This is Throwback Thursday #104. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
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John and Lucy McLuckie were both avid collectors of Mazon Creek fossils. They sponsored yearly "combined club" field trips to collect fossils in Braidwood. They were said to be some of the finest and nicest people you'd ever meet. Check this previous edition of Throwback Thursday.
From the March 1952 edition of the newsletter... How many of you would love to visit the McLuckie's this spring!
Truly One Of The Finest!
If you were riding around the Strip Mining country of Illinois on a Sunday afternoon, you might pass thru Coal City and along a shady street with attractive small houses, most of them painted white. There would be nothing to distinguish this small house, painted white, attractive, comfortable looking, with a well kept garden in the back, but if it's McLuckie's, stop! Get out and walk around toward the back, and Wow there's a concretion that looks like the tire from a B-24! Along the flagged court in the rear are petrified trees and stumps, and more concretions; now you are really excited! Walk down the basement steps and there is the Rosetta Stone!! Well, if it isn't a Rosetta stone, what is it; it, too, unlocked the secrets of the past way down in the earth! Mr. McLuckie says it came up in a shovel, and he saved it and brought it to where we all may look at it.
There is a table with a guest book to sign, filled with many interesting names, books and pamphlets on the lore of this wonderful country of the Fossil Forests and a book of excellent photographs of many fossil finds. Along the wall, not too far from the stationary tubs, is a case of beautiful specimens of leaves and stems, horseshoe crabs, shrimps or shrimp-like animals, sharks' eggs (am I right?), and hung on the wall above, another case filled with rare and wonderful finds. There is a magnifying glass so you may study them carefully. Another case holds many more. Some are for trading purposes and if you look longingly enough, Mr. McLuckie may give you one. Mr. & Mrs. McLuckie really know their collection and told us many interesting facts about it. They were most generous with their time and patient with my amateur status, and I was glad to hear him say, "They are all worth keeping, you can use them for trading with collectors far off who do not have access to our Strip Mines."
As I write this it is cold and snowing but I know out there waiting for me are beautiful ferns, calamites, sigillarias, annularias hundreds of them, but since they have been there for about a quarter of a billion years, they will probably be there when spring comes and I can again visit the wonderful Mazon Creek region and McLuckie's basement.
Wylma Kromwell (Mrs. w. B.) Welly
Pictures from the museum in their house.
