Buried Treasure

This past Saturday the weather was one of those "Chamber of Commerce Days" - a day where you get outside and you just don't want to go back inside.  The grass and trees are showing the bright green of new growth, flowers are blooming and the fragrance fills the air, and a soft wind was blowing.

Russ came in from college and wanted to get outside and help get the Spring Garden in.  One of my goals for the day was to put in a 50 foot row of sweet corn right next to the Irish potatoes.  We each got a shovel and began turning over the soil.  It was hard work doing it the old fashioned way, but it felt good working side by side.  This was indeed a 'Shovel-Ready Job!!'  Here is the result of our work:

Fifty foot row ready for corn planting

This soil is on a portion of land that sits just west of our house.  We haven't planted any crops on it before, so I figured the soil would be well-rested.  As we were turning over each shovel full of dirt and giving it a few chops to break up the compacted earth, I felt a "clang" against the blade of my shovel.  Something was buried in the soil and our digging unearthed it from it's previously undisturbed position.  What could it be?  Hmmmm...

I bent over and picked up the item you see in my hand below and wiped off years of dirt.  What is this buried treasure? Why, its a cobalt blue colored old-fashioned marble!

Buried Treasure!

I can remember when I was farming in Oberlin, we'd plow a field and pull up levees, preparing the land for rice planting.  Some of the land that was now vast fields, was previously home places decades before. After a rain, I could walk the levees and the rain would have exposed from the plowed soil, old fashioned bottles and old fashioned marbles like the one I'm holding in my hand above.  I'd put them in my pocket and bring them home.  I've got them in a box or a drawer someplace.

It's odd to think that the "boys or girls" that played with the marble I'm holding in my hand are probably long dead by now.  It shows how time moves on and things change.  Prior to computers and television and iPhones, kids played marbles outside.  This Link says that marbles were first manufactured in Germany in the 1800's and became popular in the US around 1870.  It also states that in England marbles were played around Tinsley Green for many centuries, dating back to 1588. Interestingly, it states that:

 "the marbles-playing season started on Ash Wednesday and lasted until midday on Good Friday: playing after that brought bad luck."

Well, I'm not superstitious, but if I was, I guess I still it is comforting to know that I have at least 3 more days to play marbles...

"Karl Witkowski - Game of Marbles"

I can remember in the 70's we played marbles at recess.  I had a pouch full of marbles.  If I recall correctly, we'd play a game called "keepsies".  This is probably where the saying "playing for keeps" came from.  In this game we'd draw a big circle.  Marbles would be placed in the center and if you shot your buddies' marbles out of the circle with your "plunker" (a bigger marble), you would get to keep them - hence the name, keepsies.  Of course we had marbles that we thought were the prettiest and we didn't like losing them.  You always hoped to fill your pouch with more marbles than you started with.

As I looked at the pretty marble in my hand that I dug up, I thought about the boy that lost it and how sad he must have been.  I thought about the much simpler times he lived in and those carefree times spent playing marbles under the sprawling branches of a live oak tree.  Buried treasure?  Not really, but a pretty cool relic and a nostalgic remembrance of a by-gone era.  Hopefully the same soil that yielded me the cobalt blue old-fashioned marble will, in about 100 days, also yield bushels of sweet corn for us to enjoy.  We are, after-all, playing for keeps!