Wife was smart to avoid the rocks

It was an aimless Saturday, one of those days that need some focus to begin to make sense.

The sun was shining, but it was chilly. The notion of getting out the vacuum cleaner did not exactly get my wheels turning, and there are only so many sticks you can pick up out of the yard.

Clearly, a road trip was in order.

But where to?

No offense intended to Muncie, but there was nothing much in that direction that pulled us.

What we wanted — needed, really — was a baseball game, preferably at Parkview Field in Fort Wayne, and, preferably with an old buddy of mine and his wife.

But baseball is still a few weeks off. And, as I said, it was chilly.

So it was time to ask our old friend Google, that random crapshoot/wondertrunk of possibilities to see what other options we might have overlooked.

“The rock show is on this weekend,” I said, looking up from our iMac.

The rock show. There was a time when it was a significant mark on the family calendar.

Why? That takes some explaining.

My father died late on the night of March 16, 1983, just before St. Patrick’s Day.

And in the years that followed, there seemed to be an unspoken agreement among us that we would make an extra effort to be in Richmond with my mother close to the anniversary of his death.

But we couldn’t come out and say that. My mother would have objected.

So, instead, we latched onto the rock and gem show at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Richmond that always seemed to occur about the same time.

Make the rock show a family priority and you have an easy excuse to drop in to check on mom/grandma without having it seem too obvious that we wanted to be with her on a painful anniversary.

My assumption is that she caught on to what we were doing, but she had the good graces not to mention it.

So, what do you do at a rock show?

You look at rocks, lots of rocks. (I should insert here that my worst grade in college —  a D that put me on the front burner for months — was in geology. I was more into rock music than rocks themselves.)

You also at a rock show tend to acquire rocks, often in spite of yourself.

That’s particularly true if you have kids in tow.

A 25-cent grab bag of pebbles and geods and what-nots seems like a good way to keep the kids happy, until you realize that you’ve brought half a dozen home and still have half a dozen from last year’s rock show.

And then there’s the silent auction, which drew the kids like moths to a flame after they were a little older. Did they need that shiny rock? Of course not. But should they bid 45 cents for it? That’s another story.

On top of that, I must confess that the adults indulged as well.

You can’t wander around the room looking at all these rocks and minerals and jewelry made from rocks and minerals and not eventually see something that calls your name. We bought rocks as well.

But that was then. This is now.

“The rock show is this weekend,” I told my wife.

“Let’s pass on that,” she said, without a moment’s hesitation.

She’s a very wise woman.