LAST MONTH

    I didn't lose my notes from the last meeting, I just cannot make sense of them. We saw a bunch of cool stuff at the last meeting and it wasn't just bottles. Scott rescued two Drug Salesman's Sample books that someone had dumped in a dumpster. I believe all of the stuff was products of Perrigos in Allegan. The huge books are filled with page after page of old labels and old cartons front and back. What a find!

    Here is another amazing thing that we saw. Brent Heighton brought in a very old collection of drug store prescriptions that were filled out by doctors from the turn of the century. Have you ever stopped to think how crazy it is to collect old bottles! Let's face it, we are trash collectors! And think of how much money we pay for some of this old trash . . . we love it! But collecting drug store prescriptions that is really wild!

    Doctors had just as terrible penmanship in the 1800's as they do today! With everyone pitching in we figured most of them out, and they called for every kind of drug you can think of. The most surprising thing wasn't seeing prescriptions written for the hard stuff like, morphine it was one that was written for aspirin!

    It appears that the drug stores all supplied the local doctors with pads of preprinted prescription sheets with the drug store's name and address and other advertising. Many of them were very ornate. It sure was an interesting old collection. My theory behind this unusual collection is this. I think this person might have been a drug salesman who requested these from the different stores that he called on so that he would have a record of each of his clients and their addresses. Really pretty cool stuff, Brent!

    Scott and Chuck had been doing some digging. They displayed a bottle that was embossed "W.L. LARKIN, BATTLE CREEK."

Another was "GRASSER BRAND, TOLEDO OHIO."

    Kevin had a "RICHARDSON ROOT BEER, KALAMAZOO." Also, Kevin found a small brass bank while digging into a creek bed. The bank is embossed Kalamazoo Home Savings Bank.

I was going to make a little insert to help you pay your dues but I am not going to have the extra time. All you need to do is send a check for $10.00 to:

CHUCK PARKER

607 CROCKET AVE

PORTAGE MI 49024

Or better yet, join us at the next meeting and hand him cash!

        I would like to apologize for this newsletter, my wife is not available to edit it this month. Last month I included an article I wrote for the metal detecting club called Bottle Probe. I felt, kind-of-like I was preaching to the choir, but it worked out pretty swell! I had some of our newer members come up and thank me for the article! And that same article may have recruited some new members! I know of at least one new member who is anxious for meeting night.

        His name is Mike and he is a new member in the metal detecting club. He has been following the bottle digging articles and has already had some great luck! The other day he brought some of his recent finds and I was blown away! One is a rare sized Doctor J. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters and after cleaning it should be worth $300.00 +!

        His next bottle is (are you sitting down?) "A.R. Thayer's Iron Bitters, Lansing Michigan!" This bottle has a tooled top and it has a little chip under the lip and it wasn't his fault. It is a nice bottle! My Auction Price Report is 10 years old and it shows this bottle valued in 1996 at $715.00!

        I may be wrong, but I think a third bottle that Mike showed me may be very rare! Doctor Kennedy, from Roxbury Mass., had two or three different products. I think Dr. Kennedy's Medical Discovery is perhaps the one we see from time to time, but I cannot find a listing anywhere for, Dr. Kennedy's, Prairie Weed. It is an large unusual shaped bottle! Anyway, I think Mike will be at the meeting to show you his awesome finds.

        Last month we talked about building a good probe and how to use that probe to locate, and date, old outhouse pits. When you are dating a pit using the method of 'reading stove ash residue,' we learned how the white creamy wood ash is most often your oldest pit. In most cases, wood ash dates your pit before 1890 or even 1880. By the late 1880's, many homes, especially in the city, had updated to coal-burning furnaces.

        To the old-time bottle collectors, only the pre-1900 hand finished bottles are worth considering, but we are starting to see that change. By the year 1900, the Automatic Bottle Machine (A.B.M.) was invented. After that, the glass blower and his assistants did not have anything to do with the bottle making process.

        Bottles blown in a mold will have a seam line on the bottle. If this seam extends up the side of the bottle and just over the shoulder, the bottle is from 1860's to 1870's. If the seam runs half way up the neck, it is a late 1870's to 1880's. If the seam runs up but stops at the bottle's lip, it is 1880's to late 1890's. If the seam runs all the way up and over the top lip, it is a machine made bottle.

        No longer are all machine made bottles considered undesirable. Many soda, beer, and dairy bottles from the 1900's are sought after by collectors. I sold a A.B.M. half pint dairy bottle on e-Bay for $375.00!

        Another way to date bottles is by the mouth or lip of the bottle. One of the first bottles I dug was an extremely rare umbrella ink and it had three big things going for it! It had a sheared top, which dated it to 1840 or before. This type of lip was formed by cutting or snipping the glass free of the blow pipe with a special pair of shears. This process left the neck and lip with a stovepipe look.

        There are two other great features on this beautiful old ink bottle. One is a pontil scar on the bottom. That is where the glass blower attached a glass rod to the bottom of the bottle to be used as a handle. He used it to hold the hot bottle while he sheared the lip. When he was finished, the rod was broken away from the finished bottle leaving what we call a pontil scar on the bottom. The third desirable feature was the bottle's rich dark olive green color. It was caused by using sand that contained high iron content when making the batch of glass. With this type of bottle this color is very rare.

        I went back and read part 1 and II of this series, and I realized I went from finding and dating the privy to dating the bottle finds. That means that I skipped over the most important part --digging the pit.

        Once the privy is located, many times you can probe just beneath the top soil at a sharp angle, then push the probe towards each wall of the original hole. When your probe hits the undug wall, you will feel it. Once you have determined where each wall is located, you know which sod to remove. Here is where you get right to work! I bring in a 10-feet square plastic tarp and, after carefully cutting the sod in one- foot squares, I place them on the tarp in the same order that they came out of the ground.

        Once the sod is removed, I slide that tarp out of the way and place another tarp in its place to pile dirt on. Usually, I will put a tarp on both sides of the pit so that I won't have to do a lot of twisting as I change positions while digging. The best place to start digging is in the center of the pit. Occasionally you will find bottles there, but most often they rolled off into the corners.

        Of course, you know what was piled up in the center--- right? We dug 4 pits in Decatur and I was taking a break with my digging partner. The lot was right next door to a grocery store so I grabbed us a couple sodas and some candy bars. As we stood on the dirt pile and looked over the dig site, my friend fumbled his candy bar as he was removing the wrapper and it fell into the freshly dug soil. He picked up the candy bar, brushed it off, then said "It's just dirt," then ate it!

        He is right you know-- it is just dirt. Some people freak out when you tell them what you are doing, but it is just dirt. I do wear gloves and carry antibiotic ointment when I go. I also bring water for drinking and water for washing. It is best to have at least three or more tamps. Also it is a good idea to bring along some 5- gallon pails to haul bottles and dirt in. If you find lots of bottles, you will need to import dirt to make up for the space the bottles took. I also like to use a small probe to gently feel around with when I am in the hole. Other handy tools are a hand- held garden claw to dig the corners with and a saw to cut roots with.

        Another thing to bring is newspaper to wrap the fragile bottles in. If you are digging in winter, you want to wrap the bottles before they even leave the hole and have someone place them into an insulated cooler. When they come out of the warmer ground into the freezing air, they have been known to shatter! As I said in part I of this series, don't give up too early. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that, "There was only one bottle in that pit --- a $3,000 bottle!"

        After you finish your dig, fill your hole, and if this is your first dig, you will likely be very whipped by now!

        Don't be tempted to cut corners! After you start filling the hole, jump in from time to time and stomp around, compacting the soil. If you don't, you will have what looks like too much dirt when you are finished--- but you won't, Especially if you removed several bottles. In that case, you need to add dirt.

        I make it a practice to never start a pit that I cannot finish in a day. I have friends who can dig 3 or more in a day, but you can never know how long one will take. It depends on the depth of the pit and how many bottles are present. Also, tree roots can slow things up big time.

        Some of the toughest pits that I have dug have been the most rewarding. With a wood saw, tree roots can be mastered. I like the Stanley Short Cut saw because it is fast and easy. One time I dug out an iron-framed treadle sewing machine! What a pain that was! Another pain was an old bicycle frame! I had a digging buddy who did a pit in Plainwell that many privy diggers would have passed up on because it was a 1900's house. My friend found two Michigan license plates from the first year they were made out of porcelain-covered metal. They were in perfect condition with not one chip! He sold them and he got hundreds for them!

        I asked my good friend, Mark Churchill, what were the most bottles he had ever removed from one pit and he told me 200! Now that pit required a lot of fill dirt to be brought in! Usually you will find bottles, but also watch for marbles, doll parts, clay pipes, bone handled brushes, coins & tokens.

        In a 1974 issue of Treasure World Magazine, there was an interesting story. It was called The $250,000 Privy! It was the story of a Chicago man who so hated his wife and he knew he had stomach cancer. The man was named Felix Conley and he was a successful cattle buyer and shipper. He dug a new privy and worked with his Chicago bank to convert his cash on hand into gold coins. When the new pit was dug, he scattered the coins on the floor of the new hole, then capped it with concrete. Then the outhouse was moved into place. He only told his doctor and the doctor agreed to recover the money after the wife had died.

        When 22 years had passed, the doctor fell ill. Before he died he told his son. The old lady live to be 92, outliving them all! What the writer doesn't say is who told him?

        A major development company in Philadelphia purchased several complete city blocks in a old crumbling part of town. The local bottle club wanted permission to dig as many of the privies as possible, to save as much of the town's history as they could. Permission was finally granted. However, the window of opportunity that they were granted was very small indeed and the task was overwhelming! That is when they decided to contact other clubs in surrounding states and recruit as many diggers as possible. One of my friends who went told me this story, but I cannot recall who it was.