June 4th 2006.

Howdy readers. The monkey finally dug his claws into bone and I had to get my fix. Actually I have been helping me Mum. She had a fall and broke some bones, coincidentally, the day before she had to start moving 20 years of accumulated belongings out of her recently sold house, and into a teensy little apartment. It took me over a month to accomplish this, and this last weekend was at least half my own.

Mike called to say he had a permission in Newport. This is the same Newport where legendary bottles have been dug in the past, and also the same Newport where more recently, I have struck out on the last 8 pits in a row.

The Newport pits I had been digging have been either woodliners that are 6 to 8 feet deep and have only broken (but sometimes killer) shards, or, round stoneliners that are 10 to 14 feet deep that have hardly any glass in them at all, and are always wet starting at 3 to 6 feet deep. Since I am not one to over-probe a pit once I am in it digging, the bottoms of these pits always surprise me, unpleasantly, as I am digging through seeds toward the expectation of glass, and then suddenly, crunchlessly, ...thump. There is the bottom.

Steve Green drove down from Dayton to join us today. We followed Mike over the Roebling Suspension Bridge and into Kenton's Cane lands. We arrived at the dig site to find that a large track hoe occupied the footprint of the demolished house.

Behind the track hoe, on the rear property line, Mike had already probed up two pits. We re-probed to determine the types of walls the pits had, and found one was a woody, the other a stony. We threw down on the woody.

(Steve Green in the pit, Mike watching)

The sign was fine !

We had rockingham and yellow ware shards popping out with some sick old aqua shards right off the bat. We were finding oriental looking shards in shades of purple, with hand painted designs in gold and other colors. At 4 feet deep Steve handed up a sick sided shard. I attributed it to being from some type of food bottle and tossed it onto the pile. At 5 feet mike filled the dug portion of the pit with some high caliber cursing, and handed up the base to an aqua I. Stutton iron pontilled root beer. That was when I recognized the sided piece Steve sent up for what it was. I fished it out of the pile. Mike then handed up the top to the root beer and it had enough embossing on it to identify.

We were kicked into high gear now ! Mike was really tearing into the glassless use layer, as Steve and I gazed round eyed into the pit where shovel met seeds. THUMP... Sonofa*&%#@ !!!

Bottom !

I can tell when a pit has intact layers, and this pit hadum. It was un-touched, never dug, and almost glass-free.

We fillderin and moved over to the stony and started flingin'. This pit was average size and guess what... It was wet. We did the bailerhole maneuver, right through a clay cap and then a nice layer of seeds at about 8 feet, finding a sprinkling of shards and little else. Two or three unembossed meds popped out. At 9 feet, just when we were expecting to come upon some glassy use, THUMP !!!

BOTTOM !!!

Now some of you experienced diggers might be saying to yourself, "Oh this guy is getting fooled by another clay cap". If you are indeed saying this to yourself, you would be wrong. We stick 7 feet of probe through the floor of our pits and dig under all the stone walls. We don't get fooled like some Scooby-Doo on a trap door 'round hyea !!!

We fillderin and probed a third pit in the opposite corner of the lot. This one probed smooth and with no layers. We opened it up and 6 inches down was a cathedral acorn pepper-sauce top. OK then ! At three feet I cornered something large with the shovel and flipped out the front wheel of a Murray push mower. THIS pit, HAD been dug. "Continue NOT we will", said the Yodadigger.

The house to the right of this lot looked to be un-occupied, so we cruised right over with our probes for a look-feel. We noticed in one corner, a pit had very recently been dug. We found another in the center of the yard. It was a rectangular stone liner and probed up to be huge at 5 by 7 feet. We opened it up on one corner and took it down to 4 feet, where we then probed it with the long 7 foot probe and barely managed to touch bottom, making it 11 feet deep. Well, there was moocho contents in a pit this large and it was late afternoon. The other thing we noticed was a total lack of glass or use layer on the probe.  We decided to label this one as a "hard times pit" and gathered up our stuff and headed back to Mikes house.

I had brought a small box of stuff from the last pit we dug together in New Haven, and combined with the stuff we had dug today, constituted a sparse pile. Just to keep SOME semblance of normalcy, I once more got last pick on the coin flip, and we had at it.

Even with the dismal results, I had a blast today waking up the old digging muscles and flinging some dirt. The humor was flying fast and furious and we enjoyed the day like kids in a creek. I think I have the brunt of my besides-work-family obligations met, for the time being anyway, and will be doing some more digging EL-PRONTO !!!

NEWSFLASH : Some guy named Rob, who looks like John Denver (RIP) and who is one of the nicest guys I've had the pleasure of meeting recently, has went and dug himself a privy !!! He was at one of our digs last year, and was also scouting around the Eastern Ave. site with us. He is an Indian relic hunter/collector and a detectorist. I got an e-mail from him with a story of his dig, and it is very fine and interesting, so I will be posting it soon, after he sends in some pictures. Newbie privy diggers can take a lesson from Rob, as he put his newly learned information to task and went out and got'r done ! Stay tuned for it !

Seeya in the funny papers !!!