The Great Dinosaur Hunt



The school I attended 1st grade and half of 2nd grade was almost brand new. It was so new that the plants , trees and grass were all newly planted. We were not allowed to play in the grassy areas when ever it was wet. This meant that many days we could only stare at the playground area as we milled around the front of the school where it was deemed safe to play. Some of us just stared at the unused playground equipment, while others played games like tag and hide and seek.
When we played hide and seek it wasn't quite fair. We would always choose Harold to be "IT". Harold was a little slow...... Actually Harold was a lot slow. This was his 2nd attempt at passing 2nd grade. This was pretty much normal for Harold. It had taken him 2 attempts to pass first. Some kids who were left behind as often as Harold, carried a grudge for those of us who planned to actually be in high school by time we were 17. Not Harold. He was like a big happy dog who just liked being around people.
Harold's problem was he was too trusting. When we would play hide and seek with Harold , we would tell him that no one could hide behind the bushes that had been planted just in front of the school. So of course we would hide behind the bushes , laughing at Harold as he looked everywhere but there. To my knowledge Harold had so far never caught anyone playing hide and seek, but he was having a great time doing it.
As I have noted here before , as a young boy I was obsessed with dinosaurs. So one day while hiding behind the bushes at the corner of the school , I found a rock with a small fossil in it. It was a very common type of fossil rock. There are probably dozens of them in my driveway right now. But to a 7 year old boy it was better then gold. I showed it to my friends Greg and Gary. They each wanted it. I told them no, but showed them where I found it. We all agreed to dig for more fossils the next time Harold was playing hide and seek.
That night I took the rock home and showed it to Dad. Dad looked at for a quick second and told me,"Pretty neat. You know where you find one of these there are probably many more. Look real hard. Maybe you'll even find a dinosaur." Dad probably said it just to get rid of me. He had no idea he would actually send me off looking for a dinosaur.
The next day I brought my favorite book The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs to school. I told Gary and Greg what my Dad said. We looked at the book and tried to imagine what type of dinosaur most likely lay under our school.
And so began the great dinosaur hunt.
Every chance we got we dug by the corner of the school, hidden from view by the bushes. Gary brought a sand bucket to school to help carry away the dirt. We didn't tell anyone what we were doing because we wanted all the credit to ourselves. Greg had pointed out that if we dug up a new type of dinosaur we could name it ourselves. My heart was already set on Tyrannosaurus Tom. ( If my Latin is right I believe that means Tom of the tyrant lizards.)
We were so sure that we were going to find something that it came as no shock to us when we did. About 18 inches straight down from the corner of the school building was a jagged rocky mass. We became convinced that we had found a new dinosaur. The bell rang and we went back in to the school. Before we went to class we washed our very dirty hands in the bathroom, and discussed our find. Greg was so excited he wanted to run back out and dig it up right now. Later at lunch we looked though my dinosaur book wondering what our new discovery looked like.
Our digging now took on a new urgency. We were afraid someone would steal it from us before we could get it out. By the next week we had widened and deepened the hole so I could stand in it waist deep. And that's exatly where I was when Harold finally looked for us in the bushes. Harold made such a fuss about finally finding us that a teacher came over to see what was going on. I was still standing in the hole when she found us. For some reason she became very upset about our dig site. She hauled all of us off to the Principal's office, including a very confused Harold. While the Principal was outside looking at the huge hole just outside his office window, we talked about what to say.
We knew we couldn't tell him what we were doing. We had to come up with a very logical reason why 3 boys were digging a large hole on school grounds. Harold wanted to know if he had to go to the office everytime he caught someone in Hide and Seek.
The Principal came back. He did not look very amused by the hole." Why are you digging holes under my office?"
I had been elected to talk. I stood up . " We're trying to find the lost pirates treasure."
The Principal thought it was funny. He laughed very loudly. He however didn't think it was funny enough not to call our parents and keep us after school. Inculding poor Harold who was shocked to learn that Pirates had buried a treasure under the school. I was hoping Mom would be the one to come pick me up. My hopes were dashed when I saw Dad walk into the office.
During the short walk home , Dad yelled at me. "Can't I have just one week go by without one of you kids doing something that gets me called to that school? Pirates? What on earth were you thinking? "
I kept quiet. I was hoping that when everything calmed down we could resume our dinosaur hunt. However soon it was winter, and early the next spring we moved away. I never did get to finish what we started.
30 years later I know that the "dinosaur" I found was in reality the foundation of that school. But everytime I hear in the news " NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES FOUND" ,there's still a small part of me afraid that it's going to turn out to be discovered under a small school in Iowa.