March 6th 2005

Today Mike and I decided to go to downtown Cincy to check out a construction site. This site is in the middle of the "Projects" in the "Over the Rhine" district. You may have heard about Over the Rhine on your local news. Lotsa shootings and crime. Anyways, they are tearing down the old project buildings that they put up ten years ago because the inhabitants, having lived there for free, tore them up with no regard. In the middle of the four square blocks of project buildings was a school. They are tearing the school down, and in the old blacktop parking lot, are neat rows of round depressions that were the privy pits from the 1850's houses that stood there years before.

The area is fenced and guarded. After eyeballing the entire situation, we decided to go check out some places Mike had in Northside.

Arriving in Northside, Mike went and got the key to unlock a gate that would allow us access to the back yard of an 1865 place. The back yard was STUFFED with all kinds of junk. Mike had to move stuff for over an hour when he was here a week ago just to probe. He located a stone liner in short order and we started flinging dirt.

This lot is two lots away from the pit where Mike had dug the broken large size Robacks stomach bitters a couple weeks ago. We were hoping against odds that maybe the corner store stocked this product and that more pits in the neighborhood might show an example or two.

We took the pit down about 3 feet and dug out to the stone walls to find an oval pit.

There was a hefty rock and...yuck...concrete layer at about 4 feet. We made good progress after that as the fill turned ashy and was pretty clean. At 7 foot we hit a layer of bricks that was about a foot thick. At 9 feet water came in. Mike took half of the pit down another 2 feet by bailing and dumping. At that point he decided to use the probe to feel for any kind of layer, or bottom. The bottom showed itself at 3 feet deeper than the deep side he had at about 11 feet. The problem was, there was no change whatsoever in the fill under him. He stuck the probe in 40 times and hit the bottom each time without so much as a single glass pop. A couple ABM bottles and a lonely pharmacy came out of the fill at about 10 feet and that was it.

It was a long way to dig for nothing, but we decided to cut our losses at that point. With no layer and no glass, save a maverick ABM or two, we couldn't justify moving any more of the water logged ash, so we fillederin.

The day was mostly cooked as it was nearing 5 pm, so we cleaned up and peeled out. Mike has a few other permissions on this same block, as the permissor owns them all. With a green robacks calling me on, and an empty 14 foot wet stony chasing me away, it's a hard call. The robacks came from a 6 foot woody, so maybe we'll try to ignore any large round stone liners. That is, unless we can pop some glass, or probe a layer.

Hey, where did spring go ???