surfaceone
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2008
- Messages
- 11,161
- Reaction score
- 24
- Points
- 0
Good afternoon,
This is one of my favorite bottles. It's from the second big dig I ever did. I've spoken of it in the past, but never shown it.
So there I was, years ago, scoping out an urban renewal project in the early stages of landscape rearranging. I acquainted myself with the excavator, and to my delight was given the green light to "knock yourself out." The project was nearly a city block in scope. There was dirt everywhere, glittery shards, marbles, and some bottles right on the surface.
I was in old stuff heaven. I walked the site repeatedly and seemed to find new things with each circuit. The excavator Chuck was kind enough to run his D-9 all over the place and gouge out these swell cuts. He'd also assemble these lovely big dirt piles. Huge ones, big ones and in between ones. He was digging out some old basements and cellars. There were sandstone block mountains.
I didn't have a probe yet, nor had I ever heard of one. Where to dig? I spotted ash on some of those cuts Chuck had made. Yahtzee! I dug lots of stuff. Targets of opportunity. I tried to to decipher the patterns of shard scatterage in the wake of Caterpillar tracks. Is there any rhyme or reason to that? Found a perfect old string lipped champagne split nestled down beneath the the teeth of his tread. Untouched slick syndrome,staring me in the face, and I didn't even know it yet.
Chuck dug the deepest hole to date on this site. Big as a house, twenty five or thirty feet deep. He had bisected an old brick four foot sewer line. It was flowing clean water. Certainly looked clean. This was looking like an underground oasis.
Chuck had made the walls of this hole deeply perpendicular, at first, so there was no getting down there yet. I could only stand on the bank, and look down upon ashy layer after ashy layer. The deepest thickest layer was near the bottom. There was glass winking at me from the cuts of his big bucket. There was a whole bottle about 6 feet down the edge, just hanging in the ash. I had to go home and get my rake. Murray & Lanman Florida Water, perfect and this beautiful opalescent color.
I combed through the nearby piles that had once been in the hole. Bottles and shards everywhere. Druggists, slicks, Sozodonts, sodas, beers. I swept my foot over an amber shoulder sticking outta the dirt, Ely's Cream Balm. This was great but I had to get down in that hole.
Luckily, Chuck obliged the next day and created a dirt stairway to the bottom. I was trying to figure out the lay of the underground. There seemed to be stuff at nearly every elevation from about six feet deep, all the way to the bottom. There was a great ashy pile of debris on the opposite shore of the now backed up sewer line. I had a little lake! Paradise.
So many places to scratch around. I really didn't know what I was doing yet. I experimented with scratchers. Came up with a bent tine barbecue fork that worked great, I thought. Some of the ash layers were real fluffy. You could fork through some ash. I was paranoid of breaking these bottles that had been buried all these many years. Still am.
Chuck had thoughtfully knocked a tree trunk down the hole. and I now had a painless bridge to the far shore, and that ashy pile. It was so soupy at the bottom with that sewer running. T'would suck the boots right off yer feet, and it did. I came home covered in mud more than once. Quite the quagmire.
That ashy mound held many swell treasures. Early on I was puzzled where to throw the dirt. Hadn't even begun to think about screening. It never occurred to me to do so until much later. I was throwing dirt into the wet parts. this worked for a while. I built a little penninsula along one edge so I could access more of the ash vein.
What was this? It appeared to be a huge deep trash pit. I never found any evidence of wood or block walls, though there was lots of block and brick in Chuck's spoilage, and in the ash, dirt, and clay strata. This had been between the mansion and carriage house of quite the grand old dame of houses back in the day, I later learned.
While digging, and scratching up a storm, I wondered about the people and all these bottles and trinkets they had left behind. The musings one has at the bottom of a hole, were running wild for me. This was long before I discovered the internet as a tool for finding bottle information. I didn't have a clue as to many of the bottles. "What the heck was this thing," was lighting up in little thought balloons floating outta that hole nearly every day.
This place was between 2 major thoroughfares in the hood, and before it got all tore up, had many footpaths through the overgrown lots. There was a Burger King at the end of a cross street and a church. It didn't take long for some of the more adventurous citizens to start crisscrossing the site again. Only the most reckless would attempt a traverse in the rain or directly after.
I got the occasional visitor leaning over the edge and yelling down, "What the hail are ya doin down there? Digging for gold?" etc. You've all heard it.
**** I gotta go. Be back soon...****
This is one of my favorite bottles. It's from the second big dig I ever did. I've spoken of it in the past, but never shown it.
So there I was, years ago, scoping out an urban renewal project in the early stages of landscape rearranging. I acquainted myself with the excavator, and to my delight was given the green light to "knock yourself out." The project was nearly a city block in scope. There was dirt everywhere, glittery shards, marbles, and some bottles right on the surface.
I was in old stuff heaven. I walked the site repeatedly and seemed to find new things with each circuit. The excavator Chuck was kind enough to run his D-9 all over the place and gouge out these swell cuts. He'd also assemble these lovely big dirt piles. Huge ones, big ones and in between ones. He was digging out some old basements and cellars. There were sandstone block mountains.
I didn't have a probe yet, nor had I ever heard of one. Where to dig? I spotted ash on some of those cuts Chuck had made. Yahtzee! I dug lots of stuff. Targets of opportunity. I tried to to decipher the patterns of shard scatterage in the wake of Caterpillar tracks. Is there any rhyme or reason to that? Found a perfect old string lipped champagne split nestled down beneath the the teeth of his tread. Untouched slick syndrome,staring me in the face, and I didn't even know it yet.
Chuck dug the deepest hole to date on this site. Big as a house, twenty five or thirty feet deep. He had bisected an old brick four foot sewer line. It was flowing clean water. Certainly looked clean. This was looking like an underground oasis.
Chuck had made the walls of this hole deeply perpendicular, at first, so there was no getting down there yet. I could only stand on the bank, and look down upon ashy layer after ashy layer. The deepest thickest layer was near the bottom. There was glass winking at me from the cuts of his big bucket. There was a whole bottle about 6 feet down the edge, just hanging in the ash. I had to go home and get my rake. Murray & Lanman Florida Water, perfect and this beautiful opalescent color.
I combed through the nearby piles that had once been in the hole. Bottles and shards everywhere. Druggists, slicks, Sozodonts, sodas, beers. I swept my foot over an amber shoulder sticking outta the dirt, Ely's Cream Balm. This was great but I had to get down in that hole.
Luckily, Chuck obliged the next day and created a dirt stairway to the bottom. I was trying to figure out the lay of the underground. There seemed to be stuff at nearly every elevation from about six feet deep, all the way to the bottom. There was a great ashy pile of debris on the opposite shore of the now backed up sewer line. I had a little lake! Paradise.
So many places to scratch around. I really didn't know what I was doing yet. I experimented with scratchers. Came up with a bent tine barbecue fork that worked great, I thought. Some of the ash layers were real fluffy. You could fork through some ash. I was paranoid of breaking these bottles that had been buried all these many years. Still am.
Chuck had thoughtfully knocked a tree trunk down the hole. and I now had a painless bridge to the far shore, and that ashy pile. It was so soupy at the bottom with that sewer running. T'would suck the boots right off yer feet, and it did. I came home covered in mud more than once. Quite the quagmire.
That ashy mound held many swell treasures. Early on I was puzzled where to throw the dirt. Hadn't even begun to think about screening. It never occurred to me to do so until much later. I was throwing dirt into the wet parts. this worked for a while. I built a little penninsula along one edge so I could access more of the ash vein.
What was this? It appeared to be a huge deep trash pit. I never found any evidence of wood or block walls, though there was lots of block and brick in Chuck's spoilage, and in the ash, dirt, and clay strata. This had been between the mansion and carriage house of quite the grand old dame of houses back in the day, I later learned.
While digging, and scratching up a storm, I wondered about the people and all these bottles and trinkets they had left behind. The musings one has at the bottom of a hole, were running wild for me. This was long before I discovered the internet as a tool for finding bottle information. I didn't have a clue as to many of the bottles. "What the heck was this thing," was lighting up in little thought balloons floating outta that hole nearly every day.
This place was between 2 major thoroughfares in the hood, and before it got all tore up, had many footpaths through the overgrown lots. There was a Burger King at the end of a cross street and a church. It didn't take long for some of the more adventurous citizens to start crisscrossing the site again. Only the most reckless would attempt a traverse in the rain or directly after.
I got the occasional visitor leaning over the edge and yelling down, "What the hail are ya doin down there? Digging for gold?" etc. You've all heard it.
**** I gotta go. Be back soon...****
]
