Are you going to use all them bottles?
We started this hole at 8:30am and finished at 5:00pm with no break! It was a slow start to the day but bottles were flying out at about 5 ft. After pulling out a couple of Cherry Pectorals (which helped lift our spirits) we finally got to the bottom and started to follow the yellow brick road; it just kept on going. After a quick business meeting we decided to call on Tricky’s tunneling experience. Tricky has seen the Great Escape twice now and was clearly the most qualified to undertake the risky task ahead, and with the spirit of Charles Bronson Tricky went another 3ft under the fence! Safely of course.
(Now folks, don’t try this at home, nor anybody else’s for that matter. Bottle diggers have been pinned underground, up against privy walls and some have even lost their lives going just a little further to grab that out of reach bottle, so tunneling is no joke. We will not do it again.)
It turned out to be an 8×8 ft deep woody of which we only dug 7/8ths (If you want to read about the other 1/8th we dug go to ‘digging in the rain’ also in October 07)
At about 3:30 the neighborhood kids came home from school and as is customary they stop at every 8ft deep hole on the way to ask “what you doin’ ? ” One child in particular, after coveting our mini shovel for 10 minutes, took a shine to the pile of bottles we had extracted and asked “are you going to use all them bottles?” (Frankly I would have thrown them back in the pit.) But Tricky Dickie’s window was looking pretty scant so he had his designs on them too. Enough said, Tricky donated a double portion to the bottle-poor-lad and we all went home with a grin.
It wasn’t until we got to the bottom that we actually got to the better bottles of the day. (We actually dug a lot more than the pictures show.) As is the case most were slick meds. We got 4 Ayers Cherry pectorals/Ayers Hair Tonic with killer lips, a couple of big Aschenbach & Millers from Philly we also dug about 2o or so stacked leather heels from womens’ shoes! Later research showed a cobbler shop 2 doors down.
My keepers ended up being:
H E Bucklen//Dr Kings California Golden Compound// Elkhart, Indiana
Dr Sanford’s //Liver Invigorator //New York
Ayers// Cherry Pectoral// Lowel// Mass (This product contained opium!)
L M Green prop//Woodbury N J
un-embossed sheared lip igloo ink
crude aqua strap sided flask with AD & HC embossed on the bottom
Because H E Bucklen was only in Elkhart for one year before moving his operation to Chicago, we could date the bottom of the pit to about 1878.
Yet more bottles saved from the grim prospect of another dark cold winter buried in turd.