FEBUARY (vacation) Digging Results

Hello friends, how have you been. Here it is finally, our winter vacation dig, and Dan actually made this one!

Dan and I had been making plans to go some place warm this winter as far back as last summer. We thought it would be a great way to break up the winter blues, and cure a case of ever growing bottle fever. We jumped a plane Febuary 7th at 7:00 in the morning, and would spend 3 days looking for privies.

The temperature was about 50 degrees warmer when we landed and we where so excited about digging we must have looked like little kids alone in a candy store when we got off the plane. By the time we unloaded the gear at the motel, got the car, and grabbed a bite to eat it was getting dark. We where burning up to go scout possible dig sites and started driving around the town.

As the sun was setting we where counting house after house of 1860's greek revivals, too many to count! I am sure we had initiated a few calls to the police department about a suspicious car out in front driving back and forth looking at the basement.(that is how we can date the house)

We stayed out to around 10:00PM just looking at houses, then headed back to catch some sleep before the big day. We had a wake up ring at 8:00AM, looked outside and saw the sun blasting it's beautiful rays outside without a cloud in the sky, and off we went. We knocked on some doors and got several permissions right away. The people we talked to where really friedly and warm. We started probing the yards and didn't like what we felt though, there was a hard rock layer right below the surface that we couldn't get through.

That whole day went by without finding a pit. We talked to some real nice people and made some new friends but no bottles or privies to be had. We where now down to two days, would we get skunked?

The next day we headed out and started looking at another part of town. The ground was peneterable to our probes and we knew it was just a matter of time now. Finally we hit one!!!! We looked at eachother and said get the shovel.


This is a picture of the house that would prove to be our saving grace. These people here were so so nice, and let me tell you they would make Martha Stewart look untidee. That was the cleanest house I've ever seen or mostly smelt. They where continually cleaning stuff which permeated the warm breeze with the newest of cleansing detergents.

This one started off with pieces dating back to the early 1900's, the age wasn't great but we where still happy with that since this was our first pit in this new town.
Dan worked at excavating this old outhouse for about an hour as I was walking the property looking for more pits. This privy was not producing any bottles at all. Luckily the home owner owned two adjacent lots providing plenty of good places to check for more pits.

"I think I found a bottle"! The sun was so bright out there I could hardly keep my eyes open!

A little HOYT'S 10 cent cologne.

As you can see, Dan was having problems adjusting to the sunlight also. "WOW IT'S BRIGHT OUT HERE"

After about a half hours worth of probing the rest of the two lots, I had located three more pits. The pit above Dan is standing in was absolutely full to the top of blown bottles. I couldn't even get my probe in the ground more than two inches because it was hitting too many bottles!
When I went to do a test hole, there were bottles inches below the surface practically exposed to open air.

The 1890's owner of this pit was a full fledged alcoholic for sure. We had excavated at least 50 whiskeys from the first foot and a half of material! Poor guy!

Sorting out the keepers.

This was the perfect kind of pit to cure a case of the winter bottle digging blues.

Little yellowish NOLET gin.

Now is a good time to mention some new friends we made while on this trip. We heard of a local bottle collector from some of the locals when we first started knocking on doors there. His name was Bob and they told us he was the curator of a local business.
We headed over to see him the first night we arrived in town. Bob was really cool and fun to talk to and he knew a lot about bottles, so we invited him to come watch a privy dig with us. The next morning we called him from our motel and met for breakfast before the dig. We got to know eachother better and after breakfast we headed over to the spot we are digging above.

Here is Bob and Dan Posing for the camera. Bob's holding a CLEAR CASE GIN, and Dan has another HUTCH "Say CHEEEEEESE".

This is a rare local aqua hutch with a bobcat on the back of the bottle. Very cool!

Now is another good time to mention the rest of our new friends. After Bob was watching us dig for a while he said he has a friend named "bottle Vic" that he thought would be really interested in watching too. We said call her up!

Vicky showed up in about 10 minutes and gave a helping hand. She has been collecting and digging for almost as long as Bob has and was a real pleasure to meet. "Thanks again for the drinks"!
After about another half an hour the rest of our new friends would show up. The nicest couple you could ever imagine. This couple has been digging this town 15-20 years(maybe more)before I was even born. Their names are Commander Bill Ford and his wife Fran. They were amazed at the number of bottles coming out of this one hole.

Look at that mess of bottles. Some nice ones where coming out like a couple U.S. MARINE HOSPITAL bottles, SEALED CASE GINS, some really rare HUTCHES & SQUATS, a cool CIVIL WAR officers jacket button (that I latter lost), and many others to sweeten the catch.

Here is Commander Bill and his wife Fran. Two absolute wonderful people that have been digging bottles together for longer than most people have been married.

Dan and I had a really good time digging bottles and meeting new people along our journey. It is people like all of them that keep civilazation progressing forward. Dan and I meet a lot of what you would call "strangers" while doing our hobby. It can almost be thought of as an informal survey of Americana. We sometimes come across a completely unfriendly person, or someone that seems to be bitter and whose daily goal is to go against the grain of society ruining everyones day they come in contact with.

They say one spoiled apple can ruin the bunch, but it is people like Bob, Vic, the home owners here, and the Fords that put up a great argument against such an old addage.

Case gins, hutches, medicines, hospital bottles, I guess we didn't do too bad.

Well about this time we were all packed,(except for the bottles) and getting ready to head to the airport. Packing bottles for airplane travel WILL cause you to request a late check out!

We will have to do this again next winter!

Thanks for stopping by, see you later,
Scott.