willong
Well-Known Member
Let me kick this off with a friendly “Grüß Gott” from Germany!
Two weeks ago my boys were picking trash along the embankment of a road near our house. The money they collect for returning the bottles is then spent on sweets - classical win-win-situation Even the dentist is happy … Deposit on bottles in Germany range from 8 ct for glass beer bottles to 25 ct for single use plastic bottles.
Here the bottle was found in the scrubb below the road:
View attachment 221813
When they returned with their bags I helped them sort through it and clean the bottles. The very dirty coke bottle caught my eye and I told the boys not to take this one to the store.
I never had seen one of these so I checked all the markings and asked Google.
Greenish Glass, reading:
CocaCola
Trade Mark Registered
min. contents 6 fl oz
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on the other side it says:
CocaCola
Trade Mark Registered
Bottle Pat D-105529
View attachment 221808
and below that, at the waist
60L44
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the bottom:
LYNN MASS
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What I found out so far is that the year of production is 1944 and it was produced in Lynn, Massachusetts.
How did the bottle end up here? After all, I am writing from southern Germany.
My home town Stuttgart was conquered by French troops on 04/21/1945. During the war there were more than 50 air raids on the city, and most of it had been reduced to rubble. In the west there is still a whole hill of piled up debris. The focus was on the south of the city with its airfield. And that is where we live right now. Some time back in the meadows behind our house, we also found a .50 cal casing which was produced in 1944 in Illinois. This one probably was fired by an US plane during one of the attacks on the city.
The meadows with a freshly cut tree:View attachment 221811
The casing & the bottle:
View attachment 221812
The French troops were joined by US troops in July 1945, who have significant bases in our area to this day.
I hope you enjoed the little story. If you have some more info on this particular bottle please share.
All the best for ya'll
TobiView attachment 221807View attachment 221808View attachment 221809View attachment 221810View attachment 221811View attachment 221812View attachment 221813
Let me kick this off with a friendly “Grüß Gott” from Germany!
Two weeks ago my boys were picking trash along the embankment of a road near our house. The money they collect for returning the bottles is then spent on sweets - classical win-win-situation Even the dentist is happy … Deposit on bottles in Germany range from 8 ct for glass beer bottles to 25 ct for single use plastic bottles.
Here the bottle was found in the scrubb below the road:
Welcome to the site FenderBender!
Coke, and many other beverages were previously sold in such returnable bottles. Now, virtually everything in plastic--it's disgusting! The bottle deposit was three cents when I was a kid, and a coke cost fifteen. So, gather five discarded bottles, plus one for the deposit and a lad could have a refreshing treat and a start on the next one.
If that brass cartridge case is from German 20mm ammunition, then depending upon where you recovered it, it could have spit lead at my late father from a strafing Bf 109 or Fw 190. He would have been returning the gesture with .50 BMG and curses.
During a second hitch--Dad reenlisted after the war and served in the United States Constabulary (occupation forces)--my father fraternized with the "enemy." That's how I came to be born in Stuttgart. My mother was working at snackbar in a PX--perhaps Kaiser Kaserne, but I don't know for sure and there are none still living that I can ask--when my parents met.
My mother, her sister and two young nieces, together with my Oma were all DP's (displaced persons) who had to flee Beuthen in Upper Silesia (now Bytom, Poland) ahead of the advancing Soviet forces near the end of the war. They serendipitously missed an evacuation train that would have delivered them to Dresden during the night of the firebombing.
My Opa did not escape Beuthen, but was taken by the Soviets for slave labor--he was civilian bookkeeper over 50 years old at the time. Sometime well into his captivity he escaped with another, and the two made their way back to Germany. My Opa's legs were quite crippled for the balance of his life; and he blamed the conditions endured through the captivity and escape (he and fellow escapee had to cross river by paddling themselves across on ice chunk on at least one occasion that I heard about).
When we visited relatives in Kornwestheim in 1964, I was fascinated to find beer delivered to the house by the case in returnable bottles with lightning stoppers. Wish I could get a nice rich Double Bock--Spaten Optimator is my favorite bier--delivered to me here on a regular basis in that manner.
Never know what we'll encounter on the Internet, do we?
Auf wiedersehen.