A bag of rocks

Although it was posted in June, I just read Phil's account of digging for garnets on his "Tall Trees" blog. It brought back fond memories.
I grew up spending most of my time with my grandparents who were rock hounds. They dug for garnets in Idaho, diamonds in Arkansas , and picked up fossils as well as interesting rocks and minerals all over the country. My grandfather was the curator of minerals at Birmingham Southern College and travelled everywhere to put together that collection. I was with him for some of it.
Of course they're long gone, but I still have a jar full of tumbled garnets and my grandmother's string of polished garnets. I also have the shoe-box-size quartz crystal he brought home on top of the station wagon.
Like a lot of what you find at estate sales and such, if you didn't know what you were looking at you would just call the garnets "rocks" and put them in a bag for $1.
Sometimes when I see rocks and shells at these sales I think about the happy memories associated with the day they were collected.