Flint source: "Wherever stone can be found no closer than a mile from the truck, or at an elevation of more than 11,000 feet, in a raging snowstorm, or a sea of mud, protected by either the hoop snake or the Lock Ness Monster". In this case, both!

My first mistake was to offer to buy breakfast for D.C. & Val Waldorf along with my wife Mary. While camping on our annual trip to the Ozarks, it was clear that the girls were fed up with cooking, so I made the offer. Shortly we were seated in a local café at the closest, miniscule town.

Sitting at the table next to us was a farmer and his wife. It wasn't hard to tell; he wore bib overalls and brogan boots with manure on them. They were watching intently as D.C. pulled out a couple of Hopewell points he had just finished and laid them on the table for all of us to fondle while we waited for our food.

Soon the farmer asked our table what the arrowheads were made of. We quickly informed him it was flint! Dave handed him one of the points. After examining it, the farmer informed us that it was made of the ROCKS that he had been hauling out of his hay field for the last twenty-five years. He explained that the pile of offending trash nowadays was half as big as a house! I watched as Dave's hand tightened on the table edge. With the knuckles turning white, his eyes began to glaze over and a small curl showed at the corner of his mouth. The hunt was on!

With a little talk and the promise of an arrowhead, we were invited to come and remove some of the mower busting debris. As I put jelly on my toast, Dave bolted down the last of his breakfast and on the back of a napkin, wrote down the directions to our new friend's farm. Dave's shoulder began to twitch and now his eyes were larger and very glazed over and he had that hungry look about him.

Back at camp, Dave and Val jumped into their truck and we followed in the car, soon we were at Old McDonald's farm, (not his real name). After a short conversation, our farmer said he would lead the group to the promised treasure and we could have all we could haul off; this was better than free money!

The reason Dave was in such a state was that in the next few days we planned to start shooting the new Heat Treating Video at camp with an "in the ground" attempt to cook flint in the traditional manner. For this we wanted a goodly amount of local flint so that everything would be as it had been for the last ten thousand years. Dave insisted it had to be right!

Old McDonald pulled a rusty, bent nail out of his bib overall pocket and stuck it into the switch of his faded red Farmall tractor, giving it a twist. The old tractor starter ground for a minute, then she belched to life with a dark cloud of smoke and he was off.

In the ninety-degree heat we followed the farmer down his lane and into the fields, a deep washout across the lane stopped all but the tractor and we climbed onto Shanks Mare and noted the humidity must have been higher than the temperature. We followed the smoke-breathing tractor with sweat running down our faces for about three hundred yards, until he turned into one of his fields.

We turned left into the field and noted that it sloped down to a small tree-lined draw, then back up for several hundred yards to another stand of trees. Old McDonald followed the noticeable ruts across a draw which had a trickle of water running down it, and then back up the other side to the tree line. In our excitement it didn't seem very far, but we would soon become painfully aware that it was in fact, a half mile.

When we arrived at the top of the ridge where the tractor sat, we were impressed! The pile was nearly the size of a small house. Some of it was limestone but the majority was Burlington and Boone FLINT. We had arrived in the Promised Land!!!!!

With great excitement we attacked the pile. Dave picked a nice chunk and began to break it up to check out the core, I climbed onto the flint and started to look for the perfect piece. My left sneaker hooked onto a rusted piece of barbwire; I gave it a healthy jerk to free it and managed to peel the sole of my shoe back about six inches as it came free. Heck, it was only a $75.00 pair of shoes.

As I came down Mt. Flint I stepped squarely on Dave's fresh broken spalls with the sole of the shoe folded back and drove a one-inch, razor sharp piece into the bottom of my foot, damn that hurt! With my sock and shoe filling up with blood, I sat down and took them off. Mary found several of the Knapper's Buddy; with two or three LARGE Band-Aids applied and the addition of the sock and shoe we were ready.

By this time Dave had located some huge pieces of flint and sat a fourty pounder on my left shoulder and then noticed that my right arm was free so he stuck a twenty pounder under that. He picked up a couple of ten pounders and said they were small but good; both the girls gathered up some stone from Dave's stack and we were off.

With a little practice I soon got the hang of flipping the sole forward with each step as we made the trip down the hill. At the water my shoe was full of blood so we stopped and I washed the foot so we could see the damage; yep, I had a good-sized hole in it all right! The rest of that trip was: flop the sole forward and squish as I put the bloody, water-soaked foot down.

At the truck, we were drenched with sweat but happy to set the rocks in a pile. A short rest later and some duct tape around the shoe and we were off for the second trip. At the rock pile we climbed across the fence to sit and rest a few minutes and then were ready to start the grueling trip back to the truck.

As I climbed through the fence the sharp wire caught my jeans and as I tugged to get free it ripped the back pocket and material under it free and left me with a 6-inch triangular hole in a $40.00 pair of jeans. My foot began to hurt really badly!

This time I used my head, I selected a smaller pair of stones and we started the second return trip. The water looked so inviting, I couldn't resist! I pulled off both shoes and soaked my tired dogs. The water was just deep enough so that my toes were above the water. As I watched, a Mud Dauber, (a type of wasp) landed on the big toe of my good foot. Before I could jerk my foot back she stung the toe, not once but twice! It had to be a she, as only a female would do that. My sense of humor had begun to evaporate with the heat.

As we began the trip back, I became aware that the duct tape had worn through and I had to flip the sole up with each step as I limped on first one foot, then the other. As I watched the gals carrying about 30 pounds each, Val was chewing on a stalk of weed and both of them were chattering like schoolgirls without a care in the world. I was beginning to doubt that I would even make it to the truck. After a comment about my shorts shining through the hole in my pants, I shot them a REALLY dirty look; that seemed to work. Only the flop and slop of my shoes punctuated the rest of our walk. I wonder if it's legal to outlaw women at knap-ins!

As a souvenir of trip number three, a thirty pound block of flint slid off my shoulder, ripping my T-shirt and leaving a nasty scrape on my arm and a small bleeding hole in my hand when I caught the rock. Oh well, the shirt only cost $15.00.

By the end of the fourth trip, the girls suggested that we had better head for camp and start to think about something for supper and I decided that inviting women to knap-ins wasn't such a bad idea after all, bless their little hearts! Then they ruined the whole effect by adding the comment, "After we take Dane to the doctor!"

With much anticipation, I sat down in the car, cranked her over and hit the A.C. button. A puff of smoke came from the dash and the air conditioner began to blow HOT air. But we hit the road for camp with some 300 pounds of flint and it didn't seem too bad. My face had begun to swell from the stings. I had blood on my shoulder and arm from the runaway block and again down on my fingers from the cut digits. My T-shirt hung in rags; the seat of my pants was gone. I had taken my right shoe off, as the toes were swelling something awful and each time I moved my left foot the blood in the shoe squished up between my toes.

We whizzed along with the wind blowing in the open windows and that seemed to help. Only trouble was that I whizzed along a little too fast and soon I noticed bright blue lights behind us. As I stepped from the car, the State Trooper stopped in mid-stride at the sight of me. With bugged eyes he asked me, "What the hell happened to you?" I began to relate the story as I reached for my wallet and license and realized that it was gone with the pocket of my jeans. Lord, would it ever end?

The Trooper was kind and allowed Mary to drive and added that he didn't think a ticket was necessary in this case. I moved to the passenger's side of the car as the Trooper walked to his car, bent over and howling with laughter. It was mortifying! He could have waited until we were out of earshot.

At the emergency room we finally had some good luck. We got right in and it only took two stitches in the foot and one in the cut finger. A shot of something to stop the reaction to the sting and a little cream on the scraped shoulder and we were ready to leave. I took two painkillers at the water fountain as Mary paid the bill. It was only $385.00, we got off lucky.

Back at camp, Dave had worked down all the stone and now had a huge pile of rubble and a half-full bucket of preforms that might weigh 25 pounds. As I stared at the pitifully small amount of stone for the pain and sweat we had paid for it, Dave explained that the flint had weathered in the pile and hadn't been as good as expected. That made me hurt all over again.

Two days later, we got the car out of the shop and I shelled out $405.00 for fixing the air-conditioner. Added to the $300.00 that was in my wallet, it began to add up. That night I made another mistake and did the math. It came to $48.80 Per Pound. I think next year we should buy it at Ft. Osage for something like $2.00 per pound, already heated.

That night we sat around the fire, I leaned back in my chair, put my aching feet up and considered the past few days. Okay, so it cost something but we had the flint we wanted and it was finally over. Sure it was; the final insult was still to come.

The next day, the cameras were rolling and Dave was starting to lay the flint into the pit for the in-ground burn in our Heat Treating Video and I was ready for the glory of putting the local flint into the video. As this scene began, Dave is seen putting several types of flint into the previously dug pit and finally he says, "And here we have some local material", then chucked in a single piece. THAT WAS IT!!!!!!

Want some flint? Bet you could talk me out of it for a mere $50.00 per pound, if you take it all!

[CHIPS][The Knapper's Corner]