Wheelah23
Well-Known Member
I've been a dump digger for over a year now, but today I finally graduated into privies. It's a whole different ball game, and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks online... [8D] Here's the first thread I made, which was about wanting to dig a privy... Read it if you want a laugh... []
What can I say about this dig? Well, it's the best privy I've ever dug... [] The soil around here is very rocky and clay-ey, so Tom said the digging would be hard... But then again, that's all I've known, so it seemed like a typical dig to me. Just a couple feet down, we hit ash. And in an incredibly strange turn of events, we hit a hollow cavity filled with bottles and covered over with some old wire mesh! The bottles were 60% unembossed tooled beers, ALL with the same mark on the base which I forgot right now, and the bottles are soaking so I can't check. Either way, there had to have been almost 100 of these things. Every one but a honey amber one went back in the hole. Another 35% or so were these weird green tooled quart crowns from "Iroquois Springs". A lot of them have labels on them still, including one that has an almost perfect label. I'll clean that up carefully. Tom had never seen one, and I can't find anything about them online, but it sure ain't rare now! [8D] The cavity had a couple other nice bottles in it. We have no idea why or how the bottles got there, but they were clearly stacked on purpose. The privy was enormous, and it took us from 9 to 5 to dig it. We actually couldn't dig the whole thing, because half of it was under these huge boulders for some reason. The thing was 5' wide and deep' but the width had to be at least 10'. Tom said maybe it was a four seater? Strange indeed.
We dug it to the bottom at least, and there was pretty much nothing there. There were some big rocks in the corners on one side, but we couldn't dig the whole thing, so who knows what was on the other side. The house was built in 1889, and it got plumbing in 1917 (awfully late, no?), so I think it was definitely dipped. The bastards didn't get everything though, as we found some nice stuff in one side of the bottom, which was older than the other bottles. I was hoping for a Scola blob, but alas, none were to be found. The best bottle of the dig was a small medicine from Bloomfield, which I didn't know existed. There was another one, and a bigger size, that were both broken... []
I'll post the cleaned up finds later, for now you'll have to drool over the dirty bottles... [&:]
What can I say about this dig? Well, it's the best privy I've ever dug... [] The soil around here is very rocky and clay-ey, so Tom said the digging would be hard... But then again, that's all I've known, so it seemed like a typical dig to me. Just a couple feet down, we hit ash. And in an incredibly strange turn of events, we hit a hollow cavity filled with bottles and covered over with some old wire mesh! The bottles were 60% unembossed tooled beers, ALL with the same mark on the base which I forgot right now, and the bottles are soaking so I can't check. Either way, there had to have been almost 100 of these things. Every one but a honey amber one went back in the hole. Another 35% or so were these weird green tooled quart crowns from "Iroquois Springs". A lot of them have labels on them still, including one that has an almost perfect label. I'll clean that up carefully. Tom had never seen one, and I can't find anything about them online, but it sure ain't rare now! [8D] The cavity had a couple other nice bottles in it. We have no idea why or how the bottles got there, but they were clearly stacked on purpose. The privy was enormous, and it took us from 9 to 5 to dig it. We actually couldn't dig the whole thing, because half of it was under these huge boulders for some reason. The thing was 5' wide and deep' but the width had to be at least 10'. Tom said maybe it was a four seater? Strange indeed.
We dug it to the bottom at least, and there was pretty much nothing there. There were some big rocks in the corners on one side, but we couldn't dig the whole thing, so who knows what was on the other side. The house was built in 1889, and it got plumbing in 1917 (awfully late, no?), so I think it was definitely dipped. The bastards didn't get everything though, as we found some nice stuff in one side of the bottom, which was older than the other bottles. I was hoping for a Scola blob, but alas, none were to be found. The best bottle of the dig was a small medicine from Bloomfield, which I didn't know existed. There was another one, and a bigger size, that were both broken... []
I'll post the cleaned up finds later, for now you'll have to drool over the dirty bottles... [&:]