Rocks in My Pocket and Mud on My Boots

In the end, I never had to work for a living.You never have to work for a living if always employed doing what you really want to do. That's the short story of a geologist. Being a geologist means thinking in four dimensions. You are forever enthralled with the immensity of history spread out before your eyes, billions of years of history. You appreciate the finest elements of nature, while serving the needs of humankind. Hard to think of that as work.Geology. The very word conjures romance, adventure, discovery, and rocks. Dinosaurs. Mines. Oil wells. Jungles and ice-covered wastes, mountains and deserts. It is the world of those few who choose science performed in the outdoor world. We may be born to our destiny, but for me, the open door was dinosaur eggs. "This Amazing Planet" by Roy Chapman Andrews, who first discovered dinosaur eggs in Mongolian deserts nearly a century ago, fired my imagination of adventure and discovery.From that child's awe arose my journey to powerful characters, scientific discoveries, strange friends, politics and adventures. Tales of lightning strikes, flash floods, geologists lost in blizzards, awkward field trips, oil field shenanigans and the governor are the stuff of legends. This book is approximately 70,000 words. The first part of the book is how the author, an aspiring dairy farmer, was shaped into a scientist by his cantankerous personality and immersion in nature, mixed with parental direction. Anecdotes of college and military life illustrate the tempering that brought him to graduate school at the University of Kansas, a golden time in geological education at Jayhawk U. The book then relates adventures of four tenured academic appointments, three oil companies, two state geologic surveys, and one entrepreneurship, all mixed together with unforgettable characters and shenanigans of politics. I have never milked a cow again.The short stories that follow chronicle a profession rather than a person. Most are true, but some are second hand. Some are legend.