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Everett Harrington

Becki and I drove over to O'Hare airport in Chicago the night before our flight as we didn't want to miss our 7 o'clock flight to West Palm Beach for the chance to once again dig at Rucks' Pit for the now famous calcite in Mercenaria clams. We hopped on board an airbus 320 and scooted out way across the 1137 miles to Florida, the flight lasted around 2 hours and 50 minutes. After collecting our baggage we headed over to Avis via shuttle bus to rent our car. We jumped in our rental Pontiac Vibe and headed to Ft Pierce to find a motel. After checking in, we had been up for well over 24 hours so we took a walk on the beach and headed to bed at about 6 pm. We knew that 7 am would come early for us.

The alarm sounded, we were up faster than the space shuttle into outer space. We showered and headed over to Rucks'. It was about a 35 minute drive and enjoyed seeing all of the wild life on the way. We were part of the very first cars to show up around 7.40 am. We waited and Eddie Rucks came up to the gate and let us in. While signing in I happened to notice a couple McRocks shirts, it was Thomas and son coming to sign themselves in. A quick intro and we were off to find a good hunting location before it got too full of collectors. After scouting the north wall I decided to the best to try our luck on the east face of the pit. As we were getting ready to look at this area Tom Kottyan from Bucyrus Ohio walked up and said “hi”. It was pretty strange to meet him down here since I know him from some of the mineral trading we've done at the South Bend Indiana show. So we decided to dig together. On the east face of the pit the area had not been touched a quite some time. There was nice iron oxide staining all over the front face of the digging area. Soon we had a nice shelf going at the right layer to get to business. Becki was the first to hit an amazing pocket full of the calcite lined Mercenaria clams. She had hit the jackpot. Everywhere she dug she hit another living position clam and was very difficult to extract around each of them without hitting another destroying it. During her raid on this hot spot I helped with washing off the pieces of matrix she was chipping out ever so delicately. I must have taken 20 or 30 5 gallon buckets of water up from the small stream. Several hours pasted and we had finally come to the end of the pocket. By this time we were getting tired and it was pretty late, around 4 pm. We called it quits for the day and headed up, vowing to be back the next day hunting on the same ledge. We wrapped our prizes and headed out to get something to eat. We ate at RJ Gators and had huge steaks that night as we knew we'd need the energy for the following day.

Sunday morning came quick and we loaded up the car and once again took the journey to Rucks'. We waited a few minutes for Tom to show back up and headed down to the same collecting location from the day before. It wasn't very long before Tom had found his pocket of goodies and we decided that I would dig from my area over to where he was digging. He would be spending most of his time on this day delicately digging out his clusters now in front of him so that left all the surrounding material free game. Becki had enough digging the previous day so she was in charge of procuring water for this adventure. I started my digging run towards Tom and hit a small pocket of nice living position clams as well. After careful extraction of one nice matrix and a couple single clams Becki and I decided that we should head back to the motel and get everything packed for the flight home. With that in mind we said our goodbye's and headed back to the motel. After, throwing out a muddy pair of shoes and other items we had room in our 4 suit cases to package up and fly back all of the finds except the two huge matrix pieces that were from Becki's pocket. We decided that we would try to get them on the plane in our carry on bags. Now, let me tell you I was very nervous about carrying on a 40 lb rock onto a flight, getting through security was not as bad as I thought, but the lady was a bit rough with the piece I was carrying when she unwrapped it to inspect. Shortly after seeing what it was she approved us to get past the check point and we were on our way home. We really enjoyed hunting at Rucks' this year and by chance if there is another dig next year we will be back. This year has been the best ever dig for me and I hope that the pit will be around for at least one more open house dig. Maybe next time our fellow Mc Rockers will come over to the area we are digging if for no other reason, than to say hello. Until next time, keep your chisels sharp, your eyes even sharper and KOR