The Poppy Tale, the final chapter
Jun 27, 2014 17:16:38 GMT -5
luvtogrow, bsky4463, and 1 more like this
Post by Sabre52 on Jun 27, 2014 17:16:38 GMT -5
OK folks, well, to begin with, the final chapter didn't even begin with me. I remember I was doing some carpentry, which by the way I do badly, when my buddy Tom comes racing up my driveway in his old Explorer and jumps out yelling, " Mel, Mel, I found the Holy Grail!" He then proceeded to blow me away by showing me a five gallon bucker just full of beautiful float from the site of the old find. There was some of the real good old Hornitos red poppy but lots of other varieties too. I honestly almost crapped my drawers. After all this time someone actually found the old site. Wow!
As a little background, the old original Hornitos Red Poppy , " The Holy Grail" type was supposedly discovered by some gold miners in the 1960's. According to what I was told by the guy who said he made the original discovery, most all was removed and packed in 50 gal drums to send to Germany for the European lapidary trade. He of course, kept some which he was still selling when I interviewed him at Snyders maybe ten years ago. This is a slab I purchased for my type collection for forty bucks from a seller:
Imagine this, my buddy Tom actually had some of this in his bucket!
Anyway, I of course stopped everything I was doing and made arrangements to go back to the newly discovered pit with Tom, SAP!!!!!! Got my buckets and my hammer and shovel and we were off in a cloud of dust both of us about to pee our pants with anticipation of poppy jasper heaven. *L*.
When we arrived at the site I was astounded to find the Holy grail pit had been right by the Sierra Jasper pit but hidden by deep brush. We had probably driven or walked right by it numerous times. probably not fifty yards from where we'd previously been digging. Son of a gun! Turns out Tom's dog had gone for a run in the brush and come back soaked because the old Holy Grail pit was full of water and he went for a swim. So the Holy Grail pit was actually found not by a rockhound but by a just plain old hound *L* Imagine that.
Well, the pit itself looked pretty played out with not a hint of the old vein showing and only a few chips around. the real prize though was a huge pile of undug , grown over, bulldozed tailings behind the pit and off the slope. We worked these over for probably a year and it never stopped being fun and at least a little productive. There was also another pit below the holy grail that Tom dug only once that showed promise and the edge of the tailing there was real good except for a colony of the fastest most blood thirsty ants I've ever seen. Every time I dug there and just started hitting jasper them dang things would get up my pants and sting me in the hochies till I had to give it up. Fuggin things anyway! The second pit Tom dug did yield at least one really nice piece.
I should mention we only ever found a few pounds of the really good Holy Grail stuff in the tailings. Those old timers were very thorough, but we did find oodles of fancy new poppy types I'd never even seen before. As with the coast range poppy, some shows a lot of fractures and some is pitted but still fun to cut. Here are some examples of just a few of the types.
These are by no means all the types and the "Holy Grail" I only ever found small pieces of this.
Should also mention that in addition to the Holy Grail pit and the one adjacent, there was another in the line of pits down slope. A neighbor dropped a dead horse in that pit and since it was a good dig we got to enjoy various lovely stages of smelly decomposition for about a year. You had to be a hardcore poppy digger to work the pit I named the "Stinky Horse Hole Pit". it mainly had two kinds of jasper. The first resembled Sierra Primrose and was in veins and nodules Couple of pics:
The secnd type I would have given a lot to find but there were only chips left. I found this slab f the same stuff in an old estate and matched it to the chips we found in the pit.
And so ends the tale. I should add that the time line is compressed in my little tale. This hunt probably took ten years from my first discovery to Toms dogs score. A rich basketball player bought our access ranch and closed our road off. Another gentleman found out about the poppy jasper and has I believe, put at least some of the area under claim. Tom moved south and I moved to Texas but for those of you still in Commiefornia. The firefly pit is still out there and there are miles of poppy fields still unclaimed and unexplored for the not faint of heart.....Mel
As a little background, the old original Hornitos Red Poppy , " The Holy Grail" type was supposedly discovered by some gold miners in the 1960's. According to what I was told by the guy who said he made the original discovery, most all was removed and packed in 50 gal drums to send to Germany for the European lapidary trade. He of course, kept some which he was still selling when I interviewed him at Snyders maybe ten years ago. This is a slab I purchased for my type collection for forty bucks from a seller:
Imagine this, my buddy Tom actually had some of this in his bucket!
Anyway, I of course stopped everything I was doing and made arrangements to go back to the newly discovered pit with Tom, SAP!!!!!! Got my buckets and my hammer and shovel and we were off in a cloud of dust both of us about to pee our pants with anticipation of poppy jasper heaven. *L*.
When we arrived at the site I was astounded to find the Holy grail pit had been right by the Sierra Jasper pit but hidden by deep brush. We had probably driven or walked right by it numerous times. probably not fifty yards from where we'd previously been digging. Son of a gun! Turns out Tom's dog had gone for a run in the brush and come back soaked because the old Holy Grail pit was full of water and he went for a swim. So the Holy Grail pit was actually found not by a rockhound but by a just plain old hound *L* Imagine that.
Well, the pit itself looked pretty played out with not a hint of the old vein showing and only a few chips around. the real prize though was a huge pile of undug , grown over, bulldozed tailings behind the pit and off the slope. We worked these over for probably a year and it never stopped being fun and at least a little productive. There was also another pit below the holy grail that Tom dug only once that showed promise and the edge of the tailing there was real good except for a colony of the fastest most blood thirsty ants I've ever seen. Every time I dug there and just started hitting jasper them dang things would get up my pants and sting me in the hochies till I had to give it up. Fuggin things anyway! The second pit Tom dug did yield at least one really nice piece.
I should mention we only ever found a few pounds of the really good Holy Grail stuff in the tailings. Those old timers were very thorough, but we did find oodles of fancy new poppy types I'd never even seen before. As with the coast range poppy, some shows a lot of fractures and some is pitted but still fun to cut. Here are some examples of just a few of the types.
These are by no means all the types and the "Holy Grail" I only ever found small pieces of this.
Should also mention that in addition to the Holy Grail pit and the one adjacent, there was another in the line of pits down slope. A neighbor dropped a dead horse in that pit and since it was a good dig we got to enjoy various lovely stages of smelly decomposition for about a year. You had to be a hardcore poppy digger to work the pit I named the "Stinky Horse Hole Pit". it mainly had two kinds of jasper. The first resembled Sierra Primrose and was in veins and nodules Couple of pics:
The secnd type I would have given a lot to find but there were only chips left. I found this slab f the same stuff in an old estate and matched it to the chips we found in the pit.
And so ends the tale. I should add that the time line is compressed in my little tale. This hunt probably took ten years from my first discovery to Toms dogs score. A rich basketball player bought our access ranch and closed our road off. Another gentleman found out about the poppy jasper and has I believe, put at least some of the area under claim. Tom moved south and I moved to Texas but for those of you still in Commiefornia. The firefly pit is still out there and there are miles of poppy fields still unclaimed and unexplored for the not faint of heart.....Mel