2/14/04

    Craig and Steve met me in East Troy a little before 7 am. The plan was to go to my mother's house and finish a well we had started last year. We ended up with some good hutches and a couple nice crowntops and hoped there would be more. About a month ago, I had covered the hole with some leaves and a tarp. Good thing, it has been cold and I hear there is two feet of frost.

    There still was a foot of frost, but we hacked through it and got down to 7 feet where we had left off. The water table was a little lower than before. Steve brought a gasoline powered pump to take care of the water. It got sloppy in a hurry. We could feel glass scraping on the tip of the shovel. Since the hole was so deep, we were bucketing out the slop. A couple medicines and a cobalt colored eye wash bottle got by me and the guys found them when they dumped the buckets. The stuff wasn't super old, but we were getting a few amber blob necks. It was the best thing going so we pressed on.

Craig pulling up pails of dirt

     I was up again after a round of turns. It sure is nasty to have that crappy water dripping all over me when the guys hoist the buckets. The water was very stinky. I hope it was a little better when they were using the well for drinking water. I was running into wood and noticed the outline of a wood barrel. It was either dropped down when they started to fill it in, or maybe they used it as a strainer to keep the chunks out of the water. Anyway, I was really clunking on glass. I moved some muck and two blobs came rolling above the water line. Cool, finally something good. When I pulled them out, of course they were unembossed. Then even more of the unembossed blobs came out, both broken and whole. I decide to let someone else have some fun.

Dave sending up some blobs

    Steve got in and got it close to the bottom. He was finding bottles and sending them up. He was able to break through the bottom of the barrel with a probe. Nothing but muck underneath. Steve being the quick witted one of the group yells up, "We are scrapping the bottom of the barrel, I think we are done."

Steve not looking up fearing more stuff is going to fall down. Look at all the black spots on his back and neck already, and the wet mess at his feet.

    It was a tough dig. The pump was plugging up so we didn't really use it. It was very stinky and the muck was always dripping down. The hole ended up being 14 feet deep. Worst of all, most of the stuff was unembossed.

    Oh "well", we had to know what was down there. It is looking like this will be the last dig until the frost recedes.

   The take