1/17/03

    The boys made there way through the tail end of an ice storm to meet me . I didn't think they would come. Again, their level of dedication is proven!

    This was our second trip to Troy's house. I had marked the pit out earlier in the week and put some insulating board down to keep the frost out.  At the bottom of a ash layer that was four feet down,  a few bunk medicines and 1/2 pint flasks came out. We laugh every time we find the flasks. They sure enjoyed the drink here. Which brings up another point. Man that pit was full of rocks.  The pit ended up being 7 feet deep. We got excited a couple times finding amber blobs. Only to be let down when they ended up being unembossed. Craig excavated a cool mustache mug. I have never seen one of these. It has a little sieve built in to keep the fluid off the stache. Upon further examination, Steve discovered a dainty pattern on the front and concluded, "This must be a lady's mustache mug!"

Craig and the Mustache Mug.   The take

    Again we beat the odds not finding any hutches or  good blobs. It was a fun dig, plenty of bottles to keep us busy. We cleaned up to head over a couple streets to Troy's buddy Brian's house.

    It was a little early, so we went to the lot across the street. There had been a house there in the spring, now it was gone. We dug behind it and did find some good stuff before. The guys decided to reprobe the corner. We thought we had something on the other dig, there was just too many sticks and junk piled up for us to get a descent feel. Sure enough it was there. So, we opened it up. The first thing we found was a 2 gallon crock. We wished and wished, but no blue glazing was on this one. More unembossed whiskey flasks and unembossed blobs were found. On my turn, I was digging kind of hard. The ground was packed and I was taking big strokes with the shovel. Right in the middle of the pit I hooked a bottle and a very loud crack sounded. Crap, what ever it was I broke it.  I am sure Brett Favre had that same sinking feeling  when he let that ball fly last week against the Eagles. The guys told me this one would be my first pick, since I broke it. I about puked when I moved the dirt and a crude amber neck and blob was exposed. I gave it a little tug. It felt solid for about 0.3 seconds and then pulled out in my hand. Steve informed me it was probably a Warner's Safe Cure. Then I pulled out the rest and about cried when I saw it was an amber  Log Cabin/ Scalpine/ from Rochester, NY. I felt very bad, my haste had cost one of the fellows a nice bottle. I got out of the hole and hid for awhile. Before Steve finished off the pit, he found a lower set of dentures! Pretty funny, gotta wonder how they got down there. We filled it in. The whole time after I broke the bottle the guys were riding me, and rightly so. I was going to buy lunch to patch things up. Then Steve brought the bottle over and showed me the discoloration on the break. It had already been broke, I was off the hook. Still, I have to slow down a little.

Ewww. Dentures. Broken Log Cabin Scalpine

    Steve found another pit right next to this one. I don't know how we missed it the first time. I guess it always pays to go back and probe again. It started out pretty good. There were four doll heads right away. Then a slew of local pharmacy bottles including: Kings, Prentice and Evenson, Saracy, and Smith.  Marbles, Boston Baby Feeder, clay pipes, fruit jars, and various others were found in this one.

We opened up one more pit. It contained ABM bottles. We closed it up and decide to save it for a rainy day.

The final take