7-31-04

    The last day of July and the weather here in Southern Wisconsin was again perfect. If only we had something lined up to go to. We spent the early hours of the day driving and scouting for new prospects. We knocked on a few doors and got "no" and nobody home.

    We decide to hit an empty lot behind a gas station. We had been here before and dug multiple pits. Maybe we missed something. 

    I was getting some stuff out of the truck. Steve had already made a bee line for the overgrown back lot line. I don't think I even made it half way there when he exclaimed "I got one". We cleaned out a spot to shovel from and a place to put the tarp, and the dig was on.

    Early on we knew from the shards that this one wasn't going to be much older than the turn of the century. But, you never know when you will get a late throw or one of those elusive hutch bottles we can never seem to find out here. Anyway, we did get: an abm Rex Kidney and Liver Bitter in amber, Ivory Blacking in Cobalt!, Jas H Smith & & CO MFRS Photo Sundries Chicago in a cool two tone amber, some cone inks, a Hoods Sarsaparilla, ground top shaker.

Ivory Blacking in light cobalt

Jas. Smith Photo Sundries

The take

    We got the pit filled in and started looking for another to dig. The neighbor came out and and gave us a "Hey, it is you guys again". I stopped by to talk to him a couple times over the last year. He was always gone. We had dug his yards almost a year ago to the day. One of them was the 7/27/03 dig where we got a couple cobalt ip sodas and other pontil stuff. We talked for a while and he gave us the go ahead to reprobe his yards. We never did find anything in the one lot and were hoping to find something we missed. The ground was very hard, and the sun was beating down. After an hour of heavy probing, we gave up and left for home.