Anyone ever find bottles lining a flower bed?

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jays emporium

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About 35 years ago when I was first starting to collect bottles there was an old house in town that had old looking bottles stuck in the ground with just the bottoms exposed lining the sidewalk and flower beds. I finally got enough nerve to ask the ancient old lady if I could have some of those bottles. She said NO. So I asked what if I replaced them with some other bottles about the same size and she said OK.
They were mostly unembossed aqua and amber quart blob top beers and hock wines. I did find an embossed amber blob top San Antonio Brewing bottle and Conrad's Original Budweiser and a local Hutchinson and a few other embossed bottles in there though and replaced them with some screw top quart whiskey bottles.
Since then I've seen bottles at flea markets and shows that show the same stained pattern with the top part of the bottle severely stained and the bottom clean from never being in the ground. So I guess this was a common practice around the turn of the century. Have any of you ever come across this?
 

cc6pack

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I've run across a sidewalk with hobble skirt Cokes set in concrete as a border. We spent hours trying to chip away enough contrete to see if any were 15's or Christmas. No such luck[:mad:]
 

capsoda

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When I was a boy several on the old folk around did that with bottles they figured they couldn't find a use for. They also swept their yards.

I did see a wall made of ballast bottles. It was about 3ft high and about 10 or 12ft long. A bud dug them all and wanted every one anyone else dug and didn't want. The are plentiful around these parts.
 

cyberdigger

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Cool story! I never saw anything like that around these parts.. a few months ago somebody posted about finding a grave lined with bottles.. I think they were Paines.. wish somebody could dig that thread up again!
 

Miles

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Yeah one of my neighbors was gardening years back and found some bottles, I don't know the dumping grounds were intentionally flower beds then, but either way it must be a neat surprise :D
 

RED Matthews

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Hello to all of you on this thread. When I was in Christchurch, NewZealand viviting their glass factory, one of the most interesting things I found there - was the fact that most home yards were all nothing but flower beds. One of those yards had corked bottles on two large walls.

One time when we were traveling in the western USA, I ran into a little building that was built with masonry using bottles for the building; with the bottoms facing the outside world.. I didn't get any pictures and I don't remember where it was. Unique though.

In my homepage, I pointed out that my first attraction to collecting glass was created when my parents visited some friends home. I was allowed to walk around the yard and was attracted to the lady's rock garden flower bed. What attracted me was over 50 pieces of glass from furnaces where the woman's husband worked. *Corning Glass". I liked what I saw and when they realized my attraction, they gave me three or four pieces to bring home. Later they gave me five or six additional pieces. Somewhere in my barn - I know they are there boxed up until I dig into them.

I started early being a packrat. RED Matthews
 

rockbot

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I saw an old plantation camp house that used a bunch of bottles in this fashion. to prevent soil erosion from rain water running off the roof. Can you image what that would sound like! we get over 100 inches of rain a year here.
 

ktbi

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There is a building in Rhyolite Nevada made of bottles. It was built in 1906 and the owner reportedly used 50,000 beer, whiskey, soda, and medicine bottles in the structure. I'll be stopping there in about a month and will be checking out some of the bottles. First time there for me - looking forward to it. Ron




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bottle34nut

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i have seen broken bottles cemented into the tops of old stone walls. i always figured it was to keep people from climbing over the wall. greg
 

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