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Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

Pieces of past rise to occasion

When Alisa Rehberg picks up a rake, she never knows what the long blades might find.

It’s the same way whenever her husband, Ches, turns the soil with a shovel. Pieces of the past rise to meet him.

“Every time it rains, it’s like something else comes up from the earth,” Alisa said.

The Rehberg children — 8-year-old Gracie and 6-year-old James — can’t wait to get home from school every afternoon to see what kind of relic might have surfaced since their last backyard exploration.

The Rehberg family has found old-fashioned marbles, farm implements, carnival glass, buttons and a butter churn. They don’t have to dig a hole to China for broken china cups. They haven’t discovered the Holy Grail, just a holey pail.

“Everywhere you look,” said Gracie, “is something.”

The Rehbergs live on four acres of wooded property in a neighborhood bordering Bass Road. They moved there in the mid-1990s, never dreaming they were sitting on some buried treasure.

Of course, one must expand that definition of “treasure” to include an antique belt buckle, shoe soles, vintage perfume bottles and parts of old mattress springs.

History isn’t always at our fingertips or in front of our noses. Sometimes it’s hidden beneath our feet.

Living along the fall line has produced several notable local discoveries of ancient sea life. A Zygorhiza whale fossil, nicknamed “Ziggy,” came from a nearby kaolin pit. It is on display at Macon’s Museum of Arts & Sciences and believed to be at least 40 million years old.

There are vast deposits of history on the hallowed ground of the Ocmulgee National Monument. Snapshots of the past have been excavated from the jaws of places such as Fort Hawkins.

Alisa and Ches have been finding interesting artifacts on their property for several years. They once uncovered the foundation of an old house. A man from the cable company found a headstone from an unmarked grave not far from a large oak tree.

Last year, Gracie and James got a pony named Herman. When Ches began the process of converting the shed to a barn, every till of the earth seemed to bring a new treasure trove.

Alisa, who has a keen interest in primitive pottery, began noticing the broken pieces of pottery and glass weren’t exactly bought at Sears and dumped in the yard back in 1988.

She said members of the Bass family, who once owned the land, told her sharecroppers lived on the ridge when it was a farm. They sold charcoal during the Depression, which explains why the Rehbergs keep finding chunks of it.

The Rehbergs know they’re not living on the ruins of some ancient city. But they are perched on the remnants of an era that keeps coming back to them, one history lesson at a time.

A century ago, folks didn’t have curbside garbage service. They couldn’t just run to the dump every time the trash can got heavy. They had to create their own landfills. What they couldn’t reuse — and we’re talking about one of the most resourceful of all generations — they buried in the yard.

Now the Rehberg children have their own “show and tell.”

“We never know what we’re going to stumble on next,” said Alisa. “It sure has made cleaning out the horse pen on Saturday mornings a lot more interesting.”

Reach Gris at 744-4275 or gris@macon.com