8/27/05

    We started out a little later this morning. With nothing lined up, we needed to knock for permission and didn't want to get people out of bed to early. So, we spent a little time down on the river banks looking for shards, and some time scoping out some knockers. 

    The landscape had changed a little, we have not been in this neighborhood in over a year. A string of five or six houses had been knocked down. We noticed a guy sitting on the porch next to the empty lots. Steve gave him the spiel and we were off and running. It was hard to read the lay of the land with the houses missing. Also it was hard to gauge the age of the lots. This neighborhood is not consistant, many newer old houses mixed in with the old old houses. Anyway, it didn't take to long to find a half dozen spots to dig, but none of them felt good. They felt empty and 1900s bunky.  The best ones were actually in dude's yard we had talked to as well one across the street in yet another vacant lot.

    It was getting late and we decided to head to the gas station and get some liquids before starting. While winding our way through town, we ended up stopping at some of the knockers now that people were awake. I guess we were just trying to be greedy and dig something with a little more potential. Anyway, we got a couple where the tenants said we had to ask the landlord. Another was very juicy. The house was vacant and some guys were hired to clean up. As luck would have it, the boss was a metal dectectorist and didn't see a problem with a little pre-permission probing. Of course we had to find 3 juicy pits in a matter of seconds. Now we have to find the owner and do a little sweet talking.

   We hopped in the truck again and got side tracked with another set of empty lots laid out in the figure of a "F". We talked to a landlord next door and said they were abandoned and it wouldn't be a problem.   We found a couple pits and started to open them. The first pit was empty save a couple post 1900 slick meds. Usually these pits are at least loaded with bottles. Steve did find two enormous clam shells. The clam was 3/4 the size of a dinner plate, twice as big as the biggest I have ever seen!

   The next pit was a neighboring yard. Steve the trickster didn't tell me about it until after lunch. I think he was getting a kick out listening to me gripe about our luck. We moved the stuff over and got started on it. This was even newer than the last one. It did have lots of broken pottery, but no bottles.

   We wallowed in our misery a bit and decide to open one more pit. This pit wasn't very clunky. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that we were digging on the notorious Whiskey Row. Legendary for the volume of bunk whiskey bottles contained in the pits. Anyway we got down 18 inches and the pit was packed with them. I have no idea how we could stab around all those bottles with the probe and not break any glass! We started a pile of just the intact ones, and it was huge by the time we finished. The only thing of mention was a`Crigler & Crigler Co/Distillers/Covington KY sample whiskey and a couple of small, jointed dolls with their arms missing.