Jacquie and I started grad school the same year, in the geology department at the University of Washington, Seattle. We, along with about ten others, were teaching assistants for Stan Chernicoff’s Geology 101 course. One of the many fabulous things about being a Geo-101 TA at UW is that a huge variety of geology field trips are accessible as a day trips. Stan organized an agressive array of field trips for Geo-101 students to take on weekends, and he taught us TAs to lead them. It was on one of those trips that the seed for “I Dated a Pegmatite Dike” was planted.
We were on our way back to Seattle at the end of the trip. As the darkness drew over Snoqualamie Pass the van-load full of undergrads quietly dozed in the back. I don’t remember exactly how we got onto it, but we started stumbling upon these geology double-entendres, and how they would be perfect for a silly country song. We didn’t finish the song on the drive. But about a week later we got together for the sole purpose of finishing the song. We got the words and story line worked out first. Then we both came up with melodies that might go with the verses. As it turns out, we both came up with something in a waltz tempo, and they were compatible with eachother. They both got incorporated into the song.
I hope you enjoy the song. Please learn it and play it around the campfire at your next overnight geology field trip.
Cliff Todd
About Jacquie Smith