In the Beginning....

1975 - The beer can collecting craze strikes SE Indiana and every pre-teen and early teen boy 9and a few girls) starts a beer can collection.  Overnight, every one of my friends were collecting beer cans from the roadsides and out of trash dumps.  Those of us with willing fathers begged them to buy unusual brands and then drink them by punching holes in the bottom to preserve the pull tab.  The Hudepohl can was my first can--picked up from the roadside while walking home from school in April 1975.  

Its nothing special, even now 35 years later, this is a common can (thanks to those thousands of us who collected the then current brands as youngsters!).  The beer can craze died out by around 1980, and I ended up with the collections of many friends and even my brother's collection.  Many of those cans are still on my walls and the good memories of those days are still in my head.  I can still pull some 1970s era cans off the wall and remember pleasant days hiking or biking along Indiana roadsides with friends to find that particular cans.

Not long after the beer can collection got started, and probably as a result of clambering around in SE Indiana creek beds to look for beer cans, I started noticing the fossil shells that were in the local rocks.  Some of the more interesting ones weathered completely free of the rock and were lying loose waiting to be picked up.  A few years later in high school, I took a geology class (finding out some years later how rarely that course is offered in high school-anywhere!).  Thanks to Mr. Hall, who may have inspired more than a few of his former students to become geologists.  That class was also where I learned what those common fossils of SE Indiana are called.  The photo above shows five common Brachiopods - clockwise from top left is: Rhychnotrema capax, Platystrophia ponderosa, Hebertella insculpta, Rafinesquina alternata, and in the middle, Platystrophia cypha.  All are from the Late Ordovician Dillsboro Formation, which underlies much of SE Indiana (and SW Ohio and northern KY-but with different formation names)

That high schook geology course was interesting and was followed by a few boy scout camping trips to other parts of southern Indiana led to a box of fossils that went into the closet for a few years.  Then it was off to college - to major in history (my high school major) and become a teacher (at least that was the plan at first).  However, the fall semester of freshman seemed like a good time to knock out one of the science courses required by a liberal arts college, and I took the Intro to Geo course.  So much for the human history major, switched it for an Earth history major! 

The end result was a beer can collecting geologist.  Not a unique creature as I count at least two friends with the same career and hobby.  My friend Joe also blogs on beer and beer cans and his blog is included in the links below.  

Time for a cold one--Homebrew tonight is a strong scottish ale, 8% alc, not a lot of hops, very malty, and aged in my cellar for two years to an almost brandy-like smoothness.  Til next time...