Everything’s Gonna Beer Alright
When I got permission to probe this house it took about 10 seconds to locate the privy. There it was, right in the middle of the yard, a perfect privy depression. I called my digging mentor Doc and he said he’d be there in a half hour. I was able to determine it was a brick liner fairly early on, which helped me know what parameters to work in. It was a disappointing start with nothing but un-embossed meds. Doc finally showed up to hear me moan about how sparce the pickings were. He said, “Quit moaning; you’re gonna’ pull out a blob in a minute”. (this comment was nothing more than an attempt to raise my quickly waning morale) The next shovel load revealed a blob! I eased it out and it was mint! I laughed in disbelief. It turned out to be a very rare local beer with an applied lip.
That was about it for this dig. The house ended up being mid 1880’s and the pit bottomed out at 5 ft. Besides the beer there was nothing to write home about apart from an undamaged mason jar with 13 embossed on the bottom, some people would throw these away as the thought they were unlucky. Score!
