish the golden orb that had seared itself upon my retinal wall. Suddenly, I noticed something protruding from the dark earth of that North Dallas school yard. It was pink.
I tried to free it from the ground, but it would not budge. Digging around it with nothing more than my small fingers, it would not be loosed. Just then, the bell rang. It was time to return to our class. I covered the pinkish rock back up and wiped my soiled hands upon my Husky jeans.
I told myself that I would have another chance to retrieve the little treasure, at the afternoon recess. Hopefully, no one noticed me, they usually didn't. I took several mental pictures of the surroundings, so I would be able to return to the exact spot. Then with my finger, I marked the loose soil with an "X"
Every treasure hunter knows that "X" always marks the spot.
A second recess failed to free the rock, it was quite large and and firmly rooted in an upright position.
Again, I covered the thing that I now knew was a crystal of perfect form. My heart raced with desire.
Was this some kind of diamond? Would I now be rich and famous , beyond all possible belief. I was totally obsessed with its recovery, but it would not occur until later that afternoon, after school was out and everyone was gone.
It took so much effort, but it was finally free. It was mine, all mine. That rose colored crystal was the biggest, most perfect, and most beautiful object I'd ever seen.
"Wow" came another small voice from behind me, as I stood up with that precious find, clasped in my dirty little palms. "What is that, you've got?", the other boy asked.
It was mine. I found it. I did the work to free it from it's captivity and no one , but no one, was going to take it from me now. The other boy knew something about rocks. It was his hobby and he wanted me to bring it over to his house, for a closer look and perhaps to identify it better, with the help of his books that he had had. Desiring to know more, I agreed.
The beautiful rose colored rock that I had discovered felt cool to the touch and seemed at least two or three pounds heavy. At one end it looked a bit round,with a distorted smoothness, but as it progressed towards the other end it had six flat glass-like facets that terminated into a very sharply pointed six sided pyramid. In length it looked to measure at least six or more inches.
My new friend greeted his mom in the kitchen and turned to me asking, "Oh yeah, whats your name?" My name is David. "Mom, this is David. We found a really cool rock and were going to try and identify it. "We found a rock?, I found it, not we.", I thought to myself.
His room was a total mess, filled with all kind of rock specimens and books. My mom would have never allowed my room to look like this. Anyhow, after he found the book he was looking for , he opened to the colorful platelets in the middle and began searching for a rock that resembled the one I was holding.
Rose quartz crystal. It said this is a type of quartz that exhibits a pale pink to rose red hue. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral found on our planet, next to feldspar, and it was a chief component of granite. It's composition is made up of silicone and oxygen. The rose color is due to the presence of trace amounts of titanium, iron or manganese. Quartz crystals have piezoelectric properties, an electric potential with the application of mechanical stress.
The word crystal comes from a Greek word for "ice" Pliny the Elder believed quartz to be water ice, permantly frozen after great lengths of time, and the Irish word foe quartz is grian cloch, which means 'stone of the sun'. That was something I thought about due to the fact that I am of Irish decent and I had been staring at the sun moments before I noticed the crystal protruding from the shale filled soil of our school playground.
Sell me that rock, please, exclaimed Billy. His name was William, but the only time anyone called him that, was when he was in trouble. William Dewey Walsh !, get in this kitchen, right this minute. We had left a trail of dirt on his mothers freshly waxed floor.
Knowing that this was probably this best time to leave, I told Billy good bye, but once again he tempted me by offering me a box, a whole box, of pristine comic books, many were the very first editions of some of the worlds greatest superheros. There was Batman, Superman, and Captain America. Also Richie, the little rich kid, Archie, and Lu-Lu. No collection would be complete without The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and The Incredible Hulk. It was the golden age of comics and this box contained the mother load. Who could have resisted ? Not me. I accepted the box, left the pink crystal, and ran home as fast as my short legs could carry me. I was sure I had made the best deal of my life.
For the next many weeks and months I was consumed with those comics. I enjoyed the ads within the pages as much as the characters and their many adventures. I started sending off for x-ray specks, joy buzzers, and magic tricks. There were Sea horses sea-monkeys, and all kinds of things you never heard of. It seemed like I was forever waiting for the postman to deliver something.
One day, when I got home from school, I entered by room with a shock. My mother had gotten the fever of Spring cleaning that so often grips women, but leaves the male species untouched. In a near panic, I threw open my closet doors and began scanning it for that box of comics. It was not there!
Mom (you bitch I thought), where are my comics?
"Since it seemed like you were never going to clean-up your room, I did it for you", she answered.
She had thrown them away, along with anything else that she had decided was trash. The garbage had already been collected that afternoon because it was Wednesday. I had missed him by only minutes. The box was gone, heading for some landfill. My treasure had turned to trash.
Just then, I left the body of that nine year old boy and flew forward, transcending time and space. When my eyes finally came into focus again, I found myself staring at an exact copy, line for line, of the very first copy of Captain America, just like the one I had had. It was a 1946 issue that depicted Captain America clobbering Adolf Hitler. KA-POW! Only this time itthe face of Hitler had been replaced with that of George Bush. Dick Chaney stood in the background pointing his machine gun towards the two men. It was pop art and the young artist was very impressed that I new exactly what issue that was. Even as old as I am, neither of us were even alive yet, when that issue hit the stands.
Today, that box of comics would most likely sell for many millions of dollars. It was the first time I could remember a fortune slipping through my fingers. It wasn't the only time and probably won't be the last time either. In any case, life must go on, but now I am turning my trash into treasures
