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2003.
The Big Pick of January 2003 This pick contained all of the stuff we had dug from November of 2001 untill January of 2003. We did the pick in my den, as the temp inside my barn was 8 degrees, and the wind blowing through the many cracks overpowered my woodburner. I set up bottles the night before untill almost 3 in the morning. As soon as we finished the Harrison Library Presentation, me, Mike, Rod, our buddy Bruce, and Mike and Johnnie the film guys all converged on my humble abode to devide the booty of a hard years digging. As keeper of the Die, Mike officialy started the process of deciding first pick by saying, "I aint goin first". We stared at the spinning Die laying in stationary repose untill Mike caved in and gave it a spin. Rod and I took our turns and the order wound up with Rod as first pick, Mike second, and me, like last year, dead last. And also like last year, the order really didn't mean much as we all had a different bottle picked out for our first choice. Rod chose a local Harrison milk bottle that even the old timers in town had never heard of; a pint size Geo. Frederick Dairy. Mikes first pick was a scarce Iron Pontil Cincinnati soda; Hartwell and Baker. My first pick was a square amber Waynes Diuretic Elixer / Cincinnati. After an hour or so we were mostly done. We had many good embossed bottles left over that we all had in our collections so we decided to box them up to give to homeowners when we dug and found nothing. Then it was Mike and I who had some picking to do. We had dug four pits over the summer where Rod had to miss and we hit pretty good. The die was twisted into motion once again. Mike spun a 2. "Oh yea, easy cheesy", I said. Then I spun a 2. Mike laughed at me and spun again and got another 2. I grabed the die with visions of a six in my head and spun a 1. Mikes first pick was an open pontil J.R. Rowand six sided med from Philly. My first was an open pontil C.S. Burdsal from Cincinnati. Mike then picked the second Burdsal and I chose an op Dr. Hooflands German Bitters. Mike chose next the op John Moody from Cincy an I chose the other Rowand. Mike next snatched up the Alexanders sure cure for malaria and I grabbed a very early Chameleon era Sherwin Williams Paint bottle. From this point the exitement waned drastically but we did have 16 interesting open pontil puffs and a few other neat things to choose from.
We gabbed and remembered some of the eventful digs we had over the course of the last year while we smoked Marlboros and Kools and ate bacon covered pizza. We made resolutions to hit it hard this coming season and to try to improve our techniques, get out to ask for more permissions, and make or buy tools that would ease the job, like a tripod for bucket pulling and a super long 12 foot probe for the deep pits with the tall fills and thick caps. We talked about the presentations we had done and agreed we had found a great new facet to the hobby and that we would endevour to give all that we could from now on. There is nothing as satisfying as being able to talk to those who are genuinely interested about a passion that burns brightly and is hard to contain. Thanks again to all of the folks who welcomed us into their yards and their lives for a brief period and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Eddie (Bottle
Viking) Brater
March 16th. What a
winter !!! Three weeks ago I went out and tried to stick a probe into my yard. It was frozen about 10 inches thick. We've had a nice bit of warming and while last week was soupy but thawed, this weekend the ground was firmed back up and ready to go. Indiana Rod had him some BUTT SURGERY to get rid of a cyst. The doctor said it may have been caused by spending too much time in an uncomfortable lawn chair. He's doing fine. If you want to send him a get well, you may do so at Rod@privydigger.com. (Pictures of the wound may be posted if interest is high) So today, sans Rod, the Pirate and I went to an 1860 place with the old Whitewater canal in the back yard. We had been here last during the draught of ought-2, and couldn't get the probes into the ground. Today they just sailed in. -Everywhere. -Without a single crunch or pop. The 7 foot probe went into every hole the 4 footer made, and we gridded off the entire yard. These people must have been crapping into the canal. We revisited another place where we had dug but couldn't locate anything. We decided to go up the Canal some to where it ran beside an 1875-1895 picnic grove. After the railroad came through, (on the towpath of the canal) the canal was quickly out of business. Many folks threw their trash into the defunct canal. We found a shallow dump near the grove in the canal bed, and there were lots of hutches in it, (social dump)but mostly broken. The three new permissions I have were un-available to us this weekend. Rod (sore butt) has a few choice permissions so we hope he can get back in his lawn chair soon. One of Rods permissions is this one...
And the carriage house below.
We are looking
forward to another exciting year of
March 29th Hey where did spring go ??? I try to have some understanding when it comes to weather men. Just because they have a full non stop real time view of all precipitation, cloud formation, and temperature for the entire country, and computers that run thousands of models based on current conditions and on the stored data of the last twenty years or so, it must still be really hard, right ??? How come when they're wrong
they never admit it anymore. When I was a kid good old Well, then again, I guess they don't hop up and down when they get it right either.....like they did today. 6 days ago on a nice, sunny,
warm 70 degree day, Mr. Headrocker, or something like that, our favorite Cincinnati
weather man, said it was going to plunge into the 20's again on Sunday, today. So my butt went straight into the long johns this morning. We met at stupid This yard was in town and smallish. We walked to the pit right off the bat and confirmed theory with the probe. It was a woody. The cold 26 degree wind was not a big deal as we were socked into a corner of the privacy fenced yard. There was a decade old cedar tree a couple feet to one side of us and an 80 year old walnut a couple of feet away to the other. The walnut had some roots that liked the pit so that's where they went, in, and then straight down. At about 4 feet we hit seeds and most of the chards were old. Mike found a neat Rockingham pitcher in several pieces. Mike took 6 inches of the layer down in half the pit, removed his fluff, and I hopped in. I scratched at my wall and an amber, beaded edge, double eagle flask came tumbling out. It was open pontil. It was broken in half. I also found an op 8 sided med. in pieces, some of which were put together to read, "Rowands Mixture"/ Philly. Mike was back in and found a few more broken pieces, including a black glass "Walker's" whiskey, op J.J. Butler ink, op scroll flask, ip C.B. Owens Mineral water, ip Best and Lothes Mineral water, and a dozen broken op puffs. All the good stuff broken. Even the crap and small stuff was broken. Tiny doll legs - broken, bottle stopples - broken, an op mug base shot glass - broken. Even the buttons were broken !!!
Awong wif ouw poow wittle heawts.
We started probing for another pit. This one didn't seem to be any newer than the 1870's, so we were looking for the 70's/90's pit. This yard had a natural gravel layer in it about 3 feet deep. It saved our backs from deep probing while we stabbed away at it. In the back of the yard there was a privacy fence, and behind it was a concrete pad about ten feet wide bordering the alley. Rod noticed a low spot with a crack and Mike bashed a small hole in it and stuck in the probe. Sweetness !!! The owner was cool with this as he said he was removing the old pad this year. We bashed a workable sized hole in it and started spreading dirt out on the concrete. We didn't use a tarp. The concrete is hard to roll the dirt in with but it's nice to shovel against. This pit went through about 3 feet of gravely fill and then turned into solid ash for 3 more feet. At 6 feet there was seeds and some lamp chimneys started coming out. Then we found three broken tops of cobalt target balls. So sad, ..the breakage.
This pit went to about 7 feet and had a pretty puny layer with not much in it. The one intact bottle we found was a quart 3 piece mold utility, unembossed. Shewee !!! Seeya next weekend for more
April 6th. We lost an hour of sleep last night due to daylight savings. Indiana Rod had to miss today so me and Mike headed to one of the oldest parts of Cincinnati. The old neighborhood we visited was nothing more than 60 cellar holes. Situated just out of downtown on State Street, and on the bank of the Ohio River, this area has seen constant habitation from the earliest times. Just 100 yards away from the location several "barrel pits" had been dug a few years ago with some super old and fantastic pieces coming out of them. (Barrel pits are just barrels sunk into a hole, and there's your pit. Usually indicative of the oldest types of privies) Mike showed me where a few pits had been dug. We probed near them and found several more, as yet undug. We traipsed around most of the day marking pits with our GPS units. Soon the bulldozers will be back, making way for skyscraper apartment and office buildings. Where some preliminary dozer scraping had occurred the ground was littered with yellow ware, red ware, and open pontil base frags. We're going back next weekend to crack open a pit or two. This is gonna be a good year. Yes Indeedy !!! Seeya in a week.
April 13th 2003 Today I decided we should visit a major old homestead, built in 1822, and now nothing more than a pile of bricks. IndianaRod was busy again, this time attending his Son's first ever, pre-school musical. Mike and I went and probed behind the afor mentioned abode de antiquity. The standing outhouse was situated on a steep creek bank directly behind where the house was. There was really little other choice for placement, so we concentrated near the outhouse and hit any and all flatish spots. The creek bank was filled with huge thorn trees that proudly sported massive purple thorns in evil looking clusters. They displayed their woody weapons with a toughest-tree-in-the-wood attitude, which we duly noted, then like the pre-occupied goofs that we were, would soon forget, turn around, and be near impaled by. Just when we thought we had carved a permanent receptor path on the big purple thorns, we started getting nailed from grabbing onto another variety of shade making menace. This type covertly hid it's tiny needlish thorns and mimicked the more common non-blood-letting greenery. The thorns on this tree were trained to release from the tree and stay with the new host for as long as possible, which they did effectively. We stabbed at the rocky bank until we were pooped and decided to leave the countryside and head into town. We returned to the 1865 place where we dug when Johnny and Kenny from OK. and KS., respectively, came to join us. We were looking for Kenny's first open pontil pit. This pit was bailed out on and filledin when it didn't seem to be aging to the pontil era. We cracked open the pit after finding the walls and cutting the sod. The fill was easy digging, being fluffy and free of rocks, bricks, and roots. The absence of thorn trees was not an unwelcome change. At four feet we hit a thin cap and then started finding chards. Wax sealer frags and pieces of redware were a nice sign. As I shoveled into a corner thick with seeds and threw out a shovel full onto the pile, I heard mike from over my shoulder say, "It's pontilled". He said it again and then I looked and he was holding a small sided op puff. Time to slow down a little. He handed me the scratcher and I started carefully raking through the debris. Lots of window pane came out, and some bottle chards also. I felt a larger slide from the scratcher and reached into the fluff to find a local med. , Dr. Marvin".
Mike took a turn and found a green Piso's and a beachnut container with the beachnut leaf embossed on it. All of the debris was in one little corner of the pit. Mike hit bottom and took it to the four corners. We also got a Gambrinus beer, a Boston druggist, and a clay marble. Sliiiiim Pickins. Then Rod called. His duties had been completed and he was ready for fun. He suggested the sight of another old homestead a mile out of town. We packed up and met him near it and trekked off into the woods. After we walked an old drive a quarter mile we found the foundation of a barn and another from a house. We split up and started eyeballing for signs of privy pits past. It was hard to tell where the front of the house was, but after just a couple of minutes I looked over a fence and saw a large hole in the ground. I climbed the fence and sure enough, it was a massively sunken stone lined hole. Two feet of the stone walls were visible. We tried to probe but hit rocks at every depth down to 7 feet with no sign of cap or layer. We started digging and pulled out huge slabs of limestone. The fill was a clay of the shovel clinging variety and going was mighty slow. After an hour, we had moved three more feet of clay and rocks. The long probe was inserted and after much effort we got it down to the handle. 4 feet of air and 7 more of probe and still no layer. We were thinking it was a well. We decided to leaver open as it's in a fenced area and figured we would come back when things were slow to see what might become of it. Next weekend we might go back to downtown Cincy or we might dig a place Rod has on hold. Spring is here and the diggin' is ON !!!
April 27th Shewwwwww DOGGY it was nice today. I made a call Saturday night and got a go-ahead on an 1850's place right on the Avenue, but it wouldn't be ready by this weekend. Mike called and told me he had been poking around some on a big chunk of old demolished neighborhood and said he found a stony. We decided to go downtown Cincy for a try. We logged a few pits here by global coordinates the other day. This is a sweet spot with tons of pits on it. I met Rod at Arbys and he followed me downtown. When we pulled into the parking area Mike was already in the woods digging. We walked up and met him and he showed us the prospect. It was an oval stony, about 4 by 5. The short probe was coming up black and wet from about 2 feet down. It was gonna be a wet one.
The
area where we were digging was home to the homeless. There were piles of beer cans and
whiskey and wine bottles. Some were scattered, here and there was a pile, and some
clusters of the jolly juice containers were stacked neatly. I guess being homeless allows
for the extra time needed to be creative. While we were surveying the site a couple of
weeks before we found a monster of a bum shack. It was built with plastic sheeting, old
tarps, curtains, blankets, old boards, and tree limbs. In an apparent attempt to block
drafts, beer cans had been inserted with care into the many small openings. It was Bum
paradise. The pit
was choked up with lots of limestone. After we got to about 2 feet the water started. We
took about a 3rd of the pit down through quagmire and then bailed out the
water. Then we would work the rest of the pit down to within a few inches of the water
line and do it again. This kept our feet mostly dry and allowed most of the fill to be
removed while dry. At about 6 feet we noticed gobs of floating seeds, and some bottles
started popping out. Mike bails out the water while standing on the dry side. Always keep one side dry baby. The first whole bottle was a dioxigen with a marble inside of it. Then a Belleview Brewery beer bottle, a Huffs German Liniment, a Mrs. Winslows soothing syrup, and a big Henry K. Wampole Med. From Philly. I handed up a broken dolls head and a broken round bottom soda, and the only intact soda of the day, a W. Sievers Hutch from Cincinnati. Mike ran into a nest of flower pots with both the old and new style lips, and also a few small off color terra cotta pots with scalloped sides. These were actually some pretty neat finds.
We thought the rocks would end but they never really did. At 9 feet Mike hit some gray clay and announced that the bottom had been found. I finished off the pit with a Newport KY. Pharmacy. We were hoping that a woody was next to this pit. We started filling it in with mostly rocks. We thought about all of the late night, intoxicated, residentially challenged foot traffic and joked about making a nice tiger trap to see if we could catch a bum. I pictured a cardboard sign that said, "Need money for crutches - fell in huge hole". Of course the crutch money would be spent on Mad Dog whilst the bum limped and crawled his way back to his flimsy yet spacious urban woodlot home.
Since we prefer to use snares to catch homeless guys anyway, we filled it all the way in. We were tired and wet and smelling like eggs so we decided to come back later for another dose of the bodily abuse that we can't live without. Right
On !!! Next weekend we visit 1850 on the Avenue !!! (This update brought to you by,
May 25th. Memorial day weekend. Rod and I got out for a dig today. Mike was doing the Father/Fan thing for his Son, who's baseball team is doing really well and is in the finals. Rod corralled Bruce into helping us. Bruce has been on a few digs with us and enjoys the thrill of the hunt. This dig is in down town Harrison. Our gracious host Shirley is a super sweet lady who I had done some painting for a few years ago. I arrived first and found two pits within a few minutes. Both were stone lined. The one that showed the deepest depression was absolutely huge by Harrison standards at 7 by 7 feet square. The other was a more modest 3 by 4 feet square. At this point it's always a guessing game so I guessed without Mike and his superior shovel technique, we had better stick with the smaller of the two pits. We cut the sod and cracked her open. Right off the bat we were hitting lots of medium and large limestone slabs. A few chunks of concrete were discouraging and had Rod shaking his head early on. At 5 feet we were still pulling out more rocks than dirt, and the concrete kept showing up in all it's evil post 1900 glory. There was very little sign in the pit. No bones, no glass or ceramics, no nuthin. At 6 feet we found one lonely door knob. Rod handed me the probe and I hit bottom at 7 feet. I mole holed down through the center of the pit until I hit the gravel bottom and found no layer to speak of. No debris, and no seeds whatsoever. POOP !!! The dig was done. We filled'er in and gathered around the other pit. Staring down at the marks I made in the sod indicating where the stone walls were, we were intimidated with it's bigness. It spoke to us. "Come on boys, dig ME out".The clock on my wrist said 3:00 pm. Not enough time in the day to finish this monster, which also probed with a rockish nature. This pit was a leeverite. We would have to leaveright there till another day. Shirley invited us in to see her collection of local Harrison memorabilia. She has some awesome stuff. She has all the local bottles I do plus tons of stuff that can't be dug like advertising and calendars, labels, and lots more. I would like to thank Shirley for allowing us to dig. Hopefully the other pit will have some stuff in it we can use for shelf filler.
Eddie in the pit.
Rod in the pit, Bruce flexing his firefighter guns.
Rod pauses to pose and suck wind.
Sod is replaced, ready to mow. Next weekend we will be
cracking open the big stony. I'm thinking it's gonna be LOADED !!!! RIGHT ON !!!!!
June 8th Today the trio of privy digging Goof's revisited the site of the last dig to probe for more pits. I had located a walled pit before leaving the last time and we centered in on it to reprobe for walls. After a half hour of diagonal probing we had a very strange shape marked in the sod. This walled pit was 7 feet wide and 19 feet long. Huh ??? We popped glass at 6 feet deep on one end of it. We decided to test hole a corner to get a look at the walls. We dug down about 3 feet and found a brick wall. There was mortar between the bricks. There was also a 3 inch thick layer of plaster lathe on the inside of the wall. We agreed it was a rather huge rectangular cistern, and further agreed to continue the search. Rod had his dowsing rods out and was running around the yard. He stuck a probe into an area where the rods were crossing and announced confidently that he had a pit. Mike was in the back corner and he also was announcing "I got one over here". I went to Rods and stuck in a short probe. The bottom felt like it was only 4 feet deep. Probing for walls revealed none, and I felt no glass or layering, but the ground in this spot was butter soft. I went over to Mikes corner and he had me push the long probe in the last three feet. Pow-glass at 6 feet. We decided to dig the corner spot. The stone walls of this pit were 4 by 5. We hit an ash layer with some cinder in it at 3 feet and started finding some chards of yellow ware and red ware. Good sign !!! As we were making our way steadily deeper the sky began to darken and thunder came rolling in. It started to sprinkle and we decided to attempt construction of a temporary shelter. We stretched 3 corners of an 8 by 10 tarp up to the corner of the chain link fence and used the 7 foot probe as a pole for the middle. We tied the outside corners down just as it started to really rain. The rain turned to storm and it was really hammering us. Several gusts of at least 30 mph blew through but our shelter held tight. We were huddled under it with big goofy smiles while the storm raged. We felt like 6th graders. Rod was in the pit on his knees making fluff and we never missed a beat.
After 40 minutes or so the rain turned into a steady drizzle, and after 30 minutes more it stopped and the sun came back out. We were at 6 feet now and on top of a layer. One of the first bottles was sadly broken. It was a Warners Log with the neat disk lip. The first intact piece was a neat stoneware German wine jug. We had found these in the past but always broken. This one was whole, including the handle. We got a Warners safe cure and a couple of polish bottles. One of the next things we found was a small amber "Dr Harter's Wild Cherry Bitters". This one was about 2 & 3/4 inches high. A good bottle. We also found the only semi-local piece, a Kunz and Ritzmann Hutch from Lawrenceburg Indiana.
The bottom 3 feet of the pit was all glass but was mostly broken. We pulled a few more bottles out, including one pontiled utility and a Parker Bro's London Relish.
Eddie squats and smokes, Rod fluffing the layer.
Rod looking weasilish.
Mike on the left, uncompensated helper Bruce on the
right. We gave our very gracious host Shirley some of the bottles and restored the pit. Shirley has a very nice collection of local Harrison stuff that she keeps out for display. I brought her a piece she didn't have to add to her shelf, a "K. Freiderich Distillery". We also managed (barely) to get her to take the Lawrenceburg Hutch. We all have one and it was my guess she might like to have this one. Sharing is half of the fun !!! We had some hole left over so I promised to return next weekend with some fill dirt, seed, and straw. Just before we left Mike suggested we probe around a bit more and within a few minutes we had another pit located with glass at 6 feet. Oh Yea !!! Stay
tuned for more exciting
June 22nd. 2003. It was a picture perfect day in Downtown Harrison, Ohio, with low humidity, temps in the lower 80's, and a nice breeze blowing through the shaded back yard. We had agreed to meet at 9 but last minute circumstances had me running a couple of hours behind. When I got to the dig, Mike and Rod were about four feet deep on the wood lined pit. Rod showed me a broken J. Born squat soda that came out at 3 feet deep, along with some yellow ware and red ware shards. Mike was digging and cornered what appeared to be a sided squat soda, resting against another bottle.
As he was digging it out, he announced that the soda, A Wilke from Cincinnati, was broken, but the medicine looked to be ok. He pulled out the med. and checked the bottom first to find a nice open pontil, then flipped it around a wiped the dirt from the embossing and said, " G.W. Merchant. Lockport, N.Y." The bottle was so heavy it felt as if it were solid glass. Finally, a pontiled pit !!!
The walls were very hard to find and the use layer was much the same, if not exactly the same as the fill. Lots of gravel mixed in with the seeds. Once we would find the wall of the pit and dig to that point, the dry sandy soil behind would rapidly dry out and cave in, burying shovels and feet and giving us lots of extra buckets to pull. This happened all the way around the pit until the hole we were digging was nearly twice the size of the pit. Plus, it was freaking everybody out once we were 6 or 7 feet deep. The age of the stuff kept us determined to finish, otherwise we might have bailed out.
Above pic; This is where Mike and Rod were shortly after I arrived. Looked like a normal pit at this point.
Above pic. The pit was very old but was also very empty. I was in the hole and found a broken "Parks yellowdock sarsaparilla", and then a big square ip aqua yellowdock sarsaparilla. Dang my faulty mojo and I hopped out. Mikes mojo was on today and he found a nice intact very early local bottle, an open pontil "R. Wards Botanical Linament". SHWEET !!!
Mike found a solitary puff, and then the last intact bottle for the day, an open pontil "Davis Vegetable Pain Killer".
We finished the pit off and began filling it up at around 10 pm. It was a long grueling dig of at least 12 hours. Would I have dug for 12 hours if I knew there were only three OK bottles in the pit ? Maybe not, but thats the way it go's. Could have been none at all. Could have been many. The excitement of the possibilities is what keeps us coming back. We filled in half and then decided that Rod and me would come back in the morning to finish filling it in so with the light of day we could make sure we did a nice neat job. We found yet another, the 4th pit on this property, under a very large hemlock bush. While me and Rod was filling it in, the owners son-in-law stopped by to chat. We told him about the pit-under-the-bush and he said he would talk to Shirley, the owner about it. He came back a short while later and said, "Have at it boys, She said its ok to get rid of it and it's a pain to trim anyway". With a "Right on" and a "Thanks dude", we were off, anticipating another dig. We are missing a very specific time frame in the pit timeline for this property, notably most of the 1870's. Thanks again to the homeowner for allowing us to dig. Seeya soon bottlegeeks !!!
July 6th Yes boys we are at it again. Same yard, nuther pit. This is the pit that was under the BIG bush. We did not want to have to remove the bush unless we were very sure that what was under it was a genuine privy pit. We also were mindful of the possibility of digging the pit without removing the bush if the roots weren't too bad or if there was room beside the bush to "get in".
We began by
doing some rudimentary pruning on the lower branches. Then I pulled a trick from my
residential home painting bag We started kicking shovels into the ground next to the bush and found the stone walls right where we had marked them. We got three of the walls showing and started downward, clipping off the small and wetly brittle roots as we went. After a couple of feet the roots lightened up and the fill was fluffy and light.
At three feet I got into a nest of ABM food and ketchup bottles in one of the corners. At four feet in one of the other corners I started finding glass prisms and other parts to a lamp or chandelier. They were actually pretty cool and the brass parts were really ornamental, albeit tarnished and pitted. We found a couple of other ABM nuthins, and then a big string lip wine with a high kick-up.
At 5 feet we got completely under the bush and located our fourth wall. The dirt above us and under the bush was clayish and looked like it would stick, so while the digger was on his knees under it the puller kept both eyes wide open for cracks and falling clods, the indicators of a cave in. The fill under
5 feet turned rocky and sandy and was mostly void of chards. There were some seeds but not
many. At 7 feet we hit a very orange layer of gravel and then under that just really white
gravely sand that smelled like a gravel pit in the rain. With no layer on the bottom we
could not get the picture until we finally cleared the stone walls and they stopped going
down.
Well, it was only 2 PM so we filledrin. I told Mike about a map I had from 1872 that showed something other than the 1900 house that the homeowner lived in. We decided to probe the alley behind the big house and found a stone liner and a wood liner. My map shows a very small house on this lot that sets up near the road. Along this stretch of the downtown Avenue there is always a good chance something older than what you see was there before. Shirley, the owner, was not at home so we restored the pit we dug and unleashed the bush. We left the wine and a couple of other bottles on her back stoop, and rolled out. I have a line
on another very old place right in the heart of downtown.
July 11th I was fishing for some future permissions on Friday evening. By comparing a new map with an 1869 map, both showing buildings on lots, I found that there were many post 1900 homes on top of where used to set older homes. Calling on the folks in the 20th century dwellings and telling them I wanted to dig the privies from the houses that used to be where their house was now was a new thing for me. Many of the houses dated from the 1930's so there was no outhouse associated with them at all. I made 4 calls and talked to 4 different people. The responses I got ran the gambit from one guy being so excited that he wanted me to come over right away, to one lady yelling at me at the top of her lungs after I introduced myself as a local history buff. "Hi my name is Eddie Brater, I'm a local history buff and- "I DON'T GIVE OUT NO HISTORY" She shouted, Now that's funny stuff. I got 75 %
of the 4, and I'm 100% glad I was 25 % short.
July 13th We were
meeting at the dig site this time, since we were all familiar with the location from
having already dug 4 pits there, instead of stupid The house dated around 1914, but my 1869 map showed a house on nearly the same footprint. We had located a woody and a stony last time we dug, and we decided to crack open the woody. We cut the sod but there was very little grass, mostly clover and wild strawberry. The digging was easy and soft, and red ware and yellow ware chards were soon popping out. We did a careful job of vertical probing for the walls, which are easy to miss in a woodliner that was placed in soft ground. The particular micro-geology of this area has about 2 feet of topsoil and under that very loose sandy soil. When digging wood liners, with the wood now completely gone, we have problems with the sand outside the original walls falling off in huge globs and filling in our hole as we dig it, leaving us with a cavish result, and twice as much bucket yanking. This pit we dug as fast as we could. It seemed the sandy walls of the hole would stick until the air dried them out, so we didn't give them much of a chance to dry. We burned through to the bottom. On the way we found some promising chards but little else. The two intact pieces recovered were stone ware cone inks, both accidentally flung out, and then retrieved from the pile.
At noon the woody was filled. We had a bite and then broke ground over the stony. This sod was much better and cut nicely.
This pit was in all day sun. It wasn't humid, but the sun was a'beatin on us, so being the MacGyver of polyvinyl, I rigged us up some shade.
This pit started off at the nineties with a flurry of slick x-label meds and a ton of blacking or polish bottles. We found a few common unmarked cone inks, cabin inks, and a dome or two. The layer these were coming from was seedy, and about 4 feet deep. Under this layer was some gravel and then another layer, this one a bit older. Mike pulled out the fancy but broken panel of a cathedral pickle, then the iron pontil base. Koenigs hamburger tropfen popped up about 7 times in this layer, along with an LW base Hostetters, an L.H. Thomas aqua cone ink, and another stone ware cone. We also found a Circassian Hair / Cincinnati, a trade pipe, A Halls Balsam, and a hinge mold umbrella ink. As always, the bottom reared it's ugly gravely face and ended our fun. It was fun though ! Nice layers with lots of "tinkle" to them and a few keepers. We left Shirley with some of the better embossed bottles and refilled the hole. Both pits filled in nicely and packed well. I think that about does it for this lot. Thanks to Shirley for allowing us to interrupt her weekends lately, and thanks to her little doggy Daisy for sharing her back yard.
More
pits, More bottles, More adventures,
September 7th Hey, where did August go? It must have went by while I was at work. Seems like I been at work for a solid month. Stupid conventional lifestyle !!! My mojo is
out-of-alignment. Anyways, I finally made time to
call an older prospect about a permission. I got the go-ahead for Must kick square hole into arse of Rod. Anyways, Mike and I went to the house and started probing the back yard. The back of the place was a steep hill. Real Billygoat territory. We stabbed and jabbed till we were properly frustrated, then Rod pulled in. "Did ya find it", he said. The pit must have been under the swimming pool, which occupied the only flat spot behind the house. I told Rod he would have to get into the pool and probe. I remembered a pit Rod and I had found a few months ago but didn't dig due to lack of time and Manpower (Mikepower). So we decided to go check it out. We arrived to the scene and found a minivan parked flush with the wall of the pit and a big pile of branches in the middle of it. We flipped the branches off and ignored the minivan. Mike went probing down a thin line of ground between the chain link fence and a concrete block garage. He announced he had a pit and I scampered over like a pup called to vittles. My expert probing ability was called upon for verification and in the old school fashion I proceeded to sample the sound of the ground. I excitedly confirmed the presence of a non-walled geological micro-anomaly and stated proudly, " Hell lets tear into her boys" !!! We made a test hole and got down about 3 feet. We were finding lots of cinder ash and nothing else. We probed in all 4 directions and in one of those directions the pit seemed too long to be a pit. We took our test hole down to 5 feet and hit solid gravel bottom. No change in composition, no layer, cap, shards, etc... Must be an ash pit.
We fillederin and moved back to the afore mentioned minivan encroached upon pit. We started at one corner and found brick walls. We dug a couple feet down and Mike noticed out loud that the bricks were mortared. Huh ? Not good. At three feet the walls stopped going down and just ended. At 4 feet we were back on the ancient gravel river bottom. POOP !!! We decided to hit the street and go bang doors. We armed ourselves with brochures and looks of determination and beat feet down the sidewalk. I suggested to Rod he go bang the door of a guy we knew from school who just recently bought a house that, according to my never ending research, was in the same yard where once upon an earlier time used to stand a house of older architect. Mike and I waited by his truck, a half a block up the street, while Rod went and talked to the owner. We watched him walk back out to his truck and retrieve his lawn chair. YES !!! It's ON !!! This yard was nice and city small with an open corner proudly displaying a concrete lined pit. I walked over and probed in front of it. Nuthin. I probed beside it. BINGO. I called Mike to confirm with the 7 footer. From the hollow handle of the probe came the confirmation of snap and pop. The trusty 7 footer also denied the presence of solid walls, and a best guess was made as to the location of the edges of the woodlined pit. We spread out a tarp and started moving dirt.
Brent, the owner, and his wife, were really into it. Brent new much of the history of the house and it's former occupants. He had found letters in the attic from the early 1900's to and from a captain who lived there. He was acting like we do, checking out the broken shards that started popping out, and fitting them together, checking out hallmarks and embossing on broken bottles, and getting into the discovery of buried history with us. At about 4 feet we hit the use layer. The first bottle out was a nice tealish aqua sided utility with a huge open pontil. YES !!!
The next bit of information came in the form of a broken panel with logs on it. It was a panel from a Drakes plantation bitters, and... It was yellow !!!
Up next was a couple of ultra clear barely blown slicks. Just to the side of them was an open pontil "Coffeens Liniment". A piece of bubbly green glass came out in the form of the shoulder of a case gin. There was a seal on it that said "Meder & Zoon", and a picture of a swan.
Mike was in the pit and handed up the glowing yellow top of the drakes, then the top of another drakes in red-amber. Mike said, "check THIS out", and handed up a neat pipe with a curved stem in the shape of a fowls leg with the claw holding the basket weave decorated bowl. He put it to his mouth and did a quick Popeye before handing it over.
He also pulled out a smooth base, and then a pontiled J.J. Butler ink. Rod hopped in and found an op sided ink and an op cone. He also found and op Spaldings glue and a weird bottle embossed as a spray medicator.
Dumping the bucket a very nice Archaic corner notched beveled blade, made from Hornstone flint was located.
Brent was manning the sifting and found a killer thin little side notch arrowhead with a blue tang. During my next turn in the depths I hauled out a Singer sewing machine oil, a smooth base Hooflands German Bitters, and then a broken pint double eagle flask.
Finally I found a second Meder & Zoon sealed case gin, broken like the first. There were many more good embossed bottles that we left for Brent and I wrote everything we found down but cant for the life of me find my little note book. (Buried ?) I didn't take as many pictures as I should have. Sometimes the excitement of the dig takes over and I cant think straight. But thats a good thing. The pent up worries of everyday life float away from me when I am in such a state. It's a big dose of perspective that I am happy to take. Gonna try to get out more often. Looking at next weekend, we have "dumpster day" here in my township where all us hillbillies can toss out such things as the garbage man is reluctant to take. I have a sleeper sofa, some scrap steel siding, and some other large items to haul away. I am planning on making time for a pit digging on the side. It was a fun dig, especially since it's been a month since I got a shovel into the ground. We would like to thank Brent and his family for having us. Also, the night after this dig, Rod and I were the guest speakers for the Franklin County Indiana Historical Society. Read all about it in the "Presentations" link. Gotsta Dig !!!!! Seeya soon.
October 25th Hello again. It's been awhile eh ? We have been spending time at a construction site that has been teasing us unmercifully. The shards are pure torture. Scroll flasks of green and root beers of blue. Colored OP bases and necks. A veritable carpeting of mud and broken glass. The site is on a clay hillside bordering the mighty Ohio River. The pits run to 25 feet deep and are capped with a good ten feet of clay. It almost makes probing downwards redundant, and hopeless. There are chunks of limestone from a hundred early retaining walls littered about the site, plus the natural limestone that is in the ground. Even the pits have limestone in them, mixed not only in with the use layer, but also mixed in with the heavy, shovel sticking, clay that caps them off.
So after Mike and I had been to this torture chamber a half dozen times and paying homage to the Gods of Clay and Rock, and then coming home each time with nothing more than blisters on last weeks blisters, we finally found a couple of pits in a fresh vertical excavation. Mike lives pretty close so he's been there even more than I have. On Friday he pulled a cobalt squatty soda from a black ashy wall of dirt. It is pretty, and whittled, and UN-EMBOSSED !!! What a crime !!! Mike got to the site about 45
minutes before I did and when I pulled in he had something new to show me. He whipped out
an IP "David Baker" aqua squatty. I nor he had ever heard of this bottle. We had
BOTH heard of the name before though, as it is the same name that is on one of the big,
IP, sided cobalt rootbeers, of which there are at least 5 different varieties from
Cincinnati. Then he showed me where the black spot was in the wall. We started scratching through the layers and soon a bottle gave out a squeak. Mike cornered it and moved some of the dirt from around it. It was blue. It was upside down, had an iron pontil, had a tapered top, and looked in good shape, at least from the viewable side. He surgically wiggled it free and whipped it up and around. "C.B. Owen / Cincinnati. O."
The pit was a woody and had collapsed a long time ago and the walls were just one foot apart. We into the wall to the far side of the pit and continued downward. About a foot down from the cobalt soda a yellow ware potty rim was taking shape. We got the side exposed and saw the cool wiggly mocha-worm decoration. It took ten minutes to extract it from the side of the pit. It was trapped in with rocks and bricks and broken salt glaze, all resting right against it. When it was pulled out a small hole in the back dampened the gig a little but the single missing piece was found and will be glued into place ala-tacky glue. We took this pit down to the ground level where it filled with water and sent us for our bailers. We bailed and then dug, back and forth, for another half an hour and got the pit down four feet below grade and had to let her go. It was a foot wide and the wall above us was getting ready to come down. We stuck the four footer in to the handle and felt glass all the way down. I marked the co-ords on my GPS so maybe Mr. track hoe will return for a drain tile or something. I walked over to another black spot and stuck in a scratcher and pulled a hutch down with the first swipe. It was a fairly common local " Cincinnati Soda and Mineral Water Works". It has the 6 pointed star of David symbol on it. On the third swipe a squat sody came tumbling down the wall and into my hand. It was a smooth base "Crown bottling works / H.C. Rinninsland". Mike had seen enough and came over to join in the scratching. Right away he found a smooth base "B. Bick & Co.", and then an "L&H Rinninsland." We scratched till we found the back wall and got a couple of puffs and a crude "X. Bazin."
We were gooied up with mud pretty bad and tuckered so we walked around a bit and found a few marbles and a pipe and called it a day. We will be revisiting this site often in the coming days. There is so much potential at this site it's Scaaaaaaary !!! Happy Halloween Bottle Freaks !!!
November 1st It was the
day after Halloween, Scared that is,
of putting in any more time at the stingy construction site. This site yields great stuff,
but not in any abundance so far. We got there early while the fog of All Hallows Eve still
lingered. Mike had been here a couple nights before, alone, in the dark, in the rain, and had found three pits. We re-probed these pits and found that all three were within 3 feet of the bottom. Hey this might be easy. No fill, no cap, just a layer of bottles waiting to be picked up. We cracked them open one at a time and found the first two, one a stony and one a woody, were too new. Mostly all broken and the only things worth keeping being a couple of common local hutches, a Union, and an Engel.
We decided to go
over to a caved in stony where we had found the "David Baker" root beer and the
cobalt "C.B. Owen" root beer. We had to work our long shovels by the last 4
inches of handle in order to chop around in the muddy water and slop. Again the shards
were torturing us. Mike flung out the top of a sided stone ware rootbeer with cobalt
debossing that said, "Tobys Knickerbocker Rootbeer". Ouch, that one really hurt
!!! As I was digging into the muck under 2 feet of water a bottle quickly floated up to
the top, base up, spun around to reveal a tapered lip, gurgled, and sank. I went in after
it with the shovel and got it on the first try. I pulled the shovel out and held it over
to Mike. Mike grabbed it and gave it a wipe. It was a round aqua iron pontil squat soda
that had a big PDF on it, and under that, Cincinnati. SWEEET!!!! In the muck pile
from this hole I saw a shiny thing. I grabbed it up and saw it was a "Good for 5
cent" square token from a local place called, We were at the end of our handles and could not dig the pit any deeper, although deeper it did indeed go. The 7 foot probe wend down to reveal a bottom at just about 6 1/2 feet more. That meant there was at least 4 feet of pit left undug, and the probe was hitting some pretty solid glass. This pit has shown a fab-tastic pre-disposition for containing some killer rootbeers so we sat around looking stupidly into the dark water, swirling around a small flotilla of seeds. We mentally Macgyvered back and forth about designing something that would allow us a longer reach, something with drain holes, ...something that we didn't have. This thing is just simply undiggable by any normal means due to the limit of access and caved in upper walls. Well, you could dig it if you climbed into the dang thing but not me!, or Mike!, with 10 tons of earth and stone hovering just overhead. A few sighs later
we packed up and boogied.
November 9th This weekend Mike and I once again met at the big construction site. I arrived about 20 minutes before Mike and I walked around with my "Razorback" (tm) scratcher poised for action. I scratched here and there, and turned up a partially excavated privy pit. When Mike arrived, I showed him where it was and we started flingin' dirt. It was a stone walled pit about 3 by 4 feet. There was one shallow layer near the bottom with tons of broken yellow ware and rockingham in it, and nothing else. We poked around and re-investigated the site. After a few minutes we wound up back over at the "slot in the wall" pit that had already yielded an Un-embossed ip cobalt soda, an Ip aqua "David Baker" root beer, an Ip cobalt "C.B. Owen" root beer, and an Ip aqua "PDF" Carbonated Water. It had been a good hole !!! Too good to quit thinking about. Trouble was, as I stated on previous updates, this pit was un-accessible by any ordinary methods. Lets just take a look at the pit right now, shall we.
So we dug out our access/escape hole and once again started flinging wet sloppy goo out of the pit. Within an hour we had removed about 2 more feet of the slop and we were back into undisturbed use layer with a few shards here and there.
Mike announced that by feel of the shovel through a foot of muck that he had a bottle. He gave instructions to drag him out by the feet if the wall should start to go, then crawled into the hole and stuck his arm into the muck up to his armpit and pulled out a black glass ale bottle. We continued to remove goo and feel for bottles with the tip of the shovel. I felt the slippery slide of some glass and started working my shovel around it. Suddenly it was in my shovel and I pulled it out and handed it off to Mike. He did the big wipe and said it was PDF squatty. KEWL !!! Half an hour later and another 2 feet deeper we were straining the limits of our access trench and were again working the shovel by the last 6 inches of handle. I felt another bottle in the very back but it was all I could do to hold the shovel out that far, much less actually dig. Mike got his flashlight and turned it into the hole to see what we could see. Just as his beam converged onto the spot where the bottle was trying to hide a minor cave in dumped a fresh pile of rocks and clay right over it. Ten minutes later I had the fresh fall-in cleared and started scraping around, trying to feel for the bottle. Finally I raked it off the wall into my shovel and pulled it out. Mike said, "you aint gonna believe this, it's another PDF but this one is the Mexican off with his head variant". This one also says "Ferguson's Carbonated Water". The PDF is for Peter D. Ferguson. We backed off from the pit and smoked while we played with the bottle. I sacrificed half a can of Mountain Dew over it to clean off the muck so we could see it better. It was noticeably older with less pronounced shoulders and a very tapered top.
Here is one of three of the Green iron pontil PDF Carbonated Waters.
Three nice bottles from a cranky old pit.
Here shown with the superimposed letters highlighted
Yes it's off to the tumbler for these here boys. Well, there is still about 3 more feet of layer in that pit. If we decide to attempt to dig it some more, we will have to double the size and depth of our access / escape hole so we can get deeper into the pit without climbing under that mysteriously supported 10-tons-of-rock wall. I can't wait to see what we do next !!! Seeya soon.
November 16th Back at the construction site, we returned and found the MOTHER LOAD !!! It was unreal folks. I am still waiting to wake up and start crying !!! 9 more cobalt sided root beers, two black glass rootbeers, a black glass phoenix bitters, a cobalt 1/2 gallon Harrisons colombian ink, a yellow starburst flask, an amber western spice pepper sauce, an 1804 silver dollar, a Dodge Viper, a Big Dog Chopper, a Mastercraft boat, Brooke Burke, ........yaaaaaawn.... blink blink... huh...AH HELL.
Back at the construction site, Mike returned for a look and found that a monster track hoe had filled our little pit-o-danger up with huge chunks of limestone encapsulated in great gobs of gray river clay. There was no Mother. There was no load.
As time spent away from back yards, and in construction site's, slowly
creeps into Bottle Vikings subconscious, his attitude undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis.
His kind smile of back yard diplomacy is transfigured into the grizzled scowl of the
construction site's paylake grabology. Ears once tuned for quiet questions from above
become hardened against the constant din of the too near highway roar. (OH PLEASE NOOOOOOOO !!!) (((WHAT ???))) (RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !!!!) Bottle Buzzard is always circling and watching. Mwa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha !!!
November 23rd After circling for a week, Bottle Buzzard suddenly dives down into
the construction site and November 23rd It was such a nice day, I decided to cruise down to the
construction site on my motorcycle. There were lots of shards in this muck, and before too long I found
a bottle. It was black with "Ahhh, just another lung balsam". Then I found another,
and another. Then I found a small Mike showed up and we started probing. There was many feet of earth removed by the equipment while grading, so we were looking for the bottom few feet of a pit. We found one very near the black pile of goo and located the stone walls and started flinging dirt. This pit was showing some good age with lots of broken yellow ware and Rockingham and a few wax sealer mouth frogs. I cornered a bottle and lifted it out to reveal a "J. Walker" blob beer from Cincy. Then mike said hey this is green and he handed me the bottom corner of a "Wishart's" pine tree cordial. Ouchee !!!
The pit finished up with no additional finds. We probed around some more and worked our way back over to the collapsed stone lined pit where we had found the 2 cobalt, David baker, and the four PDF sodas. Mr. Trackhoe had filled it all up, but we were going to attempt to re-dig it anyway. Mike started moving away some of the clay from in front of it and got his spud bar under the corner of the big rock that was wedged in it. He wiggled the spud bar but the rock did not move. We moved some more clay away from the rock and started getting an idea of how big it really was. It just kept on going. This thing was just too huge. It must have weighed about 800 pounds. It was 16 inches thick, five feet long, and 2 feet wide. I bet the hoe operator was really chuckling when he was dumping it in there. We were foiled. There was a guy who stopped to get some rocks to make a wall out of and we chatted with him awhile. He showed us a bottle he found and asked us what it was worth. It was a common shaped slick, so we told him little or nothing. He was kinda disappointed. We walked back over to the black pile of goo and scratched a bit more. I showed Mike the Allan's bottles and he was as un-impressed as I was. Mike said he was going to give one to the guy loading the rocks so he could have something with some embossing on it. He walked over and started talking to the guy again. I watched from a distance as Mike held out the bottle to him, then SNATCHED it back away and ran back over to me with it in his hand. Turns out I should have wiped a little more of the bottle clean. It was an "Allan's Antifat Botanic Med. Co. from Buffalo. We had never heard of it before. We checked and the other 3 were the same. Cool !!!
I gave Mike 2 of the antifats and he gave me the J. Walker. Total for the day; 4 Allan's antifat botanic Med Co. We are keeping an eye on the construction site and may be back there this weekend. If nothing new looks like it has been turned over there, we are going to go into the woods to look for an 1820 ghost town. Happy Thanksgiving !!!
Sunday November 30th We decided to check out the old 1820 place in the woods. About 10 years ago, the big house had been torn down. We were looking for the foundation for this house and ultimately, the privy pits. This house was HUGE. Locals had many names for it. "The Mansion", Feather Mansion", "Twenty Gables", "The Tower House", and other descriptive nick names. The present owner had it torn down as it had become a liability issue when it became impossible to keep people from breaking in to sight-see, loot, and pillage. The house was built in 1900 so we knew it wouldn't have anything very old, but due to the grandeur of the place, we felt it might have some high end stuff concealed in it's back yard. We arrived and, per instruction, parked just off the old driveway that now serviced a newer residence back in farther. I was also informed not to walk back into the woods too far, as said residence, belonging to the property care-taker, supported two dogs that might be biters, an Akita and a Pit Bull. I agreed to those terms without hesitation. We found the old stone walled basement for the house right away. Behind it in the woods was an outhouse building, tipped over onto it's side. I walked over and saw that the walls for this pit were made of concrete block. We probed around it in every direction for about 20 minutes, then branched out to read the land and probe some more. After another 20 minutes we had found a covered stone lined well with water about 10 feet down, and a lathed brick cistern with a dry bottom about 8 feet down. No other pits. About this time a car came down the driveway and rolled past us, then turned around, and came back. Per instructions, (in the case that I met him), I explained to the care-taker (John) that we had permission to be there and what we were doing. He hopped out of his car and gave us a small tour of the yard, showing us where things were, and so forth and so on. He knew much about the place, including the fact that the big mansion was built over top of a place from 1820. Ouch. Now we felt like our skills had abandoned us as there should be several pits in the back yard. John told us of a dilapidated hunting lodge from the early years of the mansion, about 2 miles back in the woods. I thought that a 1900 hunting lodge might have some cool secrets to hide, so when he asked us if we wanted to go see it, we said "heck yea". We went into Johns barn, carefully inching our way past the foaming mouths of the afor mentioned beasts, the chain restraining them as taught as a geetar string. Inside the barn he showed us his restored 1969, 2 wheel drive Rokon motorcycle, and his restored 1948 willies Jeep. Then we piled into the old jeep and cruised out of the barn and into the woods. I thought the
property was pretty big but I didn't think it was THAT big. John said it was 1200 acres,
with the majority of frontage directly attached to Miami Whitewater Forest. We emerged
from the woods into a large mowed field where a shooting range was kept. After that we
crested a rise and went down toward a nice 20 acre lake with a big dock. Then back into
the woods where the scrub brush and saplings soon gave way to an older, more open woods
with a high canopy. We stopped at a foundation with a standing stone fireplace that was
the old lodge. We hopped out and poked around a bit but could not locate a pit. John returned us to our vehicles and we gabbed awhile. We decided that Mike would drop down into the dry cistern to see what he could see. He climbed down my bucket rope and when he landed on the leafy surface he looked back up at me and said, "Bottom". It was just some blown in leaves that gave the illusion that there was some dirt in it. He crawled back out and we gave the place one last, lonely, forlorn look...and peeled out. Below, the cistern. Below, Mike in the cistern.
This update
brought to you by;
This concludes my 2003 dig journal. |
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and went downtown to my newest permission, an
1860 place. This one is owned by an old friend of mine from school. Me and him used to set
in a line with other idiots blowing raspberries into the mouthpiece of a trumpet in the
school band. This was Jr. High, and we both mutually respected one another greatly for
being *big quitters* before we got into high school. Lol.
