Culver’s event to offset expenses for local gem and mineral club

ANTIGO — Tonight from 4 to 8 p.m., 10 percent of all sales at Culver’s will go to the Langlade Gem and Mineral Club.

Since the Langlade Gem and Mineral Club was founded last July, members’ expenses have included digs in Wausau for moon rocks and a trip to the Upper Peninsula in which they found huge pieces of copper. They also pay dues to the Midwest Federation of Gems and Minerals, a larger organization to which the club now belongs, according to Roger Wilder, the local club’s president.

“You never know what you’re going to find when you cut a rock open,” said Wilder. When asked what exactly he means, Wilder takes out a pendant holding a fire agate stone.

On one side is the outside — it’s a unique dark silver color, but nothing extraordinary. The other side, though, with its strange, almost poison-oranges, greens, and yellows, looks like something left behind by aliens.

Wilder made the necklace himself — his expertise in stones isn’t limited to identifying them. For years, he was a certified fire agate carving instructor (if a diamond is a 10 on a scale of hardness, a fire agate would be a 7, he said), and has now instructed members in the Langlade Gem and Mineral Club in the art as well. Club Vice President Jeff Robinson, likewise, lets members use special tools in his shop to carve and polish stones they collect for free.

They turn them into things like jewelry and belt buckles, which some members sell.

Besides rock hunting expeditions, Wilder said one important function the club serves is to educate.

“We have a meeting every Saturday and besides talking about old and new business, I have an educational part,” Wilder said. “We went through a whole series of how to identify rocks and all the different tests of what they are. Last month, the first Saturday of this month, I did a little presentation on metamorphic rocks. One of the members — her husband’s a science teacher — next meeting, he’s going to give a talk on sedimentary rocks.”

Wilder, who admitted to having a kind of obsession, has collected rocks all over the country. He used to winter nearby Petrified Forest National Park for the petrified wood he could collect. He’d make detours to Mt. Ida in Arkansas for the quartz he knew he’d find. He found small amounts of gold from mines in Idaho.

He said he has now met many like-minded lapidary enthusiasts in Langlade County.

“There is a woman and her daughter from Elcho — on the first meeting, they went back to the parking lot and they looked at each other and they said, ‘These are our kind of people,’” Wilder laughed. “I went to her house and she’s got rocks displayed in every nook and cranny of the house.”

Wilder said all are welcome to stop by tonight’s Culver’s meet-up, called “Culver’s Night Out,” which is also meant to be an informational session for community members interested in joining the Langlade Gem and Mineral Club.

“I just want to pass this on to the younger people,” Wilder said. “I’ve been in this thing since the 70s — I just want to pass on what I know and teach them at the same time.”