In Flea-Market America

Collecting always seems to start with rocks. My pack-rat father was explaining to me that his first collection was a box of strangely colored stones from the roadside near his home in Tecumseh, Kansas. He remembered one particularly exciting day in his collecting history. “I remember finding a pile of small clear crystals in the ditch along a driveway when I was probably in the 2nd or 3rd grade,” he told me. “I was immediately convinced they were diamonds and filled my pockets. But then I remembered a family gathering where we churned ice cream and the look of the salt that was added to the freezer. I finally put one to my tongue and confirmed it was salt. I was a very disappointed boy that day.”