11/26/11 Privy Dig

[Jim]

Rob and I dug a 12-foot stone-lined privy today. The house was 1870s, but the pit had been cleaned out and filled with newer junk in the 30s-40s era [:'(]. It was nothing but ash, rocks and throwaway junk to the bottom, with one exception. One good local milk bottle saved the day from being a complete bust. Here are a few pictures of this mostly uneventful dig..

 

[Jim]

Partially filled

 

[Jim]

30s-40s junk [:'(] All went back in the pit.

 

[Jim]

This was better than nothing. L.L. Shirey Locust Grove Dairy. This is a scarce Lewistown milk bottle. Rob loves his milk bottles, so it will be right at home in his collection. I kept zilch, but it was a beautiful day to dig and it was cool to see Rob get a good milk that he didn't have before. I pulled it out of the pit, but Rob is more of a milk guy than I am, so I was happy to see it go home with him.

 

[Exactly_vague]

Those rocks had to be back breakers for sure. There wasn't OOONNEEE!!!!! piece of 30-40 junk cool enough to keep?

 

[Jim]

Milk slug. This is the first one of these I ever dug. It looks like Locust Grove should be the town name where the bottle came from, but it is known to be a Lewistown bottle. There were painted ones, too, and those do say Lewistown in addition to Locust Grove Dairy. The embossed ones are a LOT harder to find.

We have another pit lined up, and will be digging it soon. Hopefully, this one goes a lot older and was not cleaned out. ~Jim

 

[Jim]

Some of the rocks were heavy, but I have dealt with worse. The milk bottle was cool, but everything else was absolute garbage. Plain NO DEPOSIT 40s beers, ketchups, plain food jars, just nasty! We had fun smashing about 100 of those quart beers. Got sick of looking at 'em, so we had our revenge on them [] ~Jim

 

[David Fertig]

I always like a good local milk.

 

[Jim]

Thanks, Dave. They are always fun to find. When I pulled that one out, I was expecting one of the usual common ones. It's sweet to wipe off the slug plate and be pleasantly surprised with a decent bottle. ~Jim

 

[rockbot]

ORIGINAL: Jim

Thanks, Dave. They are always fun to find. When I pulled that one out, I was expecting one of the usual common ones. It's sweet to wipe off the slug plate and be pleasantly surprised with a decent bottle.  ~Jim

So true Jim. Glad its a good one.