A Tip-Toe Through A Crypto

OR

(Journey to a Baby Reef)

By:

Anon, et. al.

Starring

DICKIE

And the

DEN DADS!

With:

Richard Durrell – Richard Rookstep……………………….. (Exalted Leader)

Lucy Durrell – Lucretia Munchell………………………….… (A megathinker)

Kenneth E. Caster – Casterio Crinus…………. (Duncan Hines of Fossiland)

Frank Koucky – Frank Quarry…………………..(Daring young man on the Flying Swivel Chair)

Len Larsen – Hugh Ederal…………………………(A Magmatist gone astray)

Hans Hofmann – Hansel Hofmeyer………………....……..(Canadian Import)

Harvey Sunderman – Sundy Preacher………….……….(Triassic Revivalist)

Ron Schmidt – T.R. (Rollo) Swift IV………………………..(Professor Pudge)

AGI Lecturer – Dr. Le Compte………………………..……..(Visiting Bioherm)

Acknowledgement:

S.G.E. and Affiliates wishes to thank the faculty of the Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, for relinquishing their scheduled time so that we may bring you this, “Special Report – The Four Crucial Days Of The Crypto Crisis.”

Introduction:

We just want to stir you up a little and get you thinking. All geologists, no matter how specialized their field, are students of phenomena of the “Crust of the Earth”, also known as Special Paper # 62. We must tie theoretical studies, laboratory experiments, and laboratory accidents to actual conditions. We are very suspicious of the Armchair Geologist. We prefer to guess on our feet.

Acts I, II, III, IV (compressed)

Scene 1: Fenneman Memorial Lead Car, containing Richard Rookstep, Lucretia Munchell, and two students.

Scene 2: The Armored Lark, containing Dr. Casterio Crinus and two students.

Scene 3: The Sigma Seven, containing Drs. Quarry and Ederal.

Scene 4: The Friendship Five, containing Drs. Hofmeyer and Preacher.

Scene 5: A reef (?) somewhere in Illinois.

Patrons

No Cal Beverages………………………………………………….…....…Metracal

The League for the Abolition of Casters on Swivel Chairs……………Friends of the Philistines

Old Chief Christmas Committee………………………….................…...Bullmoose Party

Gayety Theater…………………………………………………..............…Kentland Hotel

1962 Christmas Skit – Sigma Gamma Epsilon

Authors Anonymous

Master of Ceremonies: The four day field trip, in which all Geology Majors and Graduate students participate, is an important event in our year. We will follow a carefully chosen route, and stop at places which best illustrate principles discussed more or less abstractly in textbooks and lectures.

Durrell: We just want to stir you up a little and get you thinking. All Geologists, no matter how specialized their field, are students of phenomenon of the “Crust of the Earth” also known as Special Paper #62. We must tie theoretical studies, laboratory experiments, and laboratory classification to actual conditions. We are very suspicious of the Armchair Geologist.

Scene 1: Car containing Richard Rockstep, Lucretia Munchell, and two students. Place is somewhere on the 4 day field trip. When they point, pictures of various features they see will be held up by someone not involved in the scene.

Richard: All right everybody, into the cars – Chop chop!

(Scramble for the cars)

Richard: Weaver! Chop chop!

(Let the chorus begin singing Chop, chop chop…)

Richard: Look at that fine kettle. (points)

(Picture, let phone ring in ear)

Richard: Hello….uh huh, uh huh…do you have half a minute?

Lucretia: Who is that Richard, your broker?

Richard: No, it’s just our travel agent. He’s arranging our trip to the Pleistocene of Poland.

(Chop chop chop….)

Lucretia: Richard, what’s that green tree? (points)

Richard: I don’t know Lucretia.

Lucretia: Let’s stop and give the students an oral examination. A student should know what that green tree is.

Richard: Well, you know how students are. They are like streams. Some drift along the misty flats.

(Chop, chop, chop….)

Richard: Look at that side, lateral recessional moraine. Gee, and I was just talking to Dick Goldthwaite about that on the phone the other day. (points)

Lucretia: Richard, is that a baby moraine?

Richard: I don’t know, Lucretia.

Lucretia: Well it certainly doesn’t look anything like Africa. (picture of Lion or Giraffe)

(Chop, chop, chop….)

Richard: We are now leaving the Muscatatuck Regional upslope, downslope (points to picture of rear-end of a cow)

Lucretia: It’s so thrilling. Do you think the students are all stirred up? (Students slouch down further in their seats reading comic books as Richard and Lucretia turn and look at them)

(Chop, chop, chop…)

Lucretia: Richard, haven’t you forgotten something?

Richard: Oh yes, the phone. I’m just letting him mull it over. I just thought I’d stir him up a little. People are like streams. Some are content to drift along the misty flats. Show me a neat desk and I’ll show you an ordered mind. A stitch in time saves nine. Life is like a stock market, it has to go up and down. A penny saved is a penny earned. I just like to organize the students’ thinking.

Lucretia: Richard, did you find out who put that thumbtack out of line on the bulletin board?

(chop, chop, chop…)

Richard: Hello…the Volkswagen…can you get me a smaller care, one with economy…of course I can afford something bigger….No, I DON’T want a bicycle….uh huh, well you work on it. Uh huh…work on it. Okay, okay, alright, you work on it…

(Chop, chop, chop…)

Scene 2: Car with Dr. Casterio Crinus and two students.

Casterio: Ah yes, they’re pointing. See what that is. (Hold up picture of hogback). Hmmm, my wife and I ate at a hot dog stand on this very site 30 years ago. Simply superb relish.

(chop, chop, chop…)

Casterio: Is this our turn off,….oh they’re pointing. (picture of volcano) Casterio: Just over there is a quaint country hotel. My wife and I stayed overnight there. They serve a wonderful country style breakfast. It’s simply marvelous.

(Chop, chop, chop…)

Casterio: What are we stopping here? Oh yes, it’s the Paul Frank Quarry. The Museum has gotten some magnificent specimens from here. (Have Tom Weaver in the back seat of the car take a giant cardboard trilobite and hide it under his seat.)

(chop, chop, chop…)

Casterio: Twelve miles north of here used to be an old woman who had the most delicious recipe for country style sausages. They were truly superb.

Student: Dr. Crinus, it sounds as though you ate your way across the United States.

Casterio: As a matter of fact that’s why my Doctoral Dissertation was on The Gastronomic Provinces of the United States. (holds up map of Gastronomic Provinces)

Scene 3 (Car with Frank Quarry and Hugh Ederal)

Frank: Hugh, isn’t that the U-name-it peneplain the Fenneman Memorial Lead Car is pointing to? (points to a picture of a barn with “Mail Pouch” written on it.)

Hugh: (Let the person playing this part assume some on LHL’s mannerisms. i.e. pause frequently, say er, uh, etc.) Frank, why do they call it the Fenneman Memorial Lead car if it is always the last in line?

Frank: Well, Hugh, it’s this way. The Fenneman car is in the rear so if in case we decide to turn around and go home it will be the first to get to Cincinnati.

(chop, chop, chop…)

Hugh: Well, Frank, what is the significance of this being a peneplain?

Frank: Well, as Engle and Engle have pointed out in their classic study of Precambrian beach ridges of Glacial Lake Chicago that “peneplains” are a state of mind….. or…er… a lack of it.

Hugh: Perhaps I better look up the thermodynamic significance of that definition again. Didn’t one of Fenneman’s students report finding 274 peneplains between here and the Ohio River?

Frank: Well, yes, but as we have shown by detailed mapping in the Beartooth Mountains all this can be directly related to Granitization.

Hugh: But …er…uh…Yoder has said that with one month in the laboratory “I can build any kind of physiographic feature.”

Frank: (standing up and exiting from the stage) Well, Hugh, I don’t think it’s exactly this way.

(chop, chop, chop…)

Scene 4 (Car with Hansel Hofmeyer and Sundy Preacher)

Hansel: So far Sundy, dis has been a good field trip, by Gar. Where are we staying tonight? Sacre Bleu.

Sundy: We’ll be in the Kentland Hilton, Hansel.

Hansel: Where? By Gar is dat near Montreal?

Sundy: No, it’s in Fenneman’s 29^th Physiographic district.

Hansel: Say, by gar, what province is dat in?

Sundy: The southern Diefenbaker lowlands of the Doukhobor upslope.

(chop, chop, chop…)

Hansel: By gar dere Sundy, what’s dat under your arm?

Sundy: Why, that’s my manuscript Hansel. Let me assure you that at long last I’ve finally finished mapping the Valley of Virginia! (pauses) it’s going to be published in Geotimes next month. (Pauses) In Sandstone Sam’s column.

Hansel: Let me see your map, Sundy. (Sundy unrolls map)

Sundy: Now the Valley of Virginia is composed of Triassic grading imperceptibly into shale – everyone knows that. Outcrops are scarce but the fishing is great.

Hansel: Have you made and strike and dip measurements, Sundy?

Sundy: (pointing to the map) Yes Hansel, let me assure you. One here, and one here – and after exhaustive study I have determined that the entire valley is an overturned anticline. (Sundy shows X section)

Hansel: Very good, by gee, and how about samples?

Sundy: Oh yes, let me assure you I have one here. (pulls out fish) I plan to add it to my common rocks collection as soon as the sections are completed.

(chop, chop, chop…)

Hansel: I hope we don’t have to sleep with anyone else again tonight. Last night I was with Casterio Crinus and his Peruvian silk pajamas woke me up every time they rustled in the breeze. The night before was even worse…I won’t name names, but did you ever sleep in a bed full of euhedral zircons?

(chop, chop, chop…)

Scene 5: Sign – A reef? Somewhere in Illinois

All faculty members are present.

Frank: Well, here we are standing on a Precambrian beach ridge of Old Lake Chicago, which Lowenstram mistakenly identified as a roof.

Hansel: By Gar, is dat so? Are you sure? How did it form?

Sundy: Let me assure you that this grades imperceptibly into the Scottsville Basin. Let me assure you that I know. I walked it out along the trout streams while I was a Triassic graduate student at Wisconsin.

Richard: I was just speaking to Jane Forsyth about this loess deposit. She seems to feel that it ties in directly with the high level silts of Raeburn Terrace. I seem to see a trend here…what do you think Dr. Le Compte?

Le Compte: (enters now) On this spot we ‘ave the balysites, favosites, and the Stromatoporesed, the biostrome, the bioherm related to the Givetian and the Frasnian of the Namur Basin. No?

Sundy: Let me assure you that this correlates nicely with the Lynchburg Gneiss proving once and for all that the earth is nothing but a simple chemical system characterized by an abundance of free energy.

Hugh: Considering the thermodynamics of this, it is as obvious as hell that we’re dealing with a clear case of metasomatic replacement.

Casterio: I wish Dr. Edral would point out the hellish obviousness of this to me. There’s no doubt that this structure is related to the fossil front.

Lucretia: Richard, what is the fossil front?

Casterio: Why it’s quite simple. It’s serendipity. Why we’re dealing with a coeval, and coetaneous eastern migration of the fossils as they do every spring. The migration simply forced up the Rocky Mountains.

Hansel: By gar, we see many meteor craters in the Pre-Cambrian of Alberta that like this by gar.

TR Swift: What’s the problem, Gentleman? Sorry I’m late; my rig’s been stuck for the last two weeks. We finally saved up enough green stamps to buy gas.

Frank: Well, Ron you see it’s this way. We’re discussing the origin of the Great Precambrian Conodont burial ground.

TR: That sounds like a great project for ESL, Frank. In fact, we’d be happy to bury them at cost.

Frank: By the way, TR, how is your diet coming along?

TR: Oh, fine Frank. I’ve added several new low-calorie dishes to my menu: As an antipasto Megastrophia metraeal with Baked Bacculites, for the Entrée I have Pizza with Homotrypa and then I top it all off with Exogyra on a half shell.

Sundy: Say TR, that sounds like a bug scientist’s diet.

TR: Well yes Sundy, it is, but it’s the best system we have at the present and it will have to do until a better one comes along.

(chop, chop, chop)

Casterio: Ah hah, Chemists and physicists, and all other chronologic technicians who supplant us: we salute you! “The kind is dead; long live the king…” However, perversely, I shall tender you the distillate of a prolix…Some grow resigned to this abandoned life in sin; the apathetic ones, strained unduly by the double yoke, crack in heart and mind; whilst others, and sadder is their fate, the poorer ones, simple “take it with them”: their life store of fate undigested, collections chaos, notes scrambled, and manuscripts unwritten. But a most cordial welcome here, indeed, to those who, despite the vicissitudes of ignorance, pressures, poverty, and scorn, manage to keep flickering the tenuous flames of invertebrate paleontology.

Lucretia: I’m going to be forced to give you all a zero for the day. It’s a baby reef!!

All: Ohhhhh ……

Lucretia: (angrily) well it is!

(Chop, chop, chop…)