[meteorite-list] Potter: RFS Picture of the Day - January 27, 2007

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:32:09 -0500
Message-ID: <g23nr29auofpg92a0up2r53e22tuaqtggl_at_4ax.com>

On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:43:20 -0600, you wrote:

>Darren wrote the following based on Find a Falling Star, pgs. 117 and 118.


This is the exact (excepting for typos made by me) text from Find a Falling Star
on the find:


One hot, windy summer day I sat down at a lunch counter in Sterling, Colorado,
and ordered a hamburger sandwich and coffee. I laid a small stony meteorite
beside my water glass. Shortly a cattle truck stopped in front and the driver
entered and sat down beside me. He wiped the swet and grime from his face,
rubbed th sand from his eyes, wiped his eyeglasses with a napkin, replaced them
and reached over and picked up the little meteorite. He examined it briefly and
put it down.

"Do you know what that is?" I asked him.
"Well, it looks like a rock."
"Yes, it is a rock, but a very special one. It fell from the sky."
"Oh, you mean it's one of those meters?"
He picked up the meteorite again, hefted it and turned it over. "You're not
kidding?"
I assured him I was not.

The driver took a swig of coffee, wiped his mustache and examined the meteorite
again.

"You know, my brother-in-law over in Nabraska may have one of those things in
his yard. It's a big thing. He bumped into it when he was plowing several
years ago in the field where there were no other rocks. He brought it up to the
house and it's been lying in the yard ever since."

I asked him how far we were from his brother-in-law's place. The distance, 110
miles, seemed too far to risk a wild goose chase, so I handed him a leaflet on
how to recognize meteorites and asked him to send another to his brother-in-law.
A few weeks later I received a sample of a somewhat old and weathered meteorite
that represented a rather rare type. When I went to Nabraska to see it I found
the farmer had about 450 pounds of meteorite in the yard and we were able to
gather another 150 ponds from the hilltop where he had plowed it up and from a
fence row where he had thrown a fourty-five pound fragment. This was the
Potter, Nebraska find.
Received on Sat 27 Jan 2007 12:32:09 PM PST