12-26-05

   The day after Christmas and I was expecting a present in one of the pits Steve had lined up. After all I had been good all year.

   Pit one was under a small lean to along the back lot line. There was a thin concrete slab here that had the tell tale cracks from pit settling underneath. The house was being knocked down to make way for a parking lot. So, removal of the crete would be no problem.

   It sure was a pain digging under the roof. I knocked my head a bunch of times on the rafter and Steve as well. To make matters worse, the pit was deep and it was hard storing the spoils. But worse of all, the pit was 1900ish and untypically thin on glass and such.

   Pit two was inside the shed attached to the lean-to. Steve found it by prying off some floor boards. This one was close to 8 feet deep and a floor joist running across the middle of the pit made it harder than heck to dig. Again, dealing with the spoils was even worse. This pit was equally thin, but Steve did manage to dig a his first W. H. Weber hutch.

Inside pic of the conditions

Hutch, stinking timber, deep hole

Weber hutch soda

   The rest of the back lot is cover with concrete. It was looking like the old pits would evade us. We went around the back of the fence to do some angle probing in hopes of pin pointing a pit and busting out the concrete on the other side. Anyway, the other side was plowed full of snow. We packed up but Steve decided to probe the side yard a little more. He is legendary at pulling pits out of thin air. This time was no exception. Two pokes next to the house and he had one on the run!

   It ended up that this was not a pit, but a danged huge wooden barrel used as a cistern. We found the hoops and the floor was still intact.

   One of the first shards out was a deep aqua quart pikes peak flask. Another crier would be a nice yellow quart local advertising flask. We never did find the whole slug plate to verify the bottler. I was sad too when a cobalt blue Johnson and Johnson jar came out of the hole in pieces.

Broken advertising flask

   Then the gifts, 4 intact stoneware beers: 1 English, 1 with nice blue ribbon around the neck, a local A.J.H, and an "AT". Another nice find was a very early Horlick's Food jar.

A.J.H stoneware beer as found

Dave and the "AT"

Horlick Jar

Steve with the horlick

Close up

   Steve went back on Tuesday to do a little metal detecting. Check out the diamond ring he scored!