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I hadn't been back to the cliffs for a bit due to work and work and work…Which is great!! The anticipation was great as well waiting to check the scene out again after a few good rains. I had returned a couple times prior to this run to unearth a nice intact "Florida Water" bottle and an applied lip "Citrate of Magnesia." I had to peer over the edge from the top to score the "Citrate" which was jutting neck out from the side. I'm always blown away that these bottles are a lot of times in view if you look for them and no one makes the connection. All the better, I guess. The "Florida Water" had to be dug . I noticed an unembossed med. laying atop some recently piled eroding dirt and over the side I went. I began scanning around the area and noticed a few shards of old glass embedded in the rocky sandstone face. I broke out the claw hammer and started at the area. After a few minutes chipping The "Florida Water" came into view. It's a cool bottle!! There are still remnants of foil around the lip and neck of the bottle from packaging. That's one bonus to Southern California digging….The weather is so dry that so much of the past is preserved as far as things in the ground…. I continued to dig and chip around the area to no avail, so I called it quits. On my recent return trip, I did the usual hunt for a good space at a meter and ended up far enough up Ocean Ave. where there were no meters. It's so hard to quit mid-dig and go feed a meter!! Ughh!!! …And let me tell you I felt the peace of unlimited cliff digging. Being so far up from where I usually park I thought I'd be walking a ways to get to one of the footbridges that crosses over Pacific Coast Hwy. to the beach. (I use the stairwell to the bridge to get to the sidewalk at the base of the cliffs.) Only to my surprise today the second bridge was open which was closer to where I entered the park..Yay!! I made my way down the stairwell passing up the bridge and on to the bottom of the cliffs..I landed on the sidewalk at the base and headed north towards the "California Incline." ( The California Incline is a one lane each way ramp that heads in a diagonal fashion up from the "PCH" to Ocean Ave above. The cliffs run horizontally along Ocean Ave. until they reach the top of the Incline and taper down to the bottom. My "business" is everything under the incline and along the cliffs.) I began a survey of the newly eroded areas and checked a few points where I'd found chips and pieces of old bottles before. I saw a few possibles that I'd need to really climb to get to so I moved along figuring I'd hit them later if I found nothing ahead. I was almost to where the top of the Incline starts (staring at it from the base) and came across an area where I noticed a homeless guy had been previously living. I saw this guy months earlier but I didn't see anyone anywhere so I made my way up the cliffs through the foliage to scout out a new area. I passed over old razors, toothpaste tubes, food wrappers, the whole nine yards. He'd really been living here for years it looked like. I made my way through the bushes a little further and there he stood. He was about 15 feet down the slope from me and hadn't noticed me yet. I figured I better let him know I was coming, so I announced myself. Without a second thought he proceeded to cuss me out!! He let me know quick, that this area was private property and I was trespassing. The area is all public, he'd just laid claim here so I let him be and moved on and he settled back into what he was doing. I saw him over the next few days of digging and he was fine as long as I stayed away from his area of the cliffs. I continued on along under the Incline and noticed a few shards and bottle ends poking out several feet above me. I broke out my framing hammer and started to chip footholds into the slope. I slowly made my way up in between two of the bluffs until I was climbing vertically to reach what I'd seen. The excitement grew as I got closer and could see the glass was opalized and very old. I stopped and chipped myself out a little plateau to place both feet to where I could stand and commence digging. Thank God I brought a respirator!! I've never brought one to the cliffs before, but something told me to this time. Respirator on and safety glasses intact, I hit it. The whole area was a big ole dust cloud, but one after the other bottles started popping out. A couple of nice pharmacies at first…One from Los Angeles and the next from Nebraska, both slug plate. As I chipped deeper, This three-piece mold black glass beer takes shape. Wow!! It looks like a beer but the bottle is embossed " Dr. JGB SIEGERT HIJOS" on the bottom and around the breast of the bottle. I can't find this listed anywhere! I'm like…"Soda???" "BEER??"…but it's got "Dr" on it..I'm like what looks like this but reads "DR.??" A friend of mine not into bottles jokes about Dr. Pepper..HaHA!! Anyway, I dig on and a small cave opens up! I peek back in there and can see a wide body and neck of a bottle with the bottom 2/3rds stuck in the dirt. I start to clear the area and ended up breaking a pharmacy bottle that was buried close to it. Oops! I get to the bottle and it's a big ole "Dr. KENNEDY'S MEDICAL DISCOVERY."cool!... The sun is setting over the ocean behind so I decide to pack up and head home. After all my gear is gathered, I start to ski/slide down the slope towards the sidewalk below. I figure I'll stop and look back to survey the days work. To my surprise, the setting sun has cast a coppery orange red glow all across bluffs! Wow! California! …and a little nod from the powers that be. I return the second day with a good section of rope to save my leg muscles a bit. I felt it'd be nice to have something to hang on to while clinging to the side of this cliff digging. I walked down the walkway that runs along the Incline until I came to my spot for bottles underneath. I doubled up the rope, put it through the concrete fence and lowered it into the dig area. Trying not to be a knucklehead, I walked to the bottom of the Incline and headed along the sidewalk back to the base of the hill and cliffs where I was digging. The rope really made a difference. I dropped a couple things amidst the dig and had to climb down to retrieve them each time. I would have been really worn out with no rope. I did learn quickly that I couldn't use the rope as a foothold….After I did the splits from trying to, I kept chiseling away. I could see someone crying with laughter watching my legs go horizontal and me trying to get out of it. The landslide I was creating did eat my good screwdriver though. It just disappeared in the soil. This was a very yin/yang type dig day. A lot of really cool bottles came out, but the broken ones were real heartbreakers. The first tough one was an amber whiskey from San Francisco embossed "GROCER". As I worked on getting it out it felt so solid the whole time until it popped out and the base was cracked off. The second was a coffin liquor flask embossed "H J Wool LACOTT FINE LIQOURS Los Angeles" in a circular slug plate..Wooohoo!! That'd a been way cool!….All in all, about 18 good bottles came out with a lip chip here and a crack there in a 3 day dig….I believe there are still a few up in there that I'll be after one day this week. UNTIL THE NEXT TIME…PATRICK THANKS EDDIE!!!!!!!! Bromo Seltzer Baltimore ( the 2nd biggest size) Dr. JGB Siegert Hijos (black glass) DR M M FENNERS ST. VITUS' DANCE SPECIFIC (lip chip) SAXLEHNERS BITTERQUELLE (black glass) DR. PRICES DELICIOUS FLAVORING EXTRACTS NEWMARK BROTHERS FLAVORING EXTRACTS(lip chip) DR.S PITHERS CASTORIA BRADSHAW & LATTER DRUGGISTS FAIRBURY NEB. THE CHAS E. PHILLIPS CHEMICAL CO.(lip chip) TARRANT & CO. DRUGGISTS NEW YORK ( small) DR KENNEDY'S MEDICAL DISCOVERY ROXBURY MASS. FRENCH GLOSS WHITTMORE BOSTON (still had the application brush inside) SHILOH'S CONSUMPTION CURE S.C. WILLIS & CO. LEROY NEW YORK
Day 4 was interesting in the fact that it rained and rained Xmas eve day
and night! When I first moved to California I noticed all the curbs are very high:
10 inches to a foot in some spots. I soon learned that drainage is a real problem in
So. Cal. Water puddles almost a foot deep in a lot of the valley where I live.
Along the "PCH" as well where I've been digging. This is a
blast in truck lemme tell you!!
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