Jacob's Geodes: A Short Story

It was a sunny day, and my grandpa, my friend Layne, and I, were all headed to Keokuk. We were lost in the monotonous bounce-bounce-bounce truck for a couple of hours, and we hadn’t done much planning besides getting supplies. In Keokuk is a variety of geode mines, and we were going to one called Jacob’s Geodes. “Hope it doesn’t rain!” my grandpa joked. “That would thwart our plans severely.”
(Insert opening door) We opened the door into the mine, and took it all in - the beauty, the fresh air, and the blistering, humid heat. The mine consisted of a small lake on a ridge to the right side, and a sizeable wall was arisen up in front of us, with rocks and geodes planted inside. There were birds chirping and a tranquil stream was flowing behind …show more content…
We dug by smashing the back end of a hammer into the sedimentary wall around where we saw half of a sphere sticking out. (Insert moving hammer) We dug like excavators for a long time, searching for and meticulously digging around geodes that we spotted in the wall; one wrong move, and you could smash the geode. Every once in awhile, we’d crack open a geode, half out of excitement, half out of impatience. I dug around a hollow one, and it dropped out of the wall like an egg out of a chicken. I noticed it felt hollow, so I carefully cracked it open, and there it was: a geode with quartz, iron ore, and a huge bar of honey barite. It was the most magnificent geode I’d ever …show more content…
6. Predictably, after the clouds appeared, rain shortly followed. It began as a distant “hiss” sound, and we all ran for cover; however, within two minutes, it was an absolute downpour. It was as if mother nature had poured a colossal water bucket upon us; the gulleys were immediately flowing with water, and the ground quickly became saturated. Our cover was a tent with no floor, and we had to lie down to fit. “This….ible…..storm!” my grandpa seemingly mumbled; the rain was so deafening, I couldn’t make out his sentence. I nodded my head in false comprehension, for to request a repeat would have been futile. 7. Incidentally, after the rain, came hail. Big hail. Hard hail. The kind of hail that breaks windows. By this point, all you could hear was an unforgiving, paradoxical, hammering silence. It wasn’t silent at all, but the rain and hail was so persistent, it seemed almost silent. I heard a loud snap, and looked to my left, where the rear-view mirror came off of the truck in the hail. I looked at my grandpa and saw him mouth, “Let’s go!” He pointed me over to the twenty-gallon bucket of geodes, which was about fifteen feet away, in the open. I ran faster than I ever had, being pelted by hail in the process. But I managed to escape, and we all jumped into the