February 11th 2006.

Mike, never one to let a probed pit lie, called me at noon today and said he wanted to dig something. He was thinking about the stone liner that was waiting for us in Newport KY. We knew it might be deep, and that we only had 6 hours of daylight left, but we decided to go check it out anyway. This is the last pit we could probe up. We had dug 10 pits here in the last two weeks. Most of them were dipped and held stuff from the 1890's. Even the old woodies had newer stuff in them. All but one of the pits we dug were wet, starting at about 4 feet deep. There were some others that we test holed but found out early on that they had been dug years back. We were ready to pluck our last chicken, and there was a chance it had already been plucked.

After we opened it up and got about 3 feet deep, we dug out to the stone walls and found the pit was round and larger than any we had dug in the neighborhood so far. This was ominous, as we knew some of the pits in Newport could go to 20 feet deep, or more. The others we dug had been from 8 to 12 feet deep. We got snagged up by a few large roots, and we chopped some, and dug around some others. The fill turned into a clay cap at about 4 feet. Mike did a mole hole down one wall to look for some signs of age. His shovel tip came out dripping with wet clay, and our fate was...more bailing. Armed with a laundry detergent bottle, we dug our bailer hole and started taking down the water level. After dropping the water level about two feet, we took that much more depth out of the hole from wall to wall, and then dug another bailer hole. Wash, rinse, repeat. As we were digging the second of what would be 3 bailer holes, mike flung a bottle out of the wet mucky clay with his shovel. It was retrieved from the sloppy dirt pile and wiped off to reveal an Ayers Ague Cure. It had a hinge mold base and a crude drippy lip. As we were halving the pit down suddenly a deep plunge of the shovel showed an abrupt change as the shovel load that came out was two toned, with clay on the top, and black on the bottom. We had arrived !!!

Then the cops showed up.

After carefully making his way over to us by stepping as precisely as he could on any maverick patches of sod that remained on the lot, Mr. Newport said in a low, slow drawl, "You boys got permission" ?

"We didn't really know who to ask", said Mike.

"The City", said Mr. Popo.

There was a moment of awkward silence. It was then that I knew I had to say something, and summoning my Jedi force, I said, with a small wave of my hand, "It's OK if we dig, the last police officer that came said it would be OK as long as we filled in the hole real good".

"Hmmm...Yeah,? well, just fill in the hole real good", said the Sheriff of them thar parts, and he tippy toed back to his cruiser and that was that. The cops in Newport are two for two with me for being nice guys.

The Newport KY Police earn the privydigger.com 21 probe, salute of the week !

We probed to find we had almost three feet of pit still under us, hopefully all use. Right away mike dug a mole hole along the wall and got it to bottom, where he bailed the pit out dry. While bailing in a small hole, maybe 1 by 2 feet across, it's neat to watch as the black water drops and glass and bottles starts showing up in the hole and stuck in the sides of it, washed clean from the action of the water, and begging to be picked through. Mike stopped bailing and handed up a wide mouth open pontil utility puff and an open pontil Bears Oil. Oh MAN !!! He hit bottom and we gazed at our potential Mother Load, that being the 9/10ths of the un-dug contents of a 2+ foot pontiled layer.

With the rest of the layer coming out semi-dry from bailing the pit to the bottom, we pushed on firmly, aware of our fading daylight. Another Ayers Ague popped out, making a pair. "Another Bears Oil would make a nice pair too", I thought. Mike was tugging on a large chunk of white ironstone. Ironstone is almost always broken. Chunks and pieces permeate most privy digs. Mike finally yanked his free of the wall of use that held it and wiped off a perfect molded chamber pot. Nary a chip on it. Moments later he yanked out the lid, or, most of it. It was missing about a third, and we set it aside to see if the other piece was in the pit. When it came out in ten pieces, we gave up hope for it. The age of the stuff seemed to be mid 60's through early 80's. I found a local druggist, "Barthalomew / Newport", and a "JW Bulls Compound Pectoral / Baltimore". I took out the first half of the use layer, finding a few other bottles, like an un-embossed square bitters and an un-embossed whiskey. Also a "J.H. Overdick" smooth base squat, and my favorite piece, a ground pontil "Hoffmann and Moser / Cincinnati" blacking bottle. It had a crude, thin re-fired lip and was somewhat lopsided. Mike finished off the rest and found a "Hallfords Leicester Table Sauce", A big blue, and a small brown Bennington marbles, An E. Scheffer / Louisville KY" and a killer little wooden rolling pin, in great shape.

It was dark and we were raking through the last bit of glass via Ryobi 18 volt assistance. It was blowing a steady 15 miles per hour and had just started snowing, hard. We looked at our giant sloppy stinky pile, and started chucking it back into the hole in big hunks and globs. 45 minutes later the fat lady sang.

 Sure was nice to dig something old again. There may even be more pits on this recently de-housed block, but if there are, they are hiding like champs. If you could somehow see every probe hole at once, it would look like someone inserted a giant hairbrush into the ground. The tip of my probe, which was showing a definite wear before we started with these lots, is now completely smooth, as if no tip had ever existed.

If the weather holds and doesn't go COMPLETELY Arctic, we have a killer permission behind a big fancy 1830's place. Dig long and prosper !!!