blobbottlebob
Posts: 3658
Joined: 12/20/2005
From: Wisconsin
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Hey everyone. Here is a story that I just finished. It relates the adventures of one dive trip and an unexpected find. It's funny how you can learn about a bottle or a company that you had never heard of because you found something from them. Once again, I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments. Pictures to follow. Thanks in advance, Bob
Dodging the Bullet By Bob Libbey
On a sunny summer day, my buddy Jim and I decided to try a murky river dive in the hopes of finding antique bottles. When we arrived in the small town along the river, we immediately spotted a problem. There were construction workers building a bridge just upstream of our projected dive spot. We considered changing our dive plans but resolved to talk it over with the construction crew first. We approached them and explained a little about our hobby. We told them what we would be doing in the water and where we wanted to dive. We also explained how they could pinpoint our location if they had any concerns. Specifically, we could be found by looking for our dive flags. The flags are attached to a large float that follows us wherever we go. The construction workers were extremely friendly and seemed interested in our hobby. A few even wondered about old bottles that they had picked up on earlier digs. During our discussion, it became clear that if we dove downstream of the construction site, we would not interfere with each other’s activities. We could still dive here!
Excited for the chance to find something old, we suited up and hit the water. I’m sure that we had visions of graphite pontils and early colored glass. The reality is, however, that you cannot control what you find (except by searching as diligently as you can). After rooting around for awhile, it became fairly obvious that we were not sitting on the mother-load. I was finding some broken pieces of salt glaze pottery and some glass shards but nothing whole. At least the items were reasonably early and there was still a chance of a decent recovery.
Then I felt a gun. I was not very surprised. After all, anyone could throw anything into the river. As I picked it up, I soon realized that it was not a real gun. Rather, it was a toy. The weight was far too light for a real firearm. I considered just leaving it but then I thought that Jim might get a kick out of it, so, I brought the toy up to the surface. I hadn’t planned to stay up long. I was just dropping it off and returning to the bottom. During that short interval, I could see that the toy was badly corroded with large chunks of blackened rust. This thing was total junk. Oh well. I’d cleaned up the environment a little. I sank back down.
The current had carried me downstream a bit and I fought to stabilize myself at the bottom. A few minutes after I returned to searching, I felt a perfectly smooth cylinder. It was several inches long and it was man made. Feeling around, I noticed that it had a pointed tip on one end. It was a high caliber bullet! It seemed like the theme of this dive was going to be gun related. Because I’d felt the tip of the bullet, I assumed that this was live ammunition. It probably wasn’t much of a danger in its waterlogged condition, but I planed to treat it with care just in case. I surfaced and immediately confirmed my underwater guess. It was a bullet with a long brass casing. I placed it in a pocket in the float and went back to diving. The rest of the tank was uneventful. The river was not deep so, the air in my tank lasted a long long time. My guess is that I was under at least an hour and a half. It was maybe an hour since I had found the toy gun.
When I finally surfaced, I saw Jim on the opposite shoreline waiting for me. Next to Jim was a police officer. There was no point in yelling across the chattering river, so, I just began to swim back. That swim seemed to take forever. First of all, the current was forcing me downstream. I had to swim facing upstream to combat the flow and stay even with the shoreline. Second, I was wondering about the policeman. Were we in some kind of trouble? Maybe there were local ordinances about diving within the city limits (or something) that we didn’t know about? When I finally made it into the shallows, the officer came right up to where I was. I somehow got the sense that he had been waiting awhile. The first thing he said was, “I understand that you found a gun.” My thoughts were racing. I was certain that there was absolutely no possible way to tell what was in my float from looking at it from the outside. Was this guy clairvoyant? Then I realized something. Of course. Somebody from the construction crew with their higher vantage point had seen me put that thing in the float. That was actually pretty impressive. I had only spent a moment above water when I dropped the gun off and the bridge was not that close to where we were. The person must have been fairly observant. I reached into my float and pulled out the corroded six-shooter. Even from where he was standing, the officer could tell that it was a badly deteriorated toy. He looked disappointed and turned to walk away. I called after him. “Wait. Here. Take it with you.” I figured that since he had waited for me, he should at least take the evidence. Maybe the guys at the station would get a good laugh out of it. He told me “No thanks” and wasted no more time. He left.
After the officer was gone, I went over to my buddy. “Ha,” I told him, “It wasn’t a real gun but I found an awesome bullet.” I fetched it out and showed it to Jim. “That’s not a bullet, you blockhead,” Jim informed me. (I’m not sure that he used the word ‘blockhead’. It may have been ‘moron’ or ‘idiot’ or some other term of affection we divers use with each other when addressing each other’s obvious errors.) He then pointed out that where the lead tip of the bullet should be, there was in actuality, a piece of glass. Wow. That’s weird. I’ve never heard of a glass bullet. The tip of this bullet had an opening that was now blocked with river sediment. I touched it and pulled. To my surprise, it easily lifted out of the brass casing. It was crayon shaped and definitely made of glass. Fairly quickly, I was shocked by the contents of this tube. There was a silver metallic coil in reasonably good condition. There was some kind of crystalline structure in there. But even more amazing, there were intact pieces of antique paper!
The times that I have found paper while diving are few and far between. Paper in water has a very short life span. Once, I found a crumpled Lucky Strike box on the inside of a Christmas Coke. It had survived because someone had re-capped the bottle before they tossed it into the water. Never before had I found a piece of paper on the inside of an old object underwater that had not been sealed. The text of the paper read in a neat font “Cushman’s Menthol Inhaler / Three Rivers, Mich.” It has the following patent information along the side, “PATENTED / JAN. 5 ’86 / NOV. 2 ‘86”. The contents were not destroyed because of the sediment that had blocked the opening at the tip. This made a seal of sorts that helped preserve the paper.
The next fairly obvious observation about the Cushman’s Inhaler was that it was minty smelling. Must be the menthol. One whiff of the contents and the fresh mint smell is stronger than you would think possible on an antique substance.
With a little research and help, here is some of what I’ve since learned about the inhaler. It claims to cure catarrh, neuralgia, and headaches as well as hay-fever, colds, and bronchitis. The manufacturer, H. D. Cushman, stated that the primary ingredient was “crystals of pure menthol . . . held in a glass tube.” The inhaler cures the listed maladies because breathing the air from the tube conveys “enough Menthol to the delicate membranes and nerves throughout the Head, Throat, and Lungs . . .” that the product ultimately destroys “disease germs and miasm.” It originally sold for fifty cents.
Much of this was learned from antique trading cards, which from time to time appear on an online auction site. The advertisements show a lady enjoying use of the product. She can clearly be seen holding both parts of the inhaler, the casing and the glass tube.
A forum member named Warren (from Alabama) warned me about something else. Warren suggested that many of these covered wagon medicinal products used cocaine as an active ingredient. I’m not sure if that is the case with Cushman’s. The advertisements do not list cocaine as a component of the product. If it was in there, though, it probably made the product feel much more effective at relieving the various maladies. I thought that this was just a quackery cure. If it did contain cocaine, it was much more potent than I would have guessed. Assuming it did contain cocaine, the menthol may have acted as a buffer against the burn of the stimulant. When they inhaled from the fresh minty product, the menthol may have helped them to take in more lung capacity. Also, if cocaine were in there, it might have created more repeat customers.
One last bit of information about the policeman. Someone told me that the small town where we were diving had an unsolved domestic homicide years earlier. Police suspected a husband in his wife’s death but lacked the evidence to prosecute. Perhaps the officer was hoping that I had inadvertently helped their case by recovering the murder weapon? I’ll never know for sure. If he was hoping to solve a crime, I regret that I couldn’t help.
< Message edited by blobbottlebob -- 4/29/2009 12:41:49 AM >
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A story about an unusual dive find. - 
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