A
amandarud55
Guest
Hi all. Thank you for allowing me into this forum.
I’ll start with a quick background. My father in law had a love of digging bottles and passed the excitement of the hobby to our young son; an adventurous 9 year old who could spend his entire day digging. He’s been doing so since he was 6. Sadly, my father in law passed leaving my husband and I to keep the excitement alive - and we are both embarrassingly rookie at his hobby.
Though we’ve got permissions to an old town dump, our son has his sights set on a privy dig. His Papaw had him fired up about doing one but sadly never got to take him so we are wanting to fulfill that wish - no matter the outcome.
We’ve had our noses in forums, books, old newspapers and maps to cram. We’ve taken field trips to local history museums and libraries and have started the process of respectfully gaining permissions. We’re trying.
The only issue? We still feel like we aren’t doing something right. Our Sanborn maps seem to only include certain areas of our city and every permission we’ve had thus far has literally been just a block or two short of these maps. We are having trouble locating the privies. Though we’ve confidentially gathered tons of info on how to find a privy, actually finding one is something we have yet to do. We’d love that “ah ha, so this is what they’re talking about” moment.
It appears most of the privies in the area were located against the alleys and we believe the local privies were dipped. We found numerous newspaper articles that would support that.We’ve probed along the alley at a location we can frequent, but darn it, we’re just not confident on what we’re feeling.
We dug a test area and found ash about 3” deep. About 2 feet down we found a broken Duffy malt whisky, a broken applied beer and a piece of a real pretty blue aqua med. About 6 more inches down we found hard orange clay. The probe busts through it, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that indicates we should go further.
On the opposite side of the property we found ash and loads of coal by the alley. It was probably about 2 foot down. We were excited when we found some brick in what appeared to be a circular formation (though messy) but it hit that same clay about 3 foot as well and the brick seemed to stop.
Would anyone be willing to account their urban privy digs as far as what layers you’ve run into and what indicators were there for you to keep going when there wasn’t a map and obvious signs of a privy? Maybe recount a dig that surprised you? Or a dig that had a heavily dipped privy? There’s no dip/indention in the area, no lilac, no funny colored grass; no obvious indication to the rookies at all - just loads of gravel to move.
My husband and I appreciate your input in advance.
Privy Promised in Indiana
I’ll start with a quick background. My father in law had a love of digging bottles and passed the excitement of the hobby to our young son; an adventurous 9 year old who could spend his entire day digging. He’s been doing so since he was 6. Sadly, my father in law passed leaving my husband and I to keep the excitement alive - and we are both embarrassingly rookie at his hobby.
Though we’ve got permissions to an old town dump, our son has his sights set on a privy dig. His Papaw had him fired up about doing one but sadly never got to take him so we are wanting to fulfill that wish - no matter the outcome.
We’ve had our noses in forums, books, old newspapers and maps to cram. We’ve taken field trips to local history museums and libraries and have started the process of respectfully gaining permissions. We’re trying.
The only issue? We still feel like we aren’t doing something right. Our Sanborn maps seem to only include certain areas of our city and every permission we’ve had thus far has literally been just a block or two short of these maps. We are having trouble locating the privies. Though we’ve confidentially gathered tons of info on how to find a privy, actually finding one is something we have yet to do. We’d love that “ah ha, so this is what they’re talking about” moment.
It appears most of the privies in the area were located against the alleys and we believe the local privies were dipped. We found numerous newspaper articles that would support that.We’ve probed along the alley at a location we can frequent, but darn it, we’re just not confident on what we’re feeling.
We dug a test area and found ash about 3” deep. About 2 feet down we found a broken Duffy malt whisky, a broken applied beer and a piece of a real pretty blue aqua med. About 6 more inches down we found hard orange clay. The probe busts through it, but there doesn’t seem to be anything that indicates we should go further.
On the opposite side of the property we found ash and loads of coal by the alley. It was probably about 2 foot down. We were excited when we found some brick in what appeared to be a circular formation (though messy) but it hit that same clay about 3 foot as well and the brick seemed to stop.
Would anyone be willing to account their urban privy digs as far as what layers you’ve run into and what indicators were there for you to keep going when there wasn’t a map and obvious signs of a privy? Maybe recount a dig that surprised you? Or a dig that had a heavily dipped privy? There’s no dip/indention in the area, no lilac, no funny colored grass; no obvious indication to the rookies at all - just loads of gravel to move.
My husband and I appreciate your input in advance.
Privy Promised in Indiana
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