|
|
|
May 25th 2008 Several Saturday's later....... We returned to empty out the pit next door to our last dig. We noticed more clues this time around. They were the kind of clues that make you wish you had squinted so you never noticed them at all. The first clue was that there was a concrete sidewalk that ended at this pit. The second clue was just how big the depression was. We decided to grid probe the yard to try to find any other pits. There was a huge pile of lumber that we could not probe under, but beside that, we probed every square foot of the yard, and turned up nothing. We decided to do a test hole on the single pit. We dug down next to a wall and found it was made of old stacked brick. This matched the construction of the pit we dug next door which was good'n'old, so that was at least a little encouraging, but what started popping out of the fill was not.
Now, I am not much of a collector of bottles with labels still on them, but if I would have been a collector of such things, I would have been in my element. Bleach bottles with not only intact labels, but perfect and shining labels started coming out. Milk of magnesia bottles were stacking up nicely before too long, and contrary to their claims and warranties, were making us even MORE sick to our stomachs. What we needed was a joint dosage of Milk of Amnesia, so we could forget this embarrassing escapade into the not so distant past. We were looking for 1850 and found ourselves a century behind. Steve noticed a pipe coming into the pit from the direction of the house, and this further dampened our spirits. At 5 feet deep, we probed to the bottom without feeling any change in resistance whatsoever. No cap or change in layers, possibly indicating any change in age. We did manage to scrounge up a few painted label crown top soda's, and some of them were local with quirky Happy Days era names on them. Finally, we had enough, and fillderin. We walked back over to the lot next door where our last decent dig was and managed to find some older glass near the pit we had dug last, just outside the brick wall. We scored a few more Shilohs Consumption bottles, and another H. Theilmanns Bitters. We finished up around 4 pm, and keeping with the 1950's theme of the day, I ran toward the cheesy sound of a baby blue ice cream truck and purchased a bomb-pop to sooth my jaded spirit. After some calibration on the dials of our time
machine, we plan to return in shining aqua glory.
|
|
|
