2/22/04

        Steve emailed me and told me the frost was gone near the lake. Cool! I figured we were done for awhile because the frost is still pretty thick around here.

        So, I made my way for Racine to hook up with Steve. We had a pit lined up in Kenosha. It felt pretty big and full when we probed last fall. As usual, we found the edges with the probes, laid out the tarp, and started digging. I was pretty pumped up, Steve was telling me how he dug a pontil pit next door and it had some keepers in it. Also, they found a rarer,  strapside flask embossed with a Kenosha merchant in a  different pit.

        Steve started talking about pottery beers. Sure enough, two seconds later, he finds a sided one.  To bad it was broke.  It had "MK" debossed on the shoulder with a swirl of blue glazing encircling it. Wow, how many whole ones could be in there?

Steve holding the "MK" pottery beer

        On my turn, I uncovered a "Frozen Charlotte" little figure and a Bennington tea pot. After I scratched around a bit, It was Steve's turn again.  He found a nice 12 sided, smooth base, aqua umbrella ink. Then, he hands up a broken fruit jar. He said, "It looks like a Magic." Yes it was, crap, to bad it was broke. Why does all the good stuff have to be broken. Then next crier to come out was a fancy sauce bottle. Again, it was broken.

    Steve found another pit while I had been digging. It was pretty shallow. It had a couple ink bottles and a wine. There also was broken yellow oil lamp. We are still wishing it would have been whole.

The first take       The second take

    We poked around awhile and didn't find anything else to promising. It was still early, so we stopped by Steve's for a cup of coffee and to check out his collection. He has this old four pane window sash he uses to display some of the odd ball stuff we find. It is really cool. He made a shallow box behind the glass to hold in the goodies. Then he hung the whole thing on the wall! It contains stuff like dentures, doll heads, doll parts, locks, pipes, etc.

    The display window