December 10th 2006

Steve Sanders had called me earlier in the week to tell me he had a permission in Harrison on Park Ave. Well, we dug the hell out of Park Ave. That is where our cobalt 1858 Mason jar was dug, as well as a Lewis Cass glazed face pipe, and allot of other goodies. I figured the chance that Steve's permission was undug was slim. I pulled up the address he gave me on the auditors website and sure enough, we had never made it to this one. It dated to 1885, and was a rental property, so I had passed it over. We agreed to meet at the crack of 9:30 out in front of the place.

For a city yard, it was very large, being near a half acre. We stabbed and we jabbed. Once again, it was my own golden probe that sniffed up the pit on the side property line near the house. We cracked it open and started flinging dirt. At 3 feet was a newer style clay sewer pipe coming in from the direction of the house. Not good. The sign was all newer being clear glass and some bone. We mole holed to within a foot of the bottom and was pulling out chunks of milks so we fillderin.

Mike located another pit under the blacktop parking area due to a large conspicuous patch that had been put over it. He was able to get his probe into the corner and got the long probe in to the handle. We would have to remove some of the blacktop to dig it so we put it on the back burner until permission to do so could be obtained, and then looked at each other like, now what.

Steve had mentioned another permission he had where Mike and I had probed a few years ago and could not locate any pits, so we decided to revisit it to see what might happen. We wheeled up on the place and never even had to walk into the yard to tell that this one would be a bust. There was a 1930's brick house in the back yard. So THATS why we struck out the first time. I pointed a few houses over to a place that I had always wanted to check out but again, was a rental property, and I had never been able to get in contact with the owner. There were a couple guys out in front of the place carrying around rolls of rubber roofing. Steve said he didn't mind giving it a try and he walked over to the house and vanished around the back. A minute later he walked back over to us and said, "Were in".

This place is 1850's and had a small enough yard. Narrow but kind of deep. Both the renter and the owner were there roofing the back addition. Mike and Steve went to the back of the lot and started up the side property line. I stayed near the house and probed at some lumpy looking parts of the yard. A minute later and I had a pit located on the side property line near the house. GOLDEN !!!

Mike came over with the long probe and verily verified. The took the entire length of the 7 foot probe, and felt very full of rocks or bricks. It was now 1:45 pm and I had to be at my daughters 15th birthday party at 5 pm. We agreed it might be a time issue so we thought about maybe coming back next weekend to do the dig with an early start. I asked the guy on the ground if that would be OK and he said, "Ask the guy on the roof, he owns it". The guy on the roof heard him and said that it would be OK with him. During this conversation, the renter locked his keys in his car. He told us it was the third time this week he had done it. Doh !!!

 He grabbed up a deer antler from the back yard and started prying his door open at the top. He asked if he could see my probe. He pushed the probe into the gap he pried open but was no where near the electronic lock. He was mighty aggravated by his predicament. I knew in order to seal our digging deal I would have to step up and rescue dude out of his dilemma. I took my short probe and with a careful, albeit fast, mental calculation of the desired angle, bent it into a nice lazy U shape. I told him to pry with the antler while I fished for the lock. On my very first insertion I snagged the lock button and popped the door open. "Wow you guys can dig whenever you want", was chronic key locker's retort.

GOLDEN !

We return at the end of the week to extract our prizes.