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International Rock Flipping Day
(14)I don’t mean to be flip about International Rock Flipping Day, but aside from a sow bug and a couple of crickets that were faster than my finger on the button at getting into their hidey-holes, here is what we found under the rocks. Unfortunately, hubby set this Ale-8 bottle up before I could get a good in situ photo but the thing was buried deep. You can see the hole it was in to the left of the bottle:
Perhaps that shouldn’t be much of a surprise after several weeks of drought. And besides, probably the most exotic thing we could hope to find would be a garter snake, and again, it would probably be faster than I am.
We don’t have a creek on our place, except for the wet-weather stream I’ve pictured here earlier and it doesn’t have a rocky bed. So we decided that the best place to find rocks would be the rock pile. You see it here along with the big sycamore log that is rotting along its edge:
When I was a girl, every farm here in Kentucky had a rock pile like this. Because the topsoil is so thin over a layer of limestone, such limestone rock are constantly turned up by the plow, along with a fair number of arrow and spear points. The farmer would carry the rocks out of the field and fling them onto a rock pile like this. Ours hasn’t been touched in the 25 years I’ve lived here.
So we picked a rock sort of out on the edge of the pile to flip:
And this is what we found (the rock is at my husband’s toe):
For those of you who aren’t locals, Ale-8-One is a Kentucky soft drink, made in Winchester, maybe somewhat comparable to Mountain Dew. It’s so local that when I grew up in Owen County, 60 miles or so to the north of where I live now, I’d never heard of it. I’m told it has a great load of caffeine and during the time when I worked at the convenience store down the road, truckers used to stop in the mornings and buy an Ale-8 and a Moon Pie for breakfast. Truth, I swear.
The mystery to me is how the bottle came to be under the rock. The rock pile is near the road and there are plenty of bottles lying around. If you remember, Billy Carter once described the difference between a good old boy and a redneck: the redneck throws his empty bottle out the window of his pickup truck. The good old boy tosses it in the floorboard.
I saw a guy the other day throw his bottle out the window and into the bed of the truck.
But hard throw your bottle out the window and under a rock.
There’s a moral in here somewhere.
The bottle is green anyway.
The only really interesting thing we found while we were out and about was not under a rock but on our rosemary plant. See this tiny garden spider:
My camera is not that good at close-ups and this guy isn’t as big as a pencil eraser. Here’s another shot.
More on IRFD here at Via Negativa. The IRFD Flickr Pool is here. I’ll be posting more links here as the day goes on.
Other Rock Flippers:
Pohanginapete (Aotearoa/New Zealand)
Blaugustine (London, England)
Nature Remains (Ohio, USA)
Pensacola Daily Photo (Florida, USA)
KatDocs World (Ohio, USA)
Notes from the Cloud Messenger (Ontario, Canada)
Brittle Road (Texas [?])
osage + orange (Illinois, USA)
Rock Paper Lizard (British Columbia, Canada)
The Crafty H (Virginia, USA)
Chicken Spaghetti (Connecticut, USA)
A Passion for Nature (New York, USA)
The Dog Geek (Virginia, USA)
Blue Ridge blog (North Carolina, USA)
Bug Girl’s Blog (Michigan, USA)
chatoyance (Austin, Texas)
Riverside Rambles (Missouri, USA)
Pines Above Snow(Maryland, USA)
Beth’s stories (Maine, USA)
A Honey of an Anklet (Virginia, USA)
Wanderin’ Weeta (British Columbia, Canada)
Fate, Felicity, or Fluke (Oregon, USA)
The Northwest Nature Nut (Oregon, USA)
Roundrock Journal (Missouri, USA)
The New Dharma Bums (California, USA)
The Marvelous in Nature (Ontario, Canada)
Via Negativa (Pennsylvania, USA)
Mrs. Gray’s class, Beatty-Warren Middle School (Pennsylvania, USA)
Cicero Sings (British Columbia, Canada)
Pocahontas County Fair (West Virginia, USA)
Let’s Paint Nature (Illinois, USA)* * *
Photos
IRFD group on Flickr
IRFD
gallery on Via NegativaPossibly related posts:
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Environmentalism, International Rock Flipping Day
14 Responses to “International Rock Flipping Day”
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What a fun post, loved the tour of your neck of the woods, and the “crash course” in drinking the local hi-test beverages and driving. I have something of an interest in old glass anyway, so it’s as good as finding a bug to me!
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I forgot all about this, yet again. Not that I have a lot of places around here where I can flip rocks. But I supposed I could have always tried to get a picture of the lizards who scurry under the house every time I go outside. Or there were what I think were sandpipers the other day, too.
As for Ale-8, I always thought it tasted like a really gingery ginger-ale, which is a distinct improvement over Mountain Dew. But I’d still rather drink just about anything else.
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I’ve heard of Ale-8. My mother visited Jabez, KY on an Elderhostel trip. The decorating theme of her room was Ale-8, and she brought back a bottle.
How it got so deep under a pile of rocks 25 years old or more is indeed a mystery.
~Kathi
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ROCKS
Chesapeake VA has no rocks. This is handy when plowing, disking or digging post holes. I have carried a few from Ky, one was placed on my harrows, to weight it down when disking, the other is used as a stepping ROCK. (Rocks are useful)
When I was a boy, I remember helping clear rocks from the field, horses dragged a Rock boat, rocks would be placed on it and drug to a Rock pile the unloaded.
Also Rocks were used to make gravel roads, we would then pick up those rocks and place them back on the rock boat, sled or wagon and place them on the dirt road, the take a sledge hammer and break them to manageable size, then use a napping hammer to make gravel of them. These were used to fix mud holes in the road, or gravel a road.
Today you order gravel; it is delivered in a gravel truck that spreads it.
On my next trip to Ky, I will likely pick up a few more rock, and bring them to Chesapeake Virginia.
Rocks are entertainment; flat ones are used for skipping in the creek, and rounder ones for just throwing.
Today I run/walk for exercise, then I didn’t. -
What an interesting glimpse into your corner of the world. And good to know that good old boys take care of their trash. Or do they just take it home and dump it on their own property? I’m appalled daily at the amount of trash on our urban streets here. People just open up their car doors and dump the trash right on the street. I was thinking this was new thoughtlessness, but perhaps all the rednecks are just moving to the big city? Hm. Thanks for sharing your adventure with us…
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Oh neat, Max. Thanks for these reminiscences (sp?). You remind me that Mom said that farmers used to haul rocks to the side of the road we lived on and then once a year the rock crusher would come through and crush them up and repave the road. Your tax dollars at work.
I remember putting rocks on the harrow and the “scrub” to weight them down. I don’t think we have a rock that big anywhere on our place on Bourbon County, though we do have a hole that we refer to as the old quarry. Also, Mom used to have a big sandstone (I think) for her front step, though I’m told Owen County has no native sandstone. Somebody must have brought it in from somewhere.
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MSW, thanks for the report on the taste of Ale-8. I’ll admit I’ve never had the nerve to try it. As for rocks, Pensacola Daily Photo moves some terra cotta pipes.
http://dailypensacolaphoto.blogspot.com/2008/09/international-rock-flipping-day.html
so I guess you’re allowed some creativity.
I love sandpipers.
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Deborah and Kathi — thanks for dropping by. Why come to Jabez? For the Lake?
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I was interested to hear about another regional high-caffeine soft drink, Ale-8. Mountain Dew once was such a regional drink; Pepsico bought the brand and now it is a major source of sugar and stimulant here in Hannibal, MO. Local meth and crack users seem to be fond of Mountain Dew.
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What a great find – I’ve heard that bottles of Ale-8 are very rarely seen in the wild. Plus, they apparently have a very small range. So, neato!
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The more blogs I read the more I hear about drought. We’re behind in rain here in the Florida panhandle but we don’t have dry cracking yards or rationing. I keep hoping these hurricanes will help out somehow. Lovely post and descriptions. I hope you receive some rain soon.
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Thanks, Larry Ayers. I did not know that Mountain Dew started as a regional soft drink. I guess I thought it just came out of some marketers nightmare. My poison of choice is Dr. Pepper, also once a regional drink.
Interesting about the connection to drug use.
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Dog-geek —
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Neat history on the soda bottle!!! I was wondering if people would find other things than bugs. LOL at moonpie how gross for breakfast…with pop no doubt!
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Sherry has also received an Artist Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
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