surfaceone
Posts: 7119
Joined: 12/9/2008
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I had noticed a crane highlighting my urban vista the other day.
I always try and recon construction sites in the old parts of town. So often they are fenced securely now days. There is even the occasional security guard on steroids and/or Mad Dog. But not today.
There was even sun. For those of you in more temperate climes, you really can't appreciate the frozen mud slide syndrome. Maybe I can give a glimpse.
No guards, no chainlink, just the safety orange roll up plastic.
Hell, there was even a stairway...
It was thirty degrees up top in the wind. The bottom was maybe 33 and wet. Bottom was at least 25 feet below grade. There were pumps running and hoses stretched up top. I was late to the party. I'd missed the entire excavation to this point. They'd already laid a base of heavy stone.
I circumnavigated the top outside the fence, and climbed all over the adjacent dirt pile. It was real wet. We've had a major snow melt followed by days of rain. Ah, spring.
The dirtpile had been covered on one side by strewn hay. There were huge gouts of semi frozen mud and clay, not much in the way of visible shards, couple of slicks, one nice yellow ware shard. Sheesh! With so manny cubic yards of dirt removed you'd think there'd be more evidence of old debris.
I haven't checked the Sanborns yet to see what, if anything, was there. In the present day, it's an industrial no man's land. But it sure was a big hole and there had to be something in it, didn't there. I did a leg over the plastic, and this time circled the upper level from 6 to 10 feet below the rim. Some scattered evidence of shardage in spots. It was pretty tore up. They may have run the compactor around the upper rim. I was mountain goating on a slippery slope, trying to examine the dirt while trying to watch, and feel every step, so not to go ass over teakettle into the hole.
I finally grabbed the left hand rail of the stairs and attempted to walk down the wall. Holding on to the railing with one hand and using my potato rake as a ski pole, in the other. The last 8-10 feet was a barely controlled slide. Now I've got kinda worn but nevertheless lug soled Wellingtons for the mud. Might as well have been barefoot surfing.
I tried to walk back up the other side of the stairway. Made a lunge for the rail about six feet up and tried to drag walk my way up. No go. Now I was sliding down backwards.
That was fun, now where's the glass? I was trying to see the flash of glass in the mud. There was some standing water in the bottom. Washed the great mud coronas off the boots and turned to looking. The corners were wet and water was trickling down. The excavator had tamped down the walls pretty well with his bucket. This was a bit below the water table. It was hard to see evidence of ash with all the mud.
There were scattered shards.
At least, the age looked okay.
I clumped around some more. I was overwhelmed. There was a lot of dirt, and mud. I haven't had much of a commune with the dirt yet this "spring."
Finally,a familiar shape poked it's neck outta the muck. 
I hope y'all realize how difficult it is for me to reach for the camera before reaching for the bottle. The things I do for the home audience. 
Well, thank you Mr. McCulley!. A lovely piece of Pittsburgh glass it is. Or, at least I thought so, before I tried to clean it.
Now, my cleaning skills are definitely sub par, and this is gonna be a real challenge. It's got a major coating of black hard tar like stuff firmly crusted over half the inside, and a bit less on the outside. It's almost crystalline. I found myself, later that night, trying to scrape, chip it off the outside with a bamboo skewer. This has worked well for me in removing rust in the past. Not so now. It's soaking...
I'm gonna have to more closely read the Cleaning & Repairing pages.
I gotta go back there after it dries out a little. I was hesitant to do much scratching or any digging in the hole, less I tip my hand to the contractors. I was trespassing my ass off, again. I don't want them calling in the storm trooper security guard.
Thanks for driving by.
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Great Big Hole - 
-------i hope you hit the Mother Load
So I went back to the big hole and had another look around. I walked the upper perimeter, the middle, and the bottom. The mid level showed the most promise, but is very wet. 
Just beneath the nice tamped down surface there was a bonanza of crushed goodies. There was heavy duty yellow ware in abundance, all crushed down into a seam about a foot and a half deep. 
This was all well and truly smashed. It was as if someone and discarded a shop inventory of chamber pots and planters. There was nothing whole. Two thirds of an undistinguished cream pitcher was as close as it got. Very awkward digging. I wanted to leave as few "footprints" as possible, so would throw the spoils up hill, so as to be able to easily rake the debris back in the hole. 
This was followed by a small Halford Leicestershire Sauce. This was good, but the area of intact bottles had a water flowing precipitous drop off, which I could not navigate alone without some sorta safety rope. A bosun's chair woulda come in real handy. 
but be careful of bullets kicking up the mud around you...
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