Home 2003 Stories 1-10-04 2004 Stories

 

1/3/04

            The first dig of the new season, and it was a good one! I haven't dug the last few weeks for a bunch of reasons. Steve has been slowed down with a flu bug. I know it had to a bad one otherwise he would have been digging.

              We decided to revisit a spot that we had started on the 9/14/03 dig. We were just down to the layer and the cops showed up and asked us to leave. We had permission, there was a question of where the lot line was. I got the legal description of the property and a tape measure proved we were in the right.

`              As we unloaded our digging equipment, we wondered how long it would be until the law showed up.

             My first bottle of the year is a Davis' Vegetable Pain Killer. I saw Steve cover up a bunk medicine and pull out a blob Kenosha beer instead. Not a bad first bottle of the year.

1-3-04.jpg (241314 bytes) Steve's first bottle of the season

            A little later, we had three different Kenosha blob beers in the pail. I wished we could find  some more so we could go home with one a piece. Needless to say my wish was granted. The next layer was full of whole blobs and many more shards. Seriously, you couldn't scoop without hitting glass.

1-3-04stacked.jpg (199221 bytes) Stacked blobs.

            There were even amber blob shards here and there. When I was in, I thought I found the first whole one. It turned out to me a common mug base Graff soda from Milwaukee. I told Steve to keep digging, there has to be one whole one  in there. Sure enough he holds up a whole one, to bad the slug plate was blank. Then two seconds later, he holds up another one. He did the same victory display of the bottle, and I even got a high five. I didn't get it at first. He is a funny guy, I thought he was laughing because we each had one to take home. "No, look, it's embossed."  "I have dug broken ones, this is a fairly rare one!" 

1-3-04slick.jpg (240905 bytes) The man who cried "bottle"     1-3-04amberbertram.jpg (235681 bytes) Yes!

 

 1-3-04take.jpg (230402 bytes) The take  1-3-04pistol.jpg (298024 bytes) Two pistols, Dave wins the duel

 

                This pit was loaded and it was huge. The final dimensions were 10' by 6' by 5' deep. No wonder we found so many bottles. There were 7 different blobs from Kenosha: amber unembossed, aqua unembossed, J.C.GOTTFREDSEN & SON, E.GRIESBACH. Don't forget the Messolt Hutch from Minnesota, a CBC Hutch from Chicago, and a" Sharp" house  ink from Chicago. We found two pistols. I am not sure if they are toys or the real thing.  Did they have cap guns in the 1880's? Would they have had wooden handles?

    We went to lunch and came back to test hole another spot Steve had probed in the yard. It was a pit, very thin on glass, and about the same age as the previous one. We did get a milk glass balm bottle and a door knob. We packed up and move two houses down to Mattew's house. We had dug there and hit another bottle bonanza 11-0-03 dig. We opened up a pit we had located from the previous dig. A couple unembossed crown tops poped out. Down a little farther we got a nice quart with a crudely applied crown, embossed  W F Martin from Kenosha. Also, there were a few Webers from Waukesha.

      On the way home, we had talked about being done for the season. The ground by me has been freezing already, and next week it will be in the teens for highs. I guess it is the price you pay for being a digger in Wisconsin. But, there is hope, as I write this we are getting heavy snow with 6+ inches forcasted. I just went outside to probe, and the ground is still soft. This snow may make the insulating blanket we need to keep the frost away! Maybe we will be able to dig right through winter!