When he was in elementary school, Jacob Smith carried a railroad spike in his pocket.
"They wouldn't let us carry a pocket knife," said the Soddy-Daisy firefighter, who found the railroad artifact in his grandmother's yard on Durham Street in the north Hamilton County community. "So I carried this little spike."
Smith, 22, is one of Hamilton County's most avid historians and a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga anthropology student. His display of artifacts at a recent regional history fair at Soddy-Daisy High School covered 10 tabletops.
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He can't resist the impulse to collect old things, Smith said in an interview.
"I've been told my whole life I was 40 (years old) the day I was born," Smith said.
His collection -- which he has assembled from flea markets, antique stores, yard sales and outdoor digs -- includes old medicine and drink bottles, railroad pieces, porcelain signs, hand tools, carbide lamps and more.
Smith is a board member of the Soddy, Daisy & Montlake Historical Association, and he's been attending the group's meetings since he was 14 years old.
Smith says his interest in local history traces to his earliest memories, when he would dig around his grandmother's property looking for old bottles and other buried treasures. Years ago, rural folks used to burn their garbage, he said, and buried remnants of those trash piles are still around.
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Early on, Smith was mostly a bottle collector, he said. Coke bottles are his specialty, he said, with his collection focused on pre-1960 examples. He has one bottle from the short-lived Soddy Bottling Works -- one of seven confirmed examples -- that is his pride and joy.
For years, Smith said he stored his collectibles in his childhood bedroom, but later his parents built him a tree-house, and he moved his historic pieces there. He set up the tree house like a general store, and his life's goal is to someday build a full-scale replica of an early 20th-century country store.
Many pieces of his collection came from frequenting the local flea market and combing the annual World's Longest Yard Sale on Highway 27. He and his buddy, Ryan Carpenter, who is also a firefighter, would spend time on weekends going to sales.
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"I'd always have a glass jar, and I would fill it with change," Smith said. When the World's Longest Yard Sale rolled around each year, Smith said he would have $150 to $200 saved from his change jar to spend.
"When I got my (driver's) license, we'd spent two or three days straight (shopping the yard sale)," he said.
Now he works volunteer shifts at the Good Old Days Museum in the old Soddy Bank Building, which is run by the historical society. He also continues to go to sales with his pal, Ryan, and his wife, Kaylee, who serves as a walk-ahead "spotter" when the two go to sales and antiques malls together.
Smith said his shift work as a Soddy-Daisy firefighter gives him blocks of time each week to pursue his hobby.
His connection to the north end of Hamilton County comes from having several generations of forebears who lived there, he said.
He has begun researching his family tree, he said, which is just another form of digging up history.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.