A Buck is a Buck

This was the picture-taking place on my grandparents farm between Dalton and Chatsworth, Georgia. The left person is one of my mother’s brothers, Osmo, the center one is my mother, who looks about fifteen or sixteen, and a friend.

The big rock served as a backdrop for many family photos of that time. But there is more to the rock than meets the eye.

The rock is covering an entrance to a cave. The first room of the cave had Indian artifacts and a foot print high up on the ceiling, which the family speculated often, long after they moved away, how the foot print got there.

Beyond the first room and through a narrow passage you come upon running water. You can hear the water gush, but you can’t see it. Or they couldn’t. Now, with more sophisticated equipment probably more could be discovered about the cave. But the big rock seals the entrance.

My mother’s father would find ways to get a buck to feed his family whenever he could. He sold the rocks to the Georgia State Highway Department and they blasted away the hill to get the granite for the purpose of building a highway, so the Indians’ mystery cave may be buried forever.

I was in the area a couple years ago and a subdivision is now built up on the hill the big rock was leaning against. It looks like to get into the cave by the only sure way, would be to remove the giant rock, and then you would have to remove two or three houses.

Maybe the late Indians would prefer their artifacts to stay buried anyway.