Consider the puff.
An angel's delight to God's ear....the slightest whisper. A barely discernible gem passed from one to another.
How do they survive? Cut from the end of a blow pipe while being attached to a punty rod ….so small...so delicate. We've all found one. The flared lips often chipped. The thinnest glass often crazed. I marvel that they survive at all.
Bottle diggers call them puffs. What a perfectly brilliant description. A single puff of air trapped in glass.
I found my first puff when I was sixteen years old. Digging at Maine Prairie was always a challenge & a delight. One had to time the rise & fall of the tide water... an outgoing tide extends the dig. I would wear the oldest, rattiest pair of Levi’s I could find & plunk into the muck. Crawling along the bank I would peek into every crevice & under cut. The bottles were always found along the East bank of the slough....the prevailing S/W wind saw to that. They were found in a distinct dark mud band.... probably evidence of the hydraulic mining in the Sierra Mountains.
The excitement was electric....you never knew what you would find.
Maine prairie was an early town located in Northern California's valley. The history of Solano County by Thompson & West relates how tons of wheat were shipped to San Francisco via barge & boat from this location. The town suffered a major disaster in 1862 when “the great deluge†nearly washed the town away. Sacramento, Marysville, all the towns along the Sacramento River suffered from this flood. It was said that a prostitute in Sacramento found a row boat and paddled the city street offering poor drowning citizens a ride to safety but only for a sizable fee...a heart of stone.
In 1865 the citizens of Maine Prairie who supported the Union (the Maine Prairie Rifles) would march in the streets....drink & generally carry on.....music to my ears.
The lowly puff...always an open pontil. Some with a rolled lip & my favorite the flared lip ~ pictured below for your approval. This 2 ¼ “ tall gem from the mud of a ghost town....[
]
An angel's delight to God's ear....the slightest whisper. A barely discernible gem passed from one to another.
How do they survive? Cut from the end of a blow pipe while being attached to a punty rod ….so small...so delicate. We've all found one. The flared lips often chipped. The thinnest glass often crazed. I marvel that they survive at all.
Bottle diggers call them puffs. What a perfectly brilliant description. A single puff of air trapped in glass.
I found my first puff when I was sixteen years old. Digging at Maine Prairie was always a challenge & a delight. One had to time the rise & fall of the tide water... an outgoing tide extends the dig. I would wear the oldest, rattiest pair of Levi’s I could find & plunk into the muck. Crawling along the bank I would peek into every crevice & under cut. The bottles were always found along the East bank of the slough....the prevailing S/W wind saw to that. They were found in a distinct dark mud band.... probably evidence of the hydraulic mining in the Sierra Mountains.
The excitement was electric....you never knew what you would find.
Maine prairie was an early town located in Northern California's valley. The history of Solano County by Thompson & West relates how tons of wheat were shipped to San Francisco via barge & boat from this location. The town suffered a major disaster in 1862 when “the great deluge†nearly washed the town away. Sacramento, Marysville, all the towns along the Sacramento River suffered from this flood. It was said that a prostitute in Sacramento found a row boat and paddled the city street offering poor drowning citizens a ride to safety but only for a sizable fee...a heart of stone.
In 1865 the citizens of Maine Prairie who supported the Union (the Maine Prairie Rifles) would march in the streets....drink & generally carry on.....music to my ears.
The lowly puff...always an open pontil. Some with a rolled lip & my favorite the flared lip ~ pictured below for your approval. This 2 ¼ “ tall gem from the mud of a ghost town....[
]
