1/10/04

     It was a little crisp in the morning, but once we got going things quickly warmed up. By about noon, it was expected to be around 60 degrees, perfect digging weather! If you believe this, you must not be from Wisconsin, and I have a couple rare unembossed ABM medicines I will sell you for $1000 apiece. Just kidding. It has been cold here and we are trying to beat the frost. An insulating blanket of snow has bought us a least one more dig.

      Ken Ok'd a dig at his place. I was pretty excited. It was a big, old place. Surely these people had extra money to afford high end liquor and other goods.

Ken's house       Pit next to Carriage House

        I stopped by during the week to find the edges of the pit. Just in case the frost was there. At least we could chop through and hit the pit. When I got there, probing was easy. I outlined this one, and started probing the rest of the yard. Along the east property line, I found two more pits. They were easy to find. The probe would only go in 2' anywhere in the yard. Where the pits were, the probe would go to the handle.

        Steve was first out of the truck and to the pit with probe in hand. He started probing and yelled "I can't get the probe in anywhere." When I was probing during the week, I stomped all the snow down flat. This eliminated any r-value the snow had. Thus allowing the ground to freeze. What a chore it was busting the frozen ground. But, determination won out.

    The first pit was next to the carriage house. We were down about 5' when we found a couple bones and a broken medicine bottle. We knew we were in a pit, but it didn't look promising. Steve noted a weird, sandy fill next to the carriage house. It was loose and kept falling in the pit. Since it was in the shape of a tube, and at the right angle, we figured the crapper was actually inside the carriage house! They must have built a little chute that aimed everything outside.  Anyway, another 2' down we hit the layer. It was from around the turn of the century and loaded with broken glass and pottery. We were laughing about some of the pottery shards. The mostly had birds on them. We even found several bird feeders and water dishes. They must have been into their birds. Steve pulled out a couple local Lufkin hutches and unembossed blob beers. It ended up being close to 9' deep. We filled it up and headed to the next one hoping it would be a little older.

    The next pit wasn't as deep. We started off finding some very deep aqua glass shards. The broken necks we found were pretty crude. This must have been the oldest pit. It was thin on glass and shards. The only whole bottles we got were: a weird looking cone ink, Halford's table sauce, and a deep amber "M & L anti-septic fluid" from Grand Rapids Mich.

            Anti-Septic close up