7-24-05

  Nobody in their right mind would go out digging in 100 degree heat. Well, we went out. I guess that proves we are not quite right.

   We started out early as usual. Steve's had a spot behind his neighbor's house. Probing wasn't good though. It was right next to a railroad track. The soil was slaggy, and everything felt like a pit.

   We jumped in the van and made some laps around town. Searching for something new to check out and stopping at some spots to reprobe. Basically killing time until people woke up.

    Steve landed an instant "yes". This was in a neighborhood he had dug before. The pits were all close to the alley. He had already found one in this yard, but didn't dig it because the fence was a little crooked and didn't want the neighbor's squawking. Anyway, when he had probed it, he said it was super clunky. We probed the snot out of the corner and found nothing. How can these pits move? I moved down the lot line about 20 feet and found two. One being shallow and not clunky. The other was about 4 feet and very clunky. We opened the pit and were pretty disappointed to find crown tops, the occasional unembossed blob, bromos, Calfigs, etc. 

    By the time we got it filled in, it was screaming hot. I would have gladly gone home, but Steve found a pit behind the shed. We opened it up to find a pile of concrete and stone for the first foot. I was thinking this to be a very new pit until Steve hands up a super sized, crude,  deep aqua blob top.  The heat was no longer a factor and the dig was on. 

Teaser blob top

   There wasn't much in the fill. We did hit a little broken stuff at the use layer,  and Steve announced, " I have an amber blob beer on the run." I was being a bit of a joke and asked if it was a Mike Steinbach. In all his years of digging, he had only found a broken slug plate of one and possibly an unknown example. He pulled it out, wiped it off, smiled and said, "Sure enough it is, but two bad the top is knocked off." There were two others in there also broken.

We finished of the pit and filled it back in.  I took a couple stabs where Steve thought that other loaded pit was. This time, it felt like I was hitting stuff on the bottom. We were pretty enthusiastic after the close calls with the Mike's and decide to open her up. We got down around 18" and discovered a monster root running smack dab in the middle of the pit. We decide to tackle it from the south side. It was a total pain digging. I was completely drained and showing early signs of heat exhaustion. Steve too, each of us could only sit on the ground and make little short uneffective stabs at the dirt. We filled it in and will hit it another day.