My Clay spot

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This is one o my favorites. The lake is calm with the sun going down and the bottle is nice.

 

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Not the deepest stamping but the bottle is in excellent condition.

 

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Fairy early in Spring, on May 2nd, we went right back where we left off. We searched and scoured and found some neat bottles, mostly glass beers and medicines. My buddy Tom found one of the most interesting items. It was an old solid brass "No Solicitation" sign from Clearwater Florida dated 1923. What it was doing there, we had no idea. After several trips, we decided that the area was over picked and we needed to move on. For most of that summer, we searched across a long section of shoreline looking for spots. By October, nearly a year after first finding those two clays, we were out of ideas. Tom agreed to try the clay beer area again. I really wasn't finding much until the end of the tank when I grabbed a loop seal glass beer bottle. I knew we wouldn't have left that, so, I figured I was in an unsearched spot. I was clawing way way down when I felt . . . a clay beer bottle! This time, I was ready and I recognized it right away. It was a GRISBAUM & KEHREIN, almost identical to the first one that I had found. This was my first duplicate clay. I had never found the same one twice. Plus, in less than one year, I had found more clays here than I had found in the previous 17 combined.

 

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Another nice example.

 

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Even after finding that clay, Tom was convinced that this location was done. He thought that there was nothing left and he didn't want to waste more time diving there.
Fast forwarding to the following summer, I asked Tom if he wanted to dive on a nice summer day. He couldn't make it because he had other committments (his kids had baseball or soccer). I told him that I was going without him. I knew right away where I would go. In fact, later when I called him to tell him that I had returned to the clay beer spot, he said, "Dude. You couldn't pay me a hundred bucks to go back there." I answered, "Dude. I'm pretty sure they did." But now I'm ahead of the story . . .


I got out in the afternoon and started diving. Fairly early on, I found a citrate of magnesia and then an amber Husting's crown bottle. Neither of these bottles are very good but I doubted that we would leave them. That meant that there were still things here to find. Shortly after that, I saw a brass item. It was a fishing reel still partially attached to a corroding pole. I grabbed the reel and began to surface. Half way up, the reel broke loose of the pole and fell off. With cat-like (or more accurately catfish-like) reflexes, I caught the reel before it sank. It had cool looking petals on it which turned out to be typical of a fly fishing reel.

 

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Shortly afterward, I bumped a bottle with my hand. This time, I had grabbed the bottle by the blob. There was no mistaking that crazy stoneware top. It was another clay beer! I began to pull my float line over in order to ascend and store the bottle when I had the thought, "What if there are more?" Like maybe someone was fishing here and tossed a bunch of them overboard. Who knows? I began to pat around with my left hand. I wasn't digging just patting at the bottom. The clay was in my right hand. As I was feeling around, I found something. It was a small round object too small to be the top of a bottle unless it was a medicine. I grabbed it and pulled it up out of the bottom. As I pulled the thing into view, I was amazed to see that I was holding a bottle but only by the cork that still sealed it. It was another clay beer bottle with its' seal intact! Wow!


I took the line that connects me to the float at the surface off of my arm and marked my place at the bottom with it. That would allow me to stow the bottles and then return right where I just was on the bottom. As I ascended, a whole bunch of bubbles came up around my face. I realized that the cork that had sealed the second clay had come out and the air trapped within had bubbled out. I had likely loosened that cork by unwittingly picking the bottle up by the stopper. Oh well, I still had the bottle and that was the main thing. This was pretty exciting. Instead of waiting two years, or even two weeks, I had found two clays in about two minutes!


Unlike my earlier clays, these two were rare examples. Both had banners, with the stamping or debossing inside. One was from W. WEBER in Racine, Wis. I have never really found any decent bottle from that city much less an obscure stoneware like this. The other was from CHAS. GIPFEL, Milwaukee. It featured a cobalt band around the top and a small cross and star. Very cool.


When I sank back down, I found no more clays. I did get some glass beer bottles and an antique folding anchor to finish off my tanks.
This area wound up being extraordinarily productive for clay beers for me. My dive buddy never found one though he did rack up some amazing bottles during the same time period including two impossible to find hutchinson sodas. I have no idea why so many clays came out for me there, but I certainly am not complaining. From time to time, I plan to try a tank or two over there in the hopes that maybe just maybe, more clays are out there to be found.

 

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That sums it up. Let me know what you think, Bob