Big day tomorrow!

[ombudsman]

We packed away our collection in 1978 when we moved to this house. All but about 100 bottles have been crated in the (low) attic over the garage ever since. Today I got down (down a ladder) all the bottles and moved them into my bedroom (upstairs) for unpacking.

Boy, how easy that last sentence was to write! The activity it describes, though, was difficult probably beyond your imagining. We're talking about approx. a dozen crates and boxes. But it's done.

I started to open 'em up, but immediately realized that the bottles are cold as ice. For that reason, I'm going to let them (at least partially) come slowly to room temperature before we unpack them. Tomorrow.

Our collection would look pretty lame compared to some I've seen here, but we love them. I can say that essentially all are BIM. Most (but not all) are common, though. This part of Oklahoma wasn't settled until the land run of 1893, so the chances of finding something older (in the ground) are almost nil. We have a few pontilled bottles, but they were all dug with a silver pick.

We do have several fire grenades in various colors. We're anxious to see those and all the other old friends. We can hardly wait! I'll try to post some pictures one day soon.
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[ombudsman]

Since I started the thread, I feel free to hijack it. I mentioned above that I want to let my bottles come to room temperature slowly. I learned that lesson very early in our bottle collecting.

On a Thanksgiving day in about 1964 or 5, while my mother and my wife were cooking the feast, I drove into the country looking for old places to scrutinize for bottles. In those days, you could find BIM bottles lying on the ground around old abandoned farmsteads. Not three miles from the folk's house I came to an old farmstead. I looked under the abandoned house, where I found a BIM medicine (can't remember what it was,) but no other bottles were evident.

Now, this was an unseasonably warm day. There were so many birds singing, it struck me that I was hearing a natural symphony. In back of the farmstead the pasture sloped gently down to a little creek (esentially dry.) It was maybe 1/8 or 1/4 mile down to the creek. It was such a nice day, I thought maybe I'd just mosey down there and see if there was any sign of dumping. Down close to the creek there was an area showing a very few broken shards of early ABM stuff on the surface. As I walked back up to the car (where my digging fork had been left) I debated whether it was worthwhile to get the fork and walk all the way back down there to check what probably was nothing.

It was a nice day, though, and the bird were providing a symphony, so I decided to take a chance. To make an already long story shorter, What I had found was a TOC dump in a gulley that had subsequently been filled in with "dirty thirties" dust and grassed over. I pulled more than 200 bottles from that shallow dump. Perhaps 4 or 5 were ABM, all the rest BIM.

I dug that dump some more later in the day (after the feast,) and on a number of days afterwards. One day while I was digging, the owner of the land sauntered down from the road and asked me what I was doing. I explained and apologized for not finding out who owned the land and seeking permission. He was perfectly cool about it and said that as long as I filled my excavation it was alright with him. In those days, most rural landowners were like that. Oklahomans are, in general, very friendly and accommodating people. Some are very protective of their land, though, and do not take kindly to trespass without permission. (Once I was confronted by a farmer who found it necessary to bring his rifle to impress upon me that, though it was just a patch of bricks - and some old bottles! - in a wheat field, IT WAS HIS! However, after a good dressing down, he let me continue my search! That's an Oklahoman for you!)

Anyway, that "Thanksgiving dump" was my first dump. It was great!

Now, to the connection between the previous post and this one. The night of that day of discovery, I sat down to call the older lady who had helped me become a bottle nut. I wanted to tell her about my wonderful finds. One bottle particularly intrigued me - a BIM Drake's Palmetto Wine Compound. Now, that is probably a common bottle, but it was neat. While I was talking to her on the phone, with the Drake's in my lap, I heard a sharp SNAP. The bottle spontaneously cracked across one side (close to the bottom), around the corner and across the bottom. What a heartbreaker! I didn't know any better than to handle bottles carelessly temperature-wise. As a matter of fact, I had probably washed the bottle with hot water. I never forgot that incident and have since been more careful.

There. Bored yet?

Dave

 

[epackage]

Not bored at all Dave, just waiting to see what you have had tucked away all these years....Jim

 

[ombudsman]

ORIGINAL: epackage

Not bored at all Dave, ....Jim

Ok, then, I'll try again.

One day, back in the day, my wife (though I don't think we had tied the knot yet) and I drove country roads in western Oklahoma, looking for old places. We spotted an old abandoned farmstead above and about 1/4 mile from the road. There was no drive going up there. We hiked up through the red cedars and other bottom-land trees to the place. There was just one corner of the house still standing, with a bit of roof collapse over it, protecting that little remnant of the kitchen of what once was a home. I wriggled into that space, where I found, on a shelf over the sink, egg receipts dated 1939.

We started looking for bottles, but didn't immediately find anything. We went down into the storm cellar. There were lots of bottles in there, including about 200 full ABM crown top beer bottles - full of home-brewed beer. It was a hot day and we had not brought any water. Man, though I'm not much of a beer lover, I sure wanted to drink some of that. I feared poisoning, so I refrained. While I poked around in the cellar, not finding anything old, Paula left the cellar. After a while, I heard her say, in a stressed voice, "David, I think you'd better come up here." I thought maybe the landowner had arrived or that she had been bitten by a rattlesnake or something. I hurried out of the cellar and over to where I saw her standing nearby looking down at something.

That something turned out to be two big galvanized washtubs full of (all but one) BIM bottles, mostly buried in blown-in dirt. Right on top was a small ABM milk-type bottle with a bail closure (no lid,) beautifully amethystine. Also a big mint amber W.H. Bull's Herbs and Iron. (I know that this is a common bottle, but, nevertheless it is my favorite of our collection - it has fabulous character.) What a thrill! We dug all the bottles out of the tubs, emptied all the dirt and put the bottles back in. (It took us two trips to the car to load up.)

We went on looking around the farmyard, where we found two Carmen Bottling Works, Carmen, O.T. hutches. (Actually, I think we found the second one on a subsequent visit to the site.)

One day soon I intend to revisit this site. Somewhere around there certainly is a dump. It has, though, been a loooong time since we were there and some bottle collector may have gotten the goods.

I know perfectly well that all diggers who read this will recall certain days when everything was perfect and the bottles presented themselves. These are two of mine.

There. I'll bet you're bored now.
Dave

 

[LC]

I was never that lucky in the area I live in . While I was in the service about eight or ten guys in my area had already came down with the bottle bug , and by the time I got hooked they had already turned to country sides upside down . They even found the old town dump on the banks of White Oak Creek dating back to pontiled scroll flasks , made me sick just looking at the bottles they had uncovered . I had actually grew up on that and other parts of White Oak , but then the dump was covered over . The bank had actually caved off the hillside of the main part of the dump , one of my friends found it
while fishing for rock bass one afternoon. He said he looked up at it and all you could see was bottles sticking out of the dirt all over the place . He told me the land owners would just go nuts when they caught him there and would run him off . He said that winter he dug it at night with a flashlight with the snow flying . He sure did have a lot of great bottles from Cincinnati , as well as many super nice bottles from other areas of the country .

 

[JOETHECROW]

Great dig stories! Thank you

 

[ombudsman]

In 1967 I was in Juneau, Alaska, for a glacier study. I made friends with two local guys who had both spent most of their (young) lives tramping around the forest there. When they learned that I collected old bottles, one of them recalled that he had stashed under a trail "bridge" two old bottles. They told me that there is a place in the woods near the year-old hidden pair where they used to break old bottles (kids! #&%#!) I didn't put too much stock in the two bottles still being under the logs, but we hiked up there anyway.

My buddy took us right to the trail bridge, crawled underneath, and came out with the two bottles: a beautiful whittled Hunyadi Janos and a beautiful amber Jesse Moore Hunt whiskey.

They then took me a few hundred feet off the trail into the rain forest (really dense.) They showed me a little rise, which turned out to be a sphagnum-covered household dump. For a number of days after, I dug (using the only tool I had - an iceaxe) into the refuse of a household, the past existence of which is completely erased - There was no sign at all that people had ever even walked there, let alone had a cabin. I found maybe two dozen BIMAL bottles. None of them were fabulous, but I liked all of them. I also dug out, but did not keep, a lot of broken Blue Willow pottery. This particularly struck me, as it seems that fancy pottery probably indicates a feminine presence. Standing in what was a wild "jungle", with the nearest person miles away and the woods filled with dangerous bears, it was hard to imagine a domestic household where (cue dramatic music here) people lived, loved, laughed and cried.

Unfortunately, a number of the bottles were broken in transit back to Oklahoma. I was hopelessly naive about airline baggage handling and had not packed them carefully enough. I do still have the survivors, including the two "stashed" bottles, and they remind me of a great dig.

Several members here have heard (read) that account. As a matter of fact, I can't remember if I have posted it here. Incipient Alzheimer's or normal memory loss consequent to aging? Who knows? If I did know, I'd forget! [sm=lol.gif]

 

[Poison_Us]

Great stories.... Only 'hunting' stories I have are of rocks.....was a rock hound for years in my youth. I would still do it today, but have other things going one....life.

 

[ombudsman]

ORIGINAL: Poison_Us

Great stories....  Only 'hunting' stories I have are of rocks.....was a rock hound for years in my youth.  I would still do it today, but have other things going one....life.

I am a rockhound, big time. My education was in geology, though fate led me elsewhere. I have never done professional geology. Now we hunt rocks and I do lapidary (mostly opals.) We haven't done any hunting to speak of for the last couple of years, but certainly plan to. We have two Honda Trail 90s (a '66 on which I did a frame-up, and a good original '69 w. engine overhaul,) and the long-term plan is to replace our old van with a pickup so that we can pull our travel trailer and haul the bikes too. Rock hunting via trail bike is a dream I've had since the Trail 90s first came out.

 

[mr.fred]

More stories please[]