My dad’s version of rock and roll
My dad collected rocks.
Not like a normal person. We didn’t have cool little bowls of polished rocks from places he’d visited, or interesting paperweights or pretty doorstops. My dad brought rocks home from the cottage, Saskatchewan, and beside the road. We had a rockery along the back edge of the yard made from these rocks. The average weight of many of them is about 60 or 70 pounds. Today that would be 30 kilograms, but he got most of them before we switched to metric. Some of these beasts weigh nearly double that.
I have these rocks now. There are hundreds of them. Hundreds. To move them, we have to roll them onto a tarp and drag them around the yard. I turned the rockery into bordered plant beds — and the rocks are the border. When I started the project nearly 30 years ago, I figured it would be easy. Simply roll the rocks forward.
Instead, what I found looked like those iceberg posters that are either inspirational or reveal political corruption: a mighty submerged portion with just a scenic bit showing at the top. My father was building a rockery he obviously expected to be excavated by future archeologists all seeking an answer to what would certainly be the world’s most perplexing question: “What made Al Sommerfeld tick?”
He buried rocks under rocks. We now have to use crowbars to get them out, and then we find another one underneath the first.
It’s like my father was making lasagna with rocks, dirt, hens and chicks and portulaca. I have ringed the entire yard with rocks. Two years ago, my sister Gilly started giving me canna lily bulbs, which I put across the front of the house. The first time I went to plant one, the shovel hit a rock just below the surface. I moved over a foot, and hit another rock.
It took two people an entire day to pull out 50 rocks. Two grown people leaning on crowbars to leverage monster rocks nestled in their garden cavities. It was like ripping out healthy molars. Even for all that effort, there are still rocks buried at some level I’m too scared to investigate. That, and how many hundreds of rocks does one person need?
For my whole childhood, rocks were important. I knew this because if we went for a drive, we’d suddenly pull over because my father had spotted a special rock. It’s as dorky as it sounds. He also collected coins but he bought those like a normal person. Well, except for the awkward exchanges he’d have with cashiers when he asked if he could go through their coin drawers looking for silver. You know how you don’t do some things because it would just make you look too crazy? My father had no such concerns.
A friend built an entire water feature around what she calls her Sommerfeld Rock. It looks like a two-tiered escarpment, its top providing shade to the lower half. Dad liked interesting rocks. I have rocks with handles and I have rocks with holes. Some rocks have other rocks stuck to them. Some artists work in oil. Some in metal. My father worked in rock.
The true mystery regarding the neverending rocks is how my father — not a large man by any means — lifted these monsters into our station wagon du jour by himself. I know when he got them home, he’d thump them into the wheelbarrow, but that initial deadlift? I know we didn’t help him; we were too busy complaining about the rock detour, and there was no way my mother would feed his habit.
When I travel, I just collect shot glasses. I figure my kids will be digging up their grandfather’s rocks long after I’m gone.