8-29-04

    Steve and I headed for the site where he was digging last week. He had a couple spots left to open up. The first hole was under the garage. We had to dig down and tunnel over. There were bottles coming out, nothing to stellar. The owner Ryan was watching and admiring some of the bottles. He mentioned he owned a few more properties. One of them was one street over, one was to new, and the other was on the south side(one of our favorite digging areas!). It didn't take much arm twisting to get us to fill in this hole and head over to his other places for some probing.

Steve working under the garage

    The next house had a big back yard. We found a couple privies. Then we lined up shoulder to shoulder to systematically probe the rest of the yard. There ended up being five pits here. Of course, we were really leaning toward getting a shot at some older stuff downtown.

    We followed Ryan to his next rental. We were hoping that other diggers didn't beat us. This area has been hit very hard in the last 25 years. Along the way, Steve was pointing out the different houses were he and Jeff had dug. Telling stories of cobalt sodas, strawberry hair restoratives, and other goodies found in their back yards.

    The yard was fenced in. To the east, a large garage, to the north a concrete drive, to the south another garage and pool. So, at least we knew nobody tunneled over to this yard. Steve found a couple spots. They felt pretty airy, typical of already being dug. We peeled back the lawn and decide to test hole. About two feet down it was looking like the ground hadn't been disturbed. On my turn, I noticed a colored bottle sticking from the side, A JSP monogrammed beer in teal. Sweet, this yard is untouched! The pit was pretty thin on glass. We did get one more JSP in a different shade of green. Also, when we were knocking the sides and top down, we found a Philip Best/Bottled by Simon Gates blob beer.

. Dave with the JSP Beer

Dave with the Simon Gates Blob Beer

    The next pit was next to this one.  We found the typically local medicines including G.D. Marlott, Kirkby, and Robinson. When Steve was up he found a weird looking Bartlett Dressing bottle. On the bulb of the neck, it says"press sponge here".

Steve examining the Bartlett dressing bottle.

    The final pit of the day was real thin on bottles and contained mostly ash. I didn't find to many. It seems everytime I got Steve would scrape up one more including a Radway's Renovating Resolvent. When he was cleaning up the sides, he found a bottle we have never seen before. It was shaped like a Mrs. Winslows, but had Rock Candy Cough Cure on the side!

    It was nice starting out with nothing and getting a couple good pits to dig. Even better, the neighbor spied us and asked what we were doing. He came out later and skeptically asked if found anything. He thought we were "yanking his chain", and could not believe what we found. We told him we found a pit under his garage and he said we could dig anytime. Better yet, he has a couple rentals in the area!

The take. Including:pint CFJ Mason jar,, Wynkoops Iceland Pectoral, Mrs. Dinsmores, Burks white pine balsam, etched cologne bottle, 2 fine teapot lids, and an intact gravy boat.