True Adventures of the Geode Kid, Part II
Robert Paul Colburn
The Kid discovers biconoids at the Valley View Mine. Shhh…don’t tell Kops.
The Kid has got some extra
dynamite. Time to
visit Opal Mountain and blow more stuff up.
Haight Ashbury in the 60’s, ‘an he was there, ‘an he
remembers it! Whoa!
Paul’s into mushrooms again, and it’s
not because he went organic, This is Berkeley in the 60’s after all.
The chemical company is just up the street. The college is nearby to meet chemistry
students. There is a crawl space under
the house. What a great place to make
rockets and miscellaneous explosives so necessary for a proper Berkeley
upbringing…
Colburn goes to Idaho and hunts 5-star garnets. And snake agates in
Oregon. Hey, a Kid’s ‘gotta make money.
Colburn hunts the famous Paul Bunyan tube agate
site.
Oxygen
and gasoline.
Oh my, time to build a really big rocket.
Ten years old, and the
Kid tries to make an atomic bomb. Dang. No fusion, just
a huge bang blowing uranium hexafluoride all over the Berkeley
neighborhood. Who said the Cold War didn’t have an effect on kids? Science. It’s sometimes a
matter of trial and error.
Coburn enlists a
partner. They conspire to raid the
closed New Almaden mine of the mercury in its retorts to sell. Mercury is going for $180 a flask. Time to get busy. Get the gas mask Kid. Then with another pal, they raid a gold
mine. So nice of them
to leave all that ore around for the kiddies.
The FBI comes a knockin’. They want
answers.
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“There are no gluttons before the tree of
knowledge,
for
the ever-growing need of life,
may
feast there forever.”
Robert Paul Colburn