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Memories of My Father

When I was a kid ('60s), I collected small limonite pseudomorphs after pyrite crystals under the swing sets in several city parks in Charlottesville virginia, where I grew up. These were brown cubes almost too small to see (larger ones having been picked up by other kids long before). Pyrite is a brassy mineral, often called fools' gold, but it oxidizes to limonite. My dad, an amateur rock and mineral collector, plotted these on a topographic map, discovered they occurred in a straight line, and extrapolated that line out into the county. We drove out to an undistinguished spot on a country road, and in a low roadcut found limonite pseudomorphs weathering out. Some were more than an inch across. Many years later (1980) I found a similar layer in the Cambrian Wheeler Shale in the Drum Mts. of western Utah. I collected cubic limonite pseudomorphs in clusters nearly as big as my hand. Some I gave away. We still have one or two.