Steve

Luck of the Irish

by Steve Ciborowski

With the last name of Ciborowski, I sometimes joke with people that I have a long Irish name. Truth is, I’m a mutt, made up of Polish, French, Scotch Irish, Native American and only God knows what else. One thing is for certain - I’ll probably never find a bottle embossed with my last name on it. After the year that my fifth grade teacher used to bring in Pollock jokes for the class and me to enjoy I learned to take a joke better than most. I’m just proud to be an American and the how, where and when we got here and the history since has always fascinated me.

I have a great, great grandfather by the name of Thomas Young Burns who was a Sergeant in the Confederate army and died a prisoner of war in a Union prison at Rock Island, Illinois in 1864. I wonder if he gave all his ancestors his unused Irish luck because he escaped once only to be recaptured. Last Thursday on St. Patrick’s Day I discovered that the Civil War belt plate that I found while bottle digging on Super Bowl Sunday belonged not to an Irishman like my great, great grandfather but to a Welshman who came to America in the 1840's to work in the Slate Quarries. It was only fitting to make the discovery on St Patrick’s Day as St. Patrick was really a Welshman.

an 1876 map the foundation belongs to a house listed to a G. Ellis. In “The River & the Ridge”, an excellent local history book Griffith G. Ellis is in a list of those known to have served during the Civil War. There’s even a picture of him in a town band taken in the early 1870's. All of a sudden the inks, ale, and other bottles I dug out of there take on new meaning.

My next stroke of luck came at lunchtime when I set out in quest of bottles. I parked the truck in a trailer park and found my way across the B&O Railroad tracks. Crossing over to a small farm on the other side, the woods to the left looked more interesting but I went right, along the outside of the farm fence and a littered and dumped in drainage creek below the tracks. I passed a truck cap propped up on a tree with two benches under it. After going about a hundred yards through stickers without seeing anything of interest I made my way back up on the right of way. Way down to the left I could see a railroad truck but decided he wasn’t moving and wouldn’t come after me. Wrong! I looked behind me and he’s heading my way but I figure I can beat him at a fast walk back to the intersection I came in at. Wrong again! I bailed over the side when he got close and he kept on going. I continued slowly the way he was going and climbed a bluff to the right above the railroad tracks. The bluff shared the right of way with a high power line so it was nice clear walking with a fringe of small pines on the edge of the bluff.

I started noticing pieces of broken insulators and an occasional metal anchor and realized I was traversing a former insulator line. Not seeing any whole ones I made a mental note to check this out later and made for the woods where the power line switched to the other side and my clearing ran out. Crossing a log at the edge of the woods I found and collected a box turtle shell. A little ways into the woods I pulled up a granite wear pot, but there was nothing in the ground below it. A little further I noticed a wringer washer tub and some galvanized buckets. This proved only 50's stuff, so I started my return in the woods parallel to the clearing. Through a younger woods back into an older I again saw trash.

I saw some amber glass and uncovered a strap sided flask but it was screw top. Next the broken top of a milk, then I see embossing staring at me but its only a screw top WATKINS Performer. A couple feet away I see more embossing staring at me through the leaves and I pull out a light green square medicine expecting a screw top but happily it had an applied sloping collar. I saw the name POTTER and thought it said PORTER having dug a few PORTER’s PAIN KING bottles but the 9 1/4 inch med is embossed CUTICURA TREATMENT FOR AFFECTIONS OF THE SKIN on one panel and POTTER DRUG AND CHEMICAL CORPORATION BOSTON U.S.A. on the opposite panel. I was close to being late for work if I didn’t leave immediately, so I headed for the tracks and my truck. Clutching my prize in one hand I passed two of the insulators with just the very tops missing and picked up a 20's SCA Sanford’s ink laying next to them. Before exiting the woods I pushed the granite wear pot back down into the leaves and could not stop smiling the rest of the day! I later found that the Cuticura brand name was developed by a George Robert White who came to the city as a poor boy to work in the Potter Drug and Chemical Company, which he eventually owned. When he died in 1922 he left 5 million to the city and 50 K for construction of a memorial to himself. There are at least two other Cuticura bottles, a CUTICURA SYSTEM OF RESOLVING AND ELIMINATING CONSTITUTIONAL HUMORS and a CUTICURA SYSTEM FOR BLOOD AND SKIN PURIFICATION. I bet those were some Yummy meds!

As I finish writing this story it is 2 in the morning of the day of my 49^th birthday, Wednesday March 23^rd, 2005. Today, well yesterday I smiled a lot again. At lunch I headed straight back to my new play spot. In order to not chance being late for work I can honestly only spend five minutes at the site, sick huh? I found the flask and Watkins I left before and scratched out an aqua ABM DAVIS VEGETABLE PAINKILLER. A couple more amber flasks later I see cobalt and easily pull out a BIM 7 ½ inch S.S. STAFFORDS’S INKS MADE IN THE U.S.A. master ink - a bottle that’s been on my dig wish list ever since one I dug as a kid got broke somehow in my college dorm room many year’s ago. I’ve dug many broke tops but this one appeared undamaged and unbelievably has half a label on one side. I washed it without touching the remains of the label or getting it wet because I think it would wipe right off and I may have wiped part of it off pulling it from the ground. Both the Cuticura and the ink have really great bubbles and the ink’s neck is a little bent. What a nice early birthday present, I hope I can keep this lucky streak going. Steve (cobaltbot) Delta Pa.