smoothjazz63
Active Member
Imagine this: A 40 x 40 brick building. A crawl space of 2 to 3 feet under a wooden floor. The year is 1894 and a soda bottling plant exists inside the building. Now, what is the one thing that a bottling plant of that era will always have? Answer = A wet floor, mainly from washing returnable bottles that are "never sold". What happens 20 years later in 1914? The floor is rotted and needs to be replaced. The bottling plant has gone out of business, and there are cases of hutchinsons that were deemed obsolete when crown tops became the norm. Also, there are crown tops that have sat unused since the plant closed. Add to that all the misc. other soda bottles from surrounding cities that were piled in the corner and never hauled away to that "low spot" in the ground nearby. The building's new owner has a room full of "trash" and no motivation to haul it away. Solution? Dump everything into the crawl space, fill and level with sand, then cover with 4" of cement. Fast forward to 1987. An enthusiastic young bottle collector (me) learns about the old soda plant (now abandoned) and wonders if there's anything to be found. He finds a small hole, about a foot across, in the concrete floor caused by water from a roof that has been leaking for 50 years. He probes the open hole with a broom handle, and out pops an 1852 blob top amber John Ryan Ginger Ale. Then another. Then another. 54 in all. Add to that about 135 hutchinsons from small towns all around the area. And crown tops of every description. Sealed like a tomb since 1914, there are no hobbleskirt Cokes at all. Just straight sides of all varieties and companies. The story is true. The town was in southeast Alabama. I submitted it to AB&GC magazine for publication TWICE for their "Writer's Contest". I guess it wasn't worthy of publication, but you're reading it here. My advice, follow every lead. And if you love endless articles about Saratoga sodas, historical flasks, pottery pigs, obscure New England glass factories, and fire grenades, sunscribe to AB&GC.