|
|
|
Pictures are shrank for load times. Click a pic to view in full size. This page includes all 2004 digs.
The Big Pick Wasn't Really very big this time. It had been a year since we picked, but it had been a slow one. We struck out a number of times also, chasing after those elusive country pits at those settler era houses. We had a few good finds. I had my eye on an open pontil SUPER bubbly "Ward's Liniment". Ward was from Harrison, Ohio and began his operation there. We also had a neat ceramic pipe in the shape of a birds claw, intact from stem to bowl. Mike and I had dug a few keepers at a construction site. Rod was out of town on those weekends, so that narrowed the pick down.
In the above picture
is a nearly 3 inch archaic corner notch bevel blade, an OP J.J. Butlers
ink, and a cherry bitters sample bottle.
Above are three ip PDF/Cincinnati (Peter D. Ferguson's / Carbonated Water) 1855. One PDF / A MEXICAN OFF WITH HIS HEAD / An ip Cobalt C.B. Owen Co., A smooth base B. Bick,
Mike spun the privy-found game piece and landed on a 4. I went next and rolled up a 2. Rod took a spin and tied me with another 2. I was first in the "spin off" and got a 4. Rod spun up yet another deuce. Mike chose the bottle I wanted, the Ward's. So I took the pipe I knew he wanted. Maybe he thought that pipe would be there for his 2nd choice. No Sir. At the end of the pick we had us a small round-robbin and the pipe and the Ward's were layed on the blanket. I got the Ward's, Mike got the pipe. As usual, Rod chose things I might not have even taken after everyone said they were done, proving that we all march to a little different beat. He DID snag some good ones though. His first pick.....was lost. It was a long round rock that may have been a Mississippian roller pestle. I couldn't give it the authenticity it may have deserved because of where it was found, so I wasn't too much concerned with it. after all, early white settlers did and made some goofy stuff. Mike thought it deserved a place in the pick so it was sat aside at the dig. Rod thinks he put it in a bucket, after that ??? Maybe it'll be in the pick pile next year Rod. If not, you can have first pick. (He'll probably just pick a rock again anyways. Lol) Mike and I made two piles out of our soda's from the construction site. I wound up with the early PDF / Mexican, and another PDF, and Mike got two PDF's, the cobalt Owen, and some smoothies. We gave three great presentations in 2003. This was a highlight for me, even with the lack of our schedules gibing and not digging as much as we would have liked to. We had another write-up in a local paper, and plan on toting a copy of that very issue along with us when we visit that nearby town on a permission rally. It is with utmost appreciation and respect that I cordially thank all of the homeowners for allowing us to flex our passion in your back yards. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Eddie Brater lll
January 11th 2004. Right after we did our pick, we decided to make a run down to the construction site. We did the pick at Mike's house, so we were already close. The workers had black insulated plastic on the ground in front of the pit we had been working. This is the same pit that all the good old soda's had come out of. It's also the same pit that the workers tried to clog up with an 800 pound slab of limestone. This time, we decided to try to dig under the big rock. After an hour or so of digging outside the pit and removing many of the wall rocks, we finally got to undisturbed layer. It was a fishing game again, as none of us would dare to climb in under the big rock that appeared to be supported by magic. We took turns working the long shovel by the last few inches of handle wood. Mike said he "felt" a bottle. He manipulated it by feel alone through the 2 feet of gooey glop and finally pulled it out on the shovel. I took it off the shovel and gave it the big wipe. It was a PDF / Cincinnati iron pontil carbonated water. We fished for another hour and felt nothing else. There was more depth to the pit but no way for us to reach any deeper. Drats, Foiyulled agayne.
Stay tuned for more Bank scrapin',
February 1st 2004 Well then. We have about 6 inches of snow on the ground. Been there for 2 weeks. It got down to -15 the other night. I have a couple of permissions waiting. It's not the cold that keeps us from digging, but the fact that my permissions are in nice back yards and I don't want to leave an ugly mess for the folks. A dirt patch in the middle of all that white is ugly. Sweeping the snow back over works OK, but as soon as it melts it's ugly again. So...we will wait patiently. I have been keeping myself busy. Work this winter has been good. I haven't had the break I usually enjoy this time of year as a painting contractor, but then again, the pile of bills are smaller than most Feb's. Besides my real job, the inside time has allowed for some bottle tumbling. I have four of partner Mike's to clean, and ten or so of my own. I have also had some time to go to the local library and research the local stuff. I have been through most of the 1870 newspapers. I took pictures of some of the local adds and have them posted on my 'Harrison" page. We also have a presentation for the Harrison Village Historical Society coming up on March 2nd, 2004. @ 7 PM @ the community center. I have been working on privydigger.com. For quite a while now I have been wanting to add a metal detecting page where I can share my finds, knowledge, (ha) and theories. Of course detecting is out for a spell too while the ground is the wrong color. In the meantime I will be adding some pictures of the more notable and interesting finds. Over the years I have sold around 500 dollars worth of found coins and tokens, as I promised myself when I got my detector that I would make the money back WITH the detector. I still have MASS cool stuff left though !!! I put together an information page about GPS. It is one of my most favorite toys/tools. I had no idea it could do so much. If you don't yet use one, your really missing something. Although they are amazing, they will become even more amazing. One day there will be handheld, full color, real time, terra-server type receivers with digitally enhanced 3D images. You will be able to see pictures of the earth with gps mapping overlayment. That's in about 10 to 20 years, and I will still be digging. By that time GPR will be way improved and way cheaper. How about GPS and GPR right on your laptop ? Who knows. So anyways, thanks for checking in and check back soon for those metal detecting additions and more of 3 crazy buds digging old poopers.
Feb. 12th Today after work, Mike called and told me they were shovin' dirt and told me to high tail it down to the construction site. I got there about 5:00 pm and we walked up a freshly graded incline to a black spot. This spot probed like a woody and was only about 3 feet deep. The top had been cut off, leaving only the bottle layer. That was OK with me. An hour later we were done and had it filled and was looking at the booty. Said booty was slim, but not too bad for a spur of the moment dig. We got 3 Davis Vegetable pain killers, an R.E. Sellers druggist / Pittsburg, and an open pontil Geo. Dixon / Cincinnati. After I got home and washed out the dixon, it was squirting juice from a teensy hole in the corner. POOP. Meanwhile, they are preparing to start phase 2 of the construction, and a whole new area full of pits awaits the dedicated digger. ME !!!
February, Friday the 13th !!! After work, Mike and I decided to go back to the construction site to do some probing, and to check out a suspicious area we had found yesterday. For whatever reason, the workers were lingering around later than usual, and we had to hide in the weeds untill they left at around 5:30. That didn't give us much time before dark. We got out and probed untill just before dark with no success. Below shows the pit we dug yesterday.
Mike suggested we walk down to the far end of the site and take a look at the "slot-in-the-wall pit" that we got all the killer sodas out of. When we got down there, we found a concrete wall had been built over top of it. On the way back to the trucks, we walked by a freshly placed drain tile, setting in a 10 by 10 hole, maybe 7 foot deep. We both saw it at the same time, a 4 foot wide streak of black dirt and glass shards on one of the walls. Mike hopped down into it and started scratching, while I went back to the truck for a shovel and a bucket. When I climbed back up onto the the level grade, my mind caught up in the excitement, without realizing it, I walked right in front of a truck that had just pulled in. One of the construction workers had returned and I thought I was CAUGHT !!! I thought about telling him, should he ask, that I was looking for marbles. A pretty lame excuse, especially since I was carrying a shovel ??? I didn't want to give up Mike's location down in the drain tile hole so I walked by it without looking in and whispered loudly, "Stayput wegotcompany". I walked to the far end and over the side of the hill, snuck back up and peered over the top. The guy was walking in the other direction looking at the concrete wall. He saw me again and was completely unconcerned with my presence. There is no fence around this site, and lots of people come and go, collecting rocks, firewood, etc... It is an open site, and we always fill our holes, so it's no big deal. 10 minutes later he left and I walked back over to the drain tile hole and....Mike was gone. "Mike", I said. From the empty hole came, "what". He had wedged himself in between the tile footer and the closest wall of dirt. We found a cluster of squaties at the bottom of the pit. As coincidence would have it, the pit went no further down than the hole they had dug. We went right into the bottom first. The pit was a round stone liner. Most of the bottles were within a foot of the bottom. Above the bottles was 6 feet of rocks and clay. We were glad we didn't have to dig this one from the top down. The bottles recovered were all smooth base soda's.
We finished up the pit and packed up our gear. There are so many rocks on this hillside, it seems that's what people used for filling the pits when the time came to fill them. That's why probing from the top is so hard. It all probes the same, with vision blurring rockiness. The most important thing for success at construction sites is to check as often as possible. Daily is best. Things move pretty fast and what is on the ground today will be gone or crushed tomorrow. Ladies and Dudes, I can't WAIT for another season of digging privy pits !!! What a RUSH it is to climb into the time capsule, and the pontil pits almost stop my heart !!! FCE
Feb. 29th Leap Day. Today we were ready for spring !!! I had fresh permissions at three places. An 1870 and an 1865 timber frame, and an 1830 brick. We started with the brick. Only the rear 4th of the lot was diggable, as there was extensive landscaping on the front 3/4ths. I was pretty sure that we would find something in the back along the alley. We probed a solid 2 foot grid and came up with nothing. We moved on to the 1870 frame house. This place had a large early carriage house in the back. It was on an early concrete foundation, meaning it was built near the turn of the century, and may be over the early pits. We ran another tight grid, and again, came up empty. Probing in Harrison is easy, as the original ancient gravel river bed is always reachable with the probe. In this yard it was 3 feet deep. Anyplace the probe went in more than 3 feet without hitting the stiff gravel meant further investigation was needed. We hit just a couple places, but privies were ruled out in short order as there was a total lack of layering, debris, or walls. We moped :( Down to my last permission, I had to call to make sure this one was available for immediate excavation. It was not. There was a gathering going on at this location, meaning we would have to wait until another day to dig it. Such is the frustration of the urban privy digger. We walked down the alley with our probes. Every depression caught our eye. Every yard invited and enticed. After walking a few blocks we came upon the house my cousin is renting. A nice 1865, right on Broadway. He has been meaning to ask permission for us, but had not got around to it. He is my kin so I will call him a BIG SLACKER !!! He said it would be OK to probe to see if there was anything worth asking permission for. The rear 3rd of the lot was under the big "C". We probed everything else and short of a septic tank, came up with nothing but river bed. We gabbed and smoked and drank coffee. We decided to go get some dirt and fill a couple of sinkers from this past Fall. After filling 10 five gallon buckets with top soil, we topped off two pits and seeded and strawed them in. We made our plans for meeting for our presentation for the Harrison Village Historical Society this Tuesday March 2nd. Talking to folks about privy digging and sharing our finds is always exciting, and after making 6 presentations so far, we are really looking forward to talking to our own hometown folks. Next weekend we will be in Saylor Park on the Ohio River at a nice 1865. Saylor Park is just upstream from Judge Symmes original settlement, and was known to be the residence of many very early influential people and families. Their pits await us.
March 7th 2004. We met in Saylor Park. Saylor park was named after the first mayor, as it was annexed into Cincinnati in 1879. Before that it was known as Home City. It's location is on the bank of the Ohio River, about 9 miles downstream of Cincinnati. The main street used to be named Independence Street. The scenic views and wide vistas, along with the proximity to the big city, led many aristocratic families to build fine homes there. We were in the city proper, about 2 by 4 blocks in size. One of my permissions was a corner lot with a very long 2 story saltbox, and the other was next to it. The backyards of both were mostly open, with the exception of a small pool and a small shed. We started probing along
the side of the property. Rod broke out his dowsing rods, (Sir Dowsing Rod, Duke of
Lawnchairshire) and began the Voodoo. He chanted, An hour later, we had one single maybe. (Rod had many) We threw down a tarp and removed a 2 by 2 patch of sod. Three feet deep we hit an ashy layer with some 1890's glass in it, and at 4 feet it ended. Nottapit. Fillerin. On the corner lot, we came up with zero maybe's. We ran a tight grid and found nothing even remotely worth a tester. I heard Rod say "food" from over my shoulder and a minute later he was gone. After putting away our probes, Mike and I went up the road to "M" and pulled in as Rod was pulling out and heading towards home. He was done. Mike said he was going to check out a couple of construction sites and I had to go and do a small touch up on a paintjob and pick up payment. This makes 4 intown lots in a row that our probes have missed their mark. The folly of it stings me to my sinew. We will meet again soon
Mr. Saylor Park, Next weekend !!!
March 13th Today we were going probing behind a nice 1865 at the corner of Broadway and Vine Streets.
Because of it's location, we new the lot may be older than what the county auditors website said it was. When we get downtown like this, almost all the lots have a woody full-o pontils. I arrived about 1/2 hour early and started probing. After about ten minutes I located a wood lined pit right next to the shed. Mike showed up and we used his 7 foot probe to reveal a bottom at about 6 and 1/2 feet. There were a couple of crunchy layers maybe halfway down, and then what felt like a very thin layer at the bottom. We flung out some tarps and started moving dirt.
At just 2 feet deep we hit redware pieces and some ironstone. This was a thin layer with some seeds and a few frags. There was some more fill under this, and at 4 feet another thin layer. This layer held a broken amber cordial, a few broken lamp chimneys, and some window pane. At 6 feet the fill turned into a gravely mix. At 6 1/2 feet a solid gravel bottom. Looking closely, we saw there was actually a super thin layer of seeds, about an inch thick, right on the bottom, mixed in with the gravel. The only shards coming out of this layer was some super thin window pane. It was so sterile and empty and rocky stiff that I was just digging through it gingerly with the short shovel. Suddenly the sound of crunching glass was heard and the bottom half of a pontiled bottle flipped up into view. It was the base of another one of Harrisons first bottles, a "Ward's Botanical Linament". I grabbed it up to look at the break. It was as sick as the rest of it. Shewwweeee !! Not me !!!!!
That slowed me down a bunch. It was a pain to slowly scratch through the rocky layer. I did the whole bottom, and nothing else came out but a few pieces of window pane. As I sat looking at the wall in front of me, I noticed a panel of glass, about 2 feet down from the top. I pulled it out to find an iron pontiled ten sided soda, "W. Wilke Mineral Water / Cin, O." Sadly, it was topless. We decided to scratch at the upper 2 layers, as we were still about a foot in from 2 of the walls. Mike hopped in and started scratching and hacking. Suddenly he stopped and held up his scratcher. There was an open pontil square ink impaled and held tight by one of the tines. Because it had no embossing, it was damage free and in perfect shape.
We dug at the sides till we hit the walls. A couple of slender op puffs rolled out and then it was over. We fillederin and threw down some of Scott's finest and some hay. Mike and I started a test hole on a soft spot and Sir rodney, having forgotten his lawnchair, decided to go next door to the big Presbyterian Church rummage sale to see if they had one. He came back telling us how close he came to buying a nice old leather recliner for 10 bucks, just to use for the dig. He decided to head back to the castle of lawnchairshire, where the above ground moat is a lovely emerald green and filled with fancy goldfish, exotic turtles, and many flavors of interesting algae. We finished the test hole with negative results and started probing again. In the center of the yard was a small raised area. It was like a depression, only backwards. I walked over to it and stabbed it square in the face. I almost fell on my own face. Mike was there in an instant to poke in Mr. Long Probe. Mr. Long Probe sang his sweet song of snap, crackle and pop. We probed up solid walls and marked out a nice 4 by 5 pit. We decided to dig a tester into one of the corners to make sure the pit walls were stone, and not concrete. At a foot down we found a nice stone corner. We stuck the 7 foot probe into the 1 foot hole and at 8 feet still could not feel the bottom. It was 4:30 and we knew this one would go well into the night so we decided to bail out and wait for next weekend. Since we were finding op stuff in the top 2 feet of the pit beside it, we are excited that this pit will begin where the first left off. Thank You to my 6th
grade Teacher for allowing us to dig. Next weekend, we rake in the hoard !!! Eddie Brater lll
March 21st 2004
Today we returned to dig the stone liner we probed up last weekend. I got there first and probed the walls. I wanted to get the tarps and the sod right on the mark to make for a clean dig. Rod and Mike showed up and we were tossing dirt. This was a pretty big pit at 5 by 5 feet. We all three had room to work down to a couple of feet, then 2 at a time till we got down to 4 feet deep. It was easy sailing. No bricks or rocks, and just little roots.
At about 5 feet we found some crown top beers and a few small slicks. We halved the pit down another few feet, looking for some age.
Rod was sifting the use and found a few toothbrushes and a few reed
pipes.
Rod hauls and dumps.
At 7 feet I found a broken cobalt target ball with a star embossed on it.
A local hutch popped out. Kunz and Ritzmann / Lawrenceburg IN.
Somebody threw out a Wicherts food bottle.
We took the pit down to 5 feet and then halved it 5 more to the bottom. At ten feet deep we hit the gravel bottom and found 90's slicks, both meds and 1/2 pint clear flasks. Where was our age ??? The walls had some older sick aqua shards and pieces of feather edge and goudy dutch. This pit had been dipped. We still had a 4th of the dirt to remove and were salty about the puny age on the bottom. Then right in the middle I hit a patch of older stuff and pulled out a small Lyons powder bottle and a ribbed pepper sauce. Then a six sided bottle with lots of embossing rolled out of the fluff. I thought it was a Wistars but it turned out to be an open pontil "Rowand's / Tonic / Mixture / or Vegetable / Febrifuge / Philida". Neat !!!
Now we HAD to take out the rest of the dirt. Mike pulled out the shards of a Congress Mineral Water. He undercut our ledge and got most of the bottom cleared before it slid. He fluffed through the slide and we pulled another 20 buckets and that's all she wrote. We got some Lydia Pinkums and some Ayers Cherrys and this and that. It was Spring and we were rakin' through glass and takin' home some bottles so life is good. The smell of dirt, the sore muscles, the tinkle of glass through my scratcher. Oh Yea !!! Rod had a brand spanking new lawn chair. It was one of those fancy new sling type, pop up jobs. He was very proud of it and smiled grandly while unveiling it. He set the front 2 legs about 3 inches from the edge of the hole and occasionally kicked dirt into the pit and down my shirt. Ahhh...Just like old times.
May 8th. 2004 My permission today was a home owned by the friendly neighborhood undertaker, who is also a relation of mine. He is also the owner by default of a local legend and piece of rare and obscure history. This item is "The Wamsley Mad Stone". It is thought to have been taken as a piece from the more well known "Burlington" (Kentucky) Mad Stone. A mad stone is a small quartz rock believed to have magic healing powers. These stones were sometimes given to early white settlers by Indian Medicine Men. The purpose of them was to cure mad dog and snake bites. The procedure was to boil the stone in milk, then place it onto the afflicted person at the site of the bite. The stone would then "cling" to the person and would not fall off until it cooled. The process was repeated a few times and the cure was done. The Wamsley Mad Stone was never known to fail, and people would travel great distances in order to be cured by it. Unfortunately for us (and more so for the grieving family) there was a funeral today. We agreed with the Undertaker that a large hole being dug in the funeral home yard might not present itself too appropriately to the crowd of mourners. Indiana Lawn Chair had a permission on the Indiana Lawn Chair side of town, so we decided to meet there. Rod was running late so Mike and I decided to start probing. We checked out the back property line and also the hidden side of the back yard where it bordered the railroad tracks. We hit glass in one spot just 2 feet down and did a test hole and found 1970 in a big way. There was nothing under it so we fillderin. "Mike the thorough" wanted to run a grid. "Eddie the spastic" wanted to keep running around the yard stabbing and jabbing at sink holes and places with funny looking grass. Just as I was getting ready to cave in and conform to a more systematic approach, I fell on my knuckles. Mike, having already responded about 40 times with the long probe to "hey check this spot out", came trudging over and popped through glass and more glass at 6 feet. This pit was in an odd location, and would have been missed by our grid. SPAZZES UNITE !!! The sod was nice in this spot so we marked the woodies walls and cut it precisely. We moved it onto a tarp and then completely surrounded the pit with more tarps. We removed about a foot of dirt and from over my shoulder came, "Just WHAT do you think youra DOIN" ??? "Oh we're digging up the old privy pit", I said. "Well the owner IS NOT gonna be happy about THAT", he said. "Well the owner MIGHT be happy about it because he just told us we could do it", I retorted. The tenants irateness was replaced by a frowning indifference and he stomped back into the house. Shewwweee. He came back out later and was all calmed down and showed a bit of interest. He was the care taker and grass mower and he was looking out for the property. That's cool. He just didn't know. And we knew we had to do an expert restore-o so he would have no gripe when it was done.
There was little change in the fill down to about 5 feet, then a foot of ash and then all glass. Mike handed up two cobalt squat soda tops and then found the bases. They were both "I. Suttohn / Cincinnati". He then found an intact B. Bick and two Best and Lothes Mineral waters, aqua smooth base squatties. He also found a neat doll head in perfect shape. It has blonde hair and a hair net. Before switching mojo, he handed up a yellow ware fruit jar On my turn I found a yellow ware chamber pot and a red ware bowl. I also found an Osgoods India Chalaguea. There were 5 tops of broken cobalt target balls and three Union wax sealer tops in a bright green.
We filled in the hole and packed it well, and replaced the sod. It Looked great and was ready for mowing. Mike located another pit behind the one we dug. It is very subtle and we felt no glass, but sometimes them are the good ones. Next weekend we may just tear into it. The weekend of the 22nd we have a big invite to go check out an early Ohio River tavern and hotel. ROAD TRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP !!!
May 22nd and 23rd, 2004 I got to talking with a feller Named Stan who was mighty interested in digging some privy pit's down in his neck of the woods. His woods were in the Hoosier Hills, centered around Troy, Indiana.
We chatted back and forth by e-mail and he had some extraordinary permissions. Now usually, I don't travel much to dig. Cincinnati has just about all the stuff dreams are made of. But some of Stans permissions, especially one, was enough to entice me downstream. The Nester House Riverplace (The Old Nester House) is located on Water Street, the only street that fronts the Ohio River in Troy, IN. Completed by John G. Heinzle in 1863, the old native sandstone block building was first used as a grocery store with residence on the second floor. After Heinzle's death in 1871, his widow, Elizabeth, married Jacob Nester who expanded services at the hotel by adding length to the original 32' x 36' structure making it 32' x 68' on the ground floor and 32' x 58' on the second and third levels. The old section's first floor was then a hotel lobby, bar, merchant showroom and elegant dining room. The extension served as kitchen, storage and servants' area. The second floor had eight instead of five rooms, at least two of which the Nesters used as living quarters. The attic provided sleeping space for single men, mainly local miners. Riverplace has had several owners and several names. The owners were John G. Heinzle (1860), Elizabeth Heinzle (1871), Jacob Nester (1879), Issac Dunn (1895), Peter Backer (1900), Francis Dunn (1902), Joseph Schwartz (1911), Joseph and Margaret Leingang (1913), Francis Xavier Bumm (1920), John I. Bumm (1954), Joseph W. Leingang (1959) William Cole (1967), and now James and Joyce Efinger (September 1988). The hotel has been known as: The Heinzel Family Grocery, Heinzle Hotel, Bauer Hotel (when rented to John Bauer by his sister, Elizabeth Heinzle), Union Hotel, Old and New Union Hotel, Nester House, Riverfront Hotel, and now Riverplace. It is the intention of the Efingers to preserve both the building and its history. A roofed lattice pavilion on the east lawn provided a place for outdoor dancing during its grandest times. The existing brick wash house replaced the train platform at the northeast edge of the lot sometime during that period. It is said that the basement, long since filled in, was a link in the Underground Railroad System having a tunnel through which slaves could escape southern masters. A section of that tunnel was uncovered in 1991. The 21" thick walls and the mortise and tendon jointed poplar studs are as secure today as when Riverplace was completed in 1863. The building was in near ruins when purchased by James Efinger. He and his wife have done a remarkable job in bringing it back to life. They give tours to school children and anyone else who is interested. Jim has the first floor level filled with pictures and artifacts from the buildings past, and upstairs where he and his wife live, his wife has artfully decorated in a fashion that truly charms the senses. Below is a picture of The Nester House and the owner, Jim Efinger.
Below, me and Jim.
Below, me, Rod, and Stan.
Yea, nuff said. You can see why I wanted to dig here. Lots of history. So we met Stan here. He had provided me with the coordinates for my GPS and finding it was simple-pie. Stan is a pleasant and very nice guy. He is soft spoken and has a gentleness about him that didn't get in the way of him getting dirty and right into the work at hand. He has been a metal detectorist and bottle digger for some time, but had never experienced the thrill of privy digging, or of finding the old pontilled stuff. Stan introduced us to the owner, Jim, and Jim gave us the grand tour. Jim is also a super nice fellow. Maybe it's the easy and relaxed atmosphere that makes the folks here so pleasant. It must have started rubbing off, as even Rod was more well mannered than usual. Lol. We wound up in back where Jim showed us an extension to an outbuilding that served in the past as a mens and womens privy. Probing just outside this building a wood lined pit was located. We tarped it off and went to work. The shards were promising with age, but the promise wore thin when we hit bottom and cleaned it out without anything whole. We probed a bit more and found another pit on the far side of the property. Unfortunately it was also just off the property. Stan knew the owner and said he would call her that night to try to get permission to dig it. As coincidence would have it, this property was also used for a hotel in bygone days. Stan said he had an 1840's lot where an early store had once stood. We packed up and headed out. This place was in the country. There was a pond there that looked as if it might hold bass big enough to drag a person in off the bank. We probed any likely looking sinkers, and we stabbed at the rear yard line. We found a low spot surrounded by bricks and broke glass with the probe at about 3 feet. We opened it up to find a rather smallish brick lined round structure. There was no mortar between or latheing on the bricks. It was chunked full of big sandstone slabs. Progress was slow. The property owner stopped by and told us we were digging in the old well. We got down to 5 feet or so and the age of the shards was pretty new. We sunk the 7 foot probe to the handle. Figuring this thing might be 40 feet deep or more, and that it was probably filled in recently, we decided to bail out and fillerin. Below, Stan and Mike at the brick well.
Stans next move was to a very old lot in a small town down the road. It was so old it almost made me cry when I saw it. Like Stan told us, it was like stepping back in time. At the place where we were going to dig, there were four depressions in the back yard along the rear property line. They all probed with glass. Mike located a pit in the very corner with no depression at all, so we decided to crack this one open. Below, Stan digs. The fill was pretty consistent down to about 4 feet. We found a slight change in the fill with some ash and then some shards started coming out. It was a mixed bag, as some were near pontil age hinge mold and some were barely blown. We took the pit down to 6 feet and then had to start bailing water. At 8 feet we still had not hit any kind of glass layer or seeds so Mike stuck in the long probe. SMACK, all the way to the handle. We probed outwards with the short probe and found that we had estimated the walls closely on three sides, but the fourth side went under the chain link fence and into the neighbors yard by about 3 or 4 feet. OUCH. It was getting late so we decided to head to the hotel and return in the morning. We covered the pit with timbers and peeled out. At the hotel, we cranked up the air onto the "frigid" setting, caught a shower and ate some food. I watched a boxer named Mayweather put a technical stomping on his opponent, and fell asleep with visions of pontils dancing in my head. With a fresh start, we determined the deep wet woody with no layer would be a time sucker. I located another woody in the opposite corner of the yard. This also had no depression. (Note, 4 depressions, all pits, and the two oldest pits had no depression) It was also shallow, with the bottom probing at 6 feet, and with a healthy foot deep layer of glass on the bottom. We filled in the first pit and cracked open the second. This pit had good sign early, with a yellow ware chamber pot popping out at just 3 feet deep. Rod was in the pit as we reached the 5 foot level and he cornered a bottle. He handed up a Simmons Liver regulator in perfect shape. He also handed up a broken hamburger tropfen and a thompsons eye water. Then he announced that he had a large bottle in the wall. It took awhile but he finally got it free and handed up a big crude Dutch Mallet.
Below, Stan holds his first dug pontiled embossed bottle. This one has to go on Stans shelf.
Stan the man was next into the pit and after some scratching and fluffing, held up a nice pontilled liniment bottle. It was his first ever whole pontilled find. He also found a large John Bull Extract of Sarsaparilla, with a crack in it. This pit bottomed out at 6 feet, and we fillderin. After making restoration Stan said that he had obtained permission to dig the pit n the property next to the Nester House. Back we went. This pit was also a 6 foot woody. We cracked it open and within a few minutes started finding shards. They were ugly. Clear, machine made, yuck !!! Our hole was rather small and we took it to 5 feet. The last thing up was a machine made whiskey flask, and some older marbles, including a brown bennington. We had to head back upstream and Stan said he would probably continue digging it, just to see what happened. We said our good-byes and left Stan with an open invitation to come up and dig any time he wanted. We had a great time and dug some neat stuff. Thanks again to Stan for inviting us and for sharing his killer spots with us. And thanks to Jim Efinger for his hospitality and and kindness. Next weekend, an 1850 on Broadway should keep us excited and busy. Seeya soon !!!
May 29th, 2004 Today Mike and I decided to go check out some construction sites. The first place we visited had some circular depressions in the blacktop. We slam-probed through them and thought they might be cisterns. We went to check out another place where they were tearing down an overpass.
This place had lots of dirt moved around. Before long we noticed a dark area in a high bank. A little scratching yielded bone and ash and seeds. Above the use layer was about 4 feet of rock and clay. We had to move it to dig safely. An hour later we were back into the layer.
It was mainly slim pickins and not very old, maybe 1890's. Mike cornered a couple of local Cincy pharmacies, one being "The Pan Handler" pharmacy. We also threw out an old tarnished disk that turned out to be an 1875 seated Liberty half dollar. Kewl. We left some of the
contents hanging on the wall and hit bottom. We started tapping at the hanging wall and in
a minute it fell and revealed a nice cobalt diamond lattice poison. I had to snatch it up
quick as the rest of the wall fell in about a minute later. I let it pose for the pic, all
the time thinking it might get crushed if I wasn't fast enough.
On Monday, Memorial day proper, we are going into a downright scary neighborhood to check out an exposed brickliner with hunks of yellow ware poking out of it. Hard to dig in kevlar. Seeya soon, I hope...
June 12th 2004 Hold on, back up. May 31st 2004 Mike and I met and headed over to Bad Bad Leroy Brown's neighborhood. (He has a custom Continental you know, and an Eldorado too.) The neighborhood was still sleeping off so we seemed to be safe, for the time being. We hopped down into the soupy, goo filled foundation hole. In the side was a brick cistern. We hacked at it awhile. The bottom probed to be about 5 feet deep. We mole holed down to 4 and found little sign of age, mostly crown tops.
On the other side of the cut was a brick lined privy. This poor dude had been assaulted by mother nature, and lots of the wall had caved in on top of his forms.
We pulled the bricks down and dug into the fill at the bottom, hoping to hit a layer. It turned out to be all fill. We stuck a probe in and down and got no change. This neighborhood is famous for deep pits with tall fills and thick caps. We figured if we pulled the fill out the side and then dug down to the goodies we would further mess up this guys world. And if he wheeled up while we were doing it, he might mess up ours. We decided to bail out and check back after the basement walls were poured, where we could then help him with the backfill, no charge.
June 12th 2004 Indiana was not answering his phone, and had his machine turned off. I hollered at him by e-mail, and then Mike and I met in Harrison to probe at a long standing permission on Broadway. Mike guessed right and we found a pit right against the back ally. It was a woody, and only 6 feet deep.
There were storms approaching rapidly from the southwest and we had to dig fast. There was lots of old sign popping up like banded yellow ware, feather edge, and goudy dutch. At 3 feet was a thin layer with only broken stuff, mostly ceramics, and hardly any bottle glass. Under this layer was about a foot.5 of dirt, and then another thin layer on the gravel bottom. Mike handed up an open pontiled aqua umbrella ink. Sadly, it was the only bottle in the pit.
We got it filled back in and re-sodded just as the rain came. We decided we would try to get ahold of Rod to dig tomorrow, at one of his permissions, another 6 foot woody. June 13th 2004 After talking to Rod
and getting a promise on a call back, he abruptly peeled out from his house to go watch
"The Bangers" play. He was so excited he forgot to call me back. Turkey
!!! What they really need is a cool web page !!! Check out their CD,
July 3rd 2004. Today I had a fresh permission to probe in Harrison. Mike met me around 8 and we rolled on down into the old part of town. This place was on a corner, and was a large 2 family 1880's place. It's nice to dig these "newer" places as we get much more stuff from the time period, as opposed to the 40's and 50's pits. We got out and walked around the biggest Oak tree in town. It is a MONSTER. A slice from this tree would seat a party of 12. Mike almost got lost on his way around it and showed up a few minutes later winded and sun burnt. My recollections DO exaggerate, but it is a BIG TREE !!! We were hoping the pit wasn't right next to this tree, as it's roots were like Volkswagens. We probed across the back line. We noticed the house to the rear was a newer brick ranch. We realized how short the back yard was. We realized the pit was probably under the ranch. 30 minutes of probing the back yard all but confirmed the worst. This was my only permission. Rod has a couple, but he's Amish now, and we can't hardly get him to dig. He is IndianaRiverMan and his lawn chair has been seen fully occupied as of late, moving downstream the mighty Whitewater River, wedged into a canoe. He has acquired a summering place on this rivers banks where he whiles away the hours in his portable aluminum chair, watching butterflies make lazy, floppy loops, and delighting in spotting the spotted gar poking their noses up out of the water. Mike and I on the other hand, had no
time for such soul calming, and with teeth clenched in determination decided to But that wouldn't be right, so...we decided to cruise down and check the construction sites in the big city. Site 1 had a ton of glass mixed in with the grading. Most of it was post 1900 but every here and there was an open pontil base or a rolled lip, thrown in just to keep us looking. No pits were found by probing dark, ashy, or wet spots, which is many times the only indicative sign at a graded site. Site B, I mean 2, had been dug on by the workers since our last visit, but not in the right spots. The ton of mucky rock we threw out of a pit onto the pathway had been neatly scooped with a single swipe into a low area next to it. Thanks fellers. Site 3 was a new site right in downtown. It had a meticulously constructed 8 foot chain link fence around it with no way to get through or under it. It was over it, or nothin. There were lots of folks on the sidewalk all around it. We walked all around it looking in for anything that might catch our eye, or for a break in the fencing. It gave no breaks, but we didn't see much inside either. It was basically a 15 foot deep hole the size of a half block, so we were looking for the ashy bottoms of some pits on the floor or a nice ashy or black streak in the walls. We shook our fists at the sky and peeled out for home. July 10th IndianaAmishRod decided he wanted to dig today, so we met at one of his permissions. This place was an 1860 and had a fairly open back yard. We probed the likely looking areas, the ran a grid over the entire back yard. An hour later we were empty. There is a large roll-off dumpster on the back corner. We shook our fists at the dumpster, 3 stooges like, and sped off towards the next permission. This place was quickly re-permissed with a phone call. We had a spot that was low, and mike thought he broke glass at 6 feet. We opened it up to find a pvc drain pipe. Yuck, no good.
This place we had dug at before, and Mike thought he had a woody behind the stony we dug. It's been mighty dry for the last 2 or 3 weeks and if this thing was a pit, we couldn't tell. We poked it to death from every angle, never hitting any glass, and never feeling any layers. Just a slightly softer push and a smoothness down to gravel at 7 feet. The last place was where we dug a tester into the corner and found some sign down to 4 feet and filled it in. The thing, whatever it is, probes to go halfway onto the neighbors property. The guy who lived here told us the folks next door had moved out, and told us a hundred reasons why it would be OK to just dig over there. We went and probed and I found a pit in short order. We went back over to the guys house and listened to him tell us some more why we could just dig it if we wanted, bolstering our courage as we took it all in with open ears. Then, just as we could stand no more and were grabbing up tools to go dig it, some people showed up to mow the grass and the guy said we better not dig it now, and we better not go ask them for permission either. He went over and talked to them and told them quite loudly if they didn't take their ladder home with them he was going to steal it. We didn't know WHAT to make out of all of it so we split. Safe, not sorry. Rod had enough, and split for his love shack. Mike and I decided to go to Lwrenceburg and check out a construction site behind the old river row of houses. There should be no better pits than the ones behind these places. It was the first block up from the public landing. We checked it good, but it was devoid of any sign. We stabbed and jabbed but most of the lot had already been filled.
The sign says it all.
So folks, we been trying.
Persistence pays in this sport, T
Sunday
August 1st, 2004. On Friday evening, I was out
riding my dual sport
When a depression caught my eye. I guess I had always missed
this one because it was in a funny place. Not HAHA funny, but weird funny. It was beside a
modular slab home, but the slab home was in the back yard of a nice 1870's place. I went
back in the company van to stab it with a probe. I got brick at 3 and then 4 feet. Mike met me at We were missing Sir Rodney, Duke of Lawnchairshire, and any and all of his permissions, contrived or otherwise. He and his family are vacationing in Jellystone Park Kentucky, home of Yogi Bear and sandwich basket thievery. So we had fired our only round and it had turned out to be a blank. I had Mike follow me to 4 different locations in town. I knocked a couple of doors where we had dug in the past to see if we could probe for any additional pits. No one seemed to be home. I became frustrated and determined to at least be told "NO" before it was all over. So I said to Mike, I says, "You remember that big hoity toity 1830's brick in West Harrison with the nice yard ?" And he says, "Yea, vaguely". And then I says, "Yea,... foller me". So after a knock and a gab, I had permission to dig, and an exterior painting estimate to give. The owner showed us where a depression was that he said he had to constantly fill. We probed it and it was soft and crunchy. We decided to probe around a little more and try to find something less obvious. Nothing turned up, so we went back to the depression and probed for walls. We found one wall at the side of the depression but in the other 3 directions there was nothing for 8 feet !!! More than likely a filled in cellar hole, but we cut sod and started a test hole to see what age it was filled with. Just a foot deep we found an amber quart blob Christian Moerlien and a nice amber arrow Cincy coke. We mole holed down to 5 feet and found no other glass, just bricks out the wazoo and chunks of plaster. We took out the sides a little more at the 1 foot level but didn't see any bottles. Since this thing was probably a monster barn cellar and since we didn't think the owner wanted an ongoing bottle mine in his back yard, we fillderin.
We probed for another hour in the sweltering heat and humidity. Nuthin !!!! I was thinking that the filling in of the cellar hole in 1900 or so could have messed with any pits that were there. Just before we gave up, Mike pounded the long probe into a slight depression in the far side yard and broke glass at 6 feet. Here we go. This pit started off soft, and at 3 feet had a 10 inch ash layer. Under the ash the fill became very stiff. The fill was sterile and showing us nothing to get an idea of age with. We had to incorporate the assistance of Mikes buddy, Spuddy, the chisel tipped spud bar. He made short work of the stubborn fill and it came out in hunks. Finally at 6 feet we hit seeds and shards. We took us a break around 4:30 or a little before, and walked some of the nearby alleys, looking for depressions and such. Then it was back to the dig !!!
Clear glass, yuck. Then some slick druggists. At least they were blown. Lots of Cincy blob beers, all broken of course, started popping out. We found 5 Lydia pinkums and three Dr. Pierces favorite prescriptions, an A. trask magnetic ointment, and one lonely unembossed aqua smooth base squat soda. We cleaned it out to the corners and the show was over. Not a great haul, but it sure was fun to fluff through the tinkle again.
We gave the homeowner all of the bottles except for the amber coke. He was tickled. He said we could come back and look for the older pits anytime. Come to think of it, we were so pooped we didn't even probe around this pit before we left. Hmmmm.
August 22nd Oh boy I was worked up and ready for a good dig !!! Work has me consumed and I hardly have time to play. Today we were going probing in the back yard of a small 1865 place in downtown, hometown, USA. I was at our usual rendezvous location and the meeting time came and went. A few minutes later my digital communication device sounded off and the display revealed Mikes home number. He informed me that the pesky intermittent problem was back, and his truck would not start. He said it would heal after a little while and then he would come straight on over to the dig. I met Rod at the dig. I knocked on the door. Nuthin. The homeowner knew to expect me around 9 am on Sunday. It was 9:30. We decided to just go ahead and start probing, but, the yard was surrounded by a privacy fence with locks on the gates. We hung out and gabbed. We went next door to a friends house and BS'ed some more. Around 10:30 I went and had another knock on the door. Nuthin again. I decided we would go to the other side of town where Mike and I had dug a couple weeks before to try to probe up another pit. When we got there, the owner informed us he was having a wedding reception at noon. I told him the bride was welcome to join in but he thought it was a bad idea. I called Mike and he said he was preparing to try to start his truck again, and that he thought enough time had passed for it to heal. Rod said "Screw you guys, Im goin home", in his familiar Cartmen-ish manner, and peeled out. Actually I think he was going fishing at his hillbilly second home of a river camp. Ahhh...I can remember when his passion for the dig drove his ambition for the quest. Them were the days. I told him to call me later on and I would torment him with news of all the cool and killer stuff we would surely find in his absence. Mike showed up about 40 minutes later and we went back to the permission where I knocked smartly on the door. This time the door opened to reveal a sleepy eyed chick with tousled hair and a small child attached to one leg. She said she would go around and unlock the gate, and we were innit. Before I jump on the probe I like to "read the land" and it usually pays off, like it did this time. The first place I stuck in the steel I had a pit. It was a woody, and probed to more than 7 feet. We opened it up and started flinging dirt. The sign was mixed but mostly looked good with some aqua frags and chunks of salt glaze. The fill was easy digging down to about 3 feet, where it stiffened up considerably and necessitated the incorporation of spuddy buddy, the chisel tipped spud bar. As usual, he made short work of the next two feet of compacted fill dirt. Under this was an ashy layer and more aqua shards started popping out.
At about 7 feet was the top of a foot thick layer, resting on the bottom. It was thick with glass but it was mostly broken. We got a few unembossed coffin flasks and some slick meds. Mike tossed out a Mellon food jar, a cracked kilmers, and a half gallon aqua masons "N" 1858 fruit jar, with a big crack in it. A Dandy little half pint aqua double eagle flask was carefully extracted. It came out in two pieces with a big piece missing. It had a crude little hand tooled top, and was streaked with olive yellow striations.
There is another pit behind the one we dug. This pit is behind the privacy fence, on the grounds of the Harrison Elementary School. Actually, it's directly under the swingset on the playground. I'm thinking no-one would mind a big hole encircled with broken glass on the school playground. Maybe the 6th graders would like to participate in an actual historical archaeological dig. I'll have to drag a hook by the school board and see if I get any nibbles. We sure have dug some skunkers lately. We are over due for some decent finds. Patience Glasshopper.
September 19th, 2004. Today we were going a-probing at an 1870 farm house in Shandon Ohio. My company had just finished painting the exterior lap board siding and trim. I got the go-ahead when I picked up payment for the job. Payday and permission !!! Nuthin finer !!! But, it WAS a farm so we had our reservations concerning locating the pit(s). While painting, my breaks were spent walking the back yard and reading the land. I had four very probable places located by eye alone that I was just sure were pits. We arrived and, with brother Mikey in tow to metal detect, promptly filled their driveway with 4 vehicles. We said our Howdies and started poking holes in the yard. My four very probable places were methodically scratched off the list, leaving me and the Pirate to go searching and stabbing at less obvious spots. An hour later we took a
fiver and smoked one of those brain refreshing cigarettes. Mmmm Mmmm good. While brother Mike was out in the front yard detecting and diggin up wheaties, partner Mike was bending over in the back yard to pick up a big coin laying on top of the ground. It was a Cincinnati Fall Festival brass token, dated 1906. We stabbed and we jabbed. We long probed every short probe hole. We re-checked slightly suspicious feeling spots. Nothing felt even worthy enough of a test hole. How many
privies could a privy digger dig if a privy digger could dig privies ????? Ahem...
October 24th, 2004. I Finally got out of the house to do a little digging this weekend. Mike and I met at our new meeting place. Our new meeting place is WAY cooler than stupid Arbys. We now meet at Big Lots, where the parking lot is large and lends itself well to the occasional loud mouthed excitement that privy digging can sometimes inspire. Today's dig is on the downtown Avenue, and is owned by Shirley, who let us dig 5 pits on the two lots her house occupies. This house and lot sets next door, and although the back of the lot is covered up with a more recently constructed garage, we thought we should give it a try, none the less. I walked over to an obvious depression and gave it a jab. Kinda crunchy, but shallow at 4 feet. Another depression up close to the back of the house accepted the entire length of the short probe, and then the entire length of the 7 footer. We threw down tarps and started cutting sod. The pit was a woody and was about 4 by 6 feet. We took half of that down to five feet, and then mole holed down, looking for sign. We got to the bottom without so much as a single seed. The sign was there, in the form of bricks and some ash, but no shards were encountered. We mole holed to the bottom near the center of the pit, and again, found discouragement el Grande. No good, fillerin !!!
We grid probed the entire back yard, right up to the rear addition. The only spot that gave any clues was the first depression I probed, so we opened her up. This fill held some shards. Red ware, ironstone, and some thin window pane drove us onward and downward. At 4 feet we hit the old gravel riverbed. The pit was devoid of layering and appeared to be all fill, with a few shards mixed in. We pulled out an open pontilled base of an aqua fruit jar. We cleaned the pit out to the corners, and the show was over.
We believe both of these pits were dipped clean and refilled. The other pits, if there are any, are under the garage that sets on the hidden side of the back of the lot. We checked to see if it had a dirt floor. It did not. Poop !!! Mike has a few permissions just north of downtown Cincy we are going after next weekend, and there is some construction sites downtown that are begging for a guy with a scratcher to walk through. Fall digging is great.
November 13th 2004. Today we had a permission to probe a lot in Cleves, Ohio. Cleves is named after Judge John Cleves Symmes 1742-1814, who served as a judge of the Territorial Court from 1788 until Ohio became a state in 1803. He was responsible for the Symmes purchase, also known as the Miami purchase, of 330,000 acres. He was the Father in-law of William Henry Harrison. Cleves is situated on the Great Miami river, about a mile before it empties into the Ohio River. Originally, the town of North Bend, Ohio, was chosen by Symmes to become the great queen city of the west. North Bend sets right next to Cleves. The present site of Cincinnati was chosen over that of North Bend, as Ft. Washington had already been established and offered settlers better protection from the hostile Indians. William Henry Harrison also lived in North Bend, and campaigned from his farm there during his run for the presidency. His campaign committee reportedly gave out some historical flasks with the cider barrel and log cabin motif, as well as the green cabin shaped North Bend / Tippecanoe flasks. A couple of
weeks ago I was out cruising on my
Mike and I met at the dig and I showed him the square depression. It had two of the stone walls visible. We probed it and sunk the 7 footer through some layering. We probed all around it but found no other pits in the immediate area. We layed down some tarps and away we went.
The fill was uuuugly, with new plastic junk all the way down to about 4 feet. At 5 feet was a thin layer of clay, maybe 8 inches thick, then some ash and more fill. Finally at 6 feet we hit a change and started finding more shards and seeds. At 6.5 feet was all seeds and stuff started popping out.
Mike first cornered a hutch and an amber blob beer.
The hutch was a Cincinnati picture type, David Engel, with a horseshoe on it. The blob beer was an amber quart embossed Gambrinus Stock Co. Bottled Beer, and had the picture of the King on it.
Mike handed up a broken milk that said, "Page's Kleen Maid", with a picture of a lady in a dress holding a milk pail. Too bad the top was missing. We also found a neat local hutch embossed, "Kunz and Ritzmann / Lawrenceburg Indiana. This is a cool local hutch, and most local folks have never heard of it. THEN, we found another, but it was a squat type. Cool ! WE had never seen this one before. I carefully extracted a super thin Hemingray wax sealer embossed, "Patent September 18th, 1860". It was unusual for a wax sealer as the wax ring was formed in the mold of the jar, rather than being applied. We have dug a DOZEN of these particular jars, but always broken. This one was perfect, and thin as a light bulb. We also found another amber quart blob beer, this one a John Kauffman, also from Cincinnati. A cone ink, a large glyco-thymoline, and a nice pressed glass tumbler rounded off the dig, and it was over.
We refilled the hole, and since it was such a big depression to start with, I cleaned up the owners lot a little by tossing in some of the debris that was lying around on the ground. We jumbled the big limestone rocks as we threw them back in, making some air pockets, and then shoveled in the dirt. The pit filled in nicely and was up to grade level when we put the sod back on. We had a few stopper-bys as we were digging. A couple of interested 12 year old boys, Drew, and his buddy who I cant remember his name, (sorry buddy) were a couple of well mannered kids who we gave some bottles to. They thought what we were doing was cool, which made us feel like 12 year old boys again. Right before we left, Mike tried a spot we had probed earlier and this time, got past whatever obstruction had kept him out before and SWOOSH - pop - snap - pop... OH YEA !!! This is another stony and it's on the same lot so it looks like we have another pit to dig. With all the post 1900 stuff in the top 4 feet of the last pit, and late 80's on the bottom, we are calculating this pit to take up where the previous pit left off. So let's see....That means 1880's on the top....and 1850 on the bottom !!! The use layer is probably only a foot down, and runs plum to the bottom at about 10 feet. OK..., now
I'm either dreaming, or jinxing us to death !!!
December 18th and 19th, 2004 Saturday. I got an e-mail from a feller named Shawn, who said his brother Dave had an old house in Harrison, and if he could talk him into it, we could dig his privy. I encouraged him to do his best in the "talking into". When he got back to me he said it was cool, his brother was hip, after he explained that we take care of the yard, and replace the sod. We showed up at 9 am Saturday morning and met Dave and headed around back. The county auditors web site said this place was built in 1875. Shawn had said there was an old original carriage house in the back, and no other outbuildings. We assumed the carriage house would be old enough to NOT be setting over any of the privy pits. Around back was a couple of walkways. One was concrete pavers that led to the door of the carriage shop, and one was of cut limestone that led back beside the carriage house and ended at nothing, near the back property line. I first stabbed a depression near the back of the house and tapped something solid at 3 feet, most likely a septic tank top. Then I walked down the length of the limestone walkway and stuck a probe in through gravel. It felt softer by a little, so Mike stuck in the 7 footer. It sailed in to the handle, but there was little layering and no glass at all. Mike used the short probe and stuck it in diagonally and thought he had a couple of walls. He did a test hole on where he thought the corner was and found the top of a limestone wall. Digging toward the other wall he located the nice, neat 45 degree angle of it, right where he said it would be. We broke out the tarps and started flinging dirt. Dave was ultra cool with where it was, as there was no sod, and it was in an area that he didn't really use. We got down a couple of feet and got three walls exposed. The fourth wall was still a couple feet away so we left some hanging for the time being. It was a good sized pit, maybe 4 by 6 feet.
Shawn and some of his buddies from work showed up. One of his friends told him about my web page and clued him in on the dealio. These guys are artifact hunters and were interested in the coolness of privy digging. They had lots of good questions. Shawn started singing "Take me home country road" and smiling at me and glancing at one of his buds. It took me a minute, and then, I noticed said Bud was somewhat of a John Denver clone. They all started laughing, including John Denver, whose real name is Rob. Lol. We got the pit down to about 5 feet and were still pulling up chunks of plastic and aluminum foil balls. YIKES !!! Harrison pits are usually only 6 or 7 feet deep. It would have to get old quick or the rest of the fill would be staying in the pit. We decided to halve the pit down to look for age before removing all of the contents. This decision had us 7 feet deep on the deep side before too long, and we were still too new, finding threaded bromos and graduated meds. At 8.5 feet we hit seeds and the bottles started becoming blown. We tossed up Bromo after Bromo, of mainly the large and medium sizes. We had around 40 of them or so by this time. The ground was littered with cobalt. Dave bought a stack of pizzas and I took a fiver inside his heated carriage shop to scarf a hot piece and chat with the guys. The subject was Rob's Cumberland point, type distribution, type comparison, etc... It was hard to tear away from it, but Mike gave a yelp, which I translated in the privy digger dialect to mean, "BUCKET !!!" After awhile our audience had to peel out. They had watched for hours. The fill in the pit was loaded with big round cobbles, and it was pretty stiff digging. We got half of the pit down to 9 feet and it was solid seeds. Out pops a ton of glass. The buckets being dumped onto the pile made the sound every privy digger wants to hear. The bottles were older in the seed layer. Up came 2 Jacobs oels, a pierces favorite prescription, three Dayton Ohio flavorings, and then from the depths mike hands up a broken iron pontil cathedral peppersauce. Shortly after, another one. The pile grew by Bromos rapidly. We had about a hundred at this point. A pontil puff was scratched out of the seeds, then the bases and panels of two iron pontil scroll flasks. Pieces of a lovely green sided bottle kept showing up until a piece with some letters on it said it was a townsends sarsaparilla. Another broken amber panel popped out with H & K stomach tonic bitters written across it. An intact Warners safe cure came up from the bottom, along with an intact open pontil Dr. G W Phillips Diarhoea Syrup. Gross !!! Those two words should not be used together !!! It was getting late, and we still had the other half of the contents from 5 foot on down to get out. We talked it over and Dave was cool with us coming back the next day to finish. We covered the pit with a piece of plywood and put a tarp over the glassy dirt pile and pealed out, excited about what else might be in the bottom of the pit. Sunday I arrived about 9:30 and removed the tarp from the dirt pile. I pulled the plywood off the pit and jumped in and started scratching around in the fluff. Mike arrived a few minutes later and I already had 10 more large and medium size Bromos. Shawn and Dave came out and watched us dig for awhile, then went back inside. The temp. was 15 degrees and the wind was gusting to 30 miles an hour. Being in the pit wasn't bad, but being the guy on bucket duty was misery. We caved the other side of the pit down into buckets and hauled it out until we were right on top of the seeds and glass. Again, Bromos dominated the finds. It got to the point where I was getting salty whenever my scratcher would slide across a bottle and I would wipe it and see blue. Finally a few aqua bottles came up. One was a nice open pontil olive oil, and another was a super crude pontiled free blown oil or vinegar bottle. Mike handed up a tiny op umbrella and a couple of smooth base cabin inks. We got two iron pontil and one smooth base "Compound Extract of Hops and Boneset", a "GW Phillips cough Syrup", a nice square ridged pepper sauce, a Helmbolds Genuine fluid extracts, an op ayers cherry pectoral, an amber Murdock liquid food, a Wards Liniment, an Indian chalogua, 2 trade pipes, and a stoneware ink. We also got about 50 more Bromos for the day. The Bromo grand total was 136, and only 6 of them were the small size. 14 were the large size, and the rest were both sizes of medium. A few.
A few more
The Diarrhoea.....um...... Syrup.
The Pirate in the pit.
From the left, Shawn, me, Mike, and Dave.
A few Bromo Seltzers.
We wrapped it up at about 3:00 and gathered up our stuff, and restored the dig area. Dave came out and we divided the Bromos up equally. We took a few other bottles and gave him the majority. Mike and I both wanted the Warners but it is such a neatly embossed large amber bottle that we thought Dave would like it so I stuck it in his pile. He mentioned he might give it to his Dad. We sure enjoyed this dig !!! Shawn and Dave and their buddies are crack ups. I may have more pictures to go with this update shortly. A big thanks to Rob (Country Roads) for remembering my page, Shawn for setting it up, and Dave for hosting the dig. Below, a Bromo display shelf.
Today as I write, it is Wednesday December 22nd, and we just had a foot of snow hit the ground. I guess I'll need a longer probe.
|
|
|
on Sunday morning and we headed on down to partake in the
services of the church of privydiggerology. This pit was preaching 1950 in a big way. We
test holed down to the bottom at 4 feet and found us some miracle whip jars. Fillerin !!!
, slowly rolling
through the alleys of the early town, and a nice square depression caught my
eye. I had a chat with a guy hanging around his place and he told me who owned
the property. Later, from the Privydigger.com control center, I steadied my
nerves and made the call and let the spiel fly. The owner was a cheerful fellow
and was tickled by the absurdness of my pursuit. He said, "just go right ahead",
and I was officially permissed. 
