Duncan Manor Tour
As you may have read in the April ‘08 stories, I have been in contact with a realtor who had just purchased an 1870’s manor. About 1 month ago she contacted me and said they were planning to have a public tour of the property, as there had been so much local interest. I was glad to help out and suggested that I could set up a table of bottles to sell and dig a privy at the same time.
I had probed out one obvious spot in the yard, which was later confirmed to be a privy by a resident who had torn it down in the 1960’s. I knew it was not even worth the effort digging but this was not just for me, it was about showing the visitors touring the manor. They would be the ones to benefit from seeing how history, even if recent, was interesting in it’s historical context. My friend Shawn and ‘old man’ Lyle came along for the ride. Lyle is an old time dump digger and American Indian artifact collector… Sounding like the old cartoon character Deputy Dawg he said, ”Boy! I never dug an outhouse before.”
My son Jack came to see his daddy dig for bottles for a while, too.
When we cut the sod and pulled up the first piece Jack said, “You didn’t get a bottle, guys.” Too cute.
He was happy enough to play with the ‘claw’ and scrape through the dirt we threw onto the tarp.
I didn’t realize I had so many bottles tucked away in my shed and was glad to have a chance to get rid of a few and make a few bucks in the process. There were about 2,500 visitors over 2 days and I sold over half of the bottles I took.
WARNING: REAL PRIVY DIGGERS MAY BE OVERCOME WITH SADNESS IF THEY READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH…YES FOLKS, IT’S WORSE THAN DIGGING BROKEN BOTTLES.
The privy turned out to be pretty full too; we dug about 40 bottles, all of which did nothing more than extract involuntary ohhh’s and ahhh’s from those who saw them come out of the pit. Each time a bottle with a half-rusted metal screw top came out, people responded like I had just performed a magic trick! Those who wanted could take away screw top beers for a buck or two. All the bottles were 1950-60’s. We even dug some plastic bottles too! But what was cool was that hundreds of people, otherwise ignorant of old bottles in old outhouses, went home and after putting up their new window bottles, laid in bed that night and thought, “Man! What a cool day that was; would you have ever believed it? Old bottles buried in poop!”
ROLL UP, ROLL UP! 
….me explaining how the British Codd bottle (a victorian soda) worked
This is my first effort to video a dig. From now on I will try to do this on all of my digs…
A huge thanks to Dianne and Bud for inviting me to share this wonderful experience with them. Jared and Rachel… thanks for helping me when the crowds got too big to handle. And SHAWN, well, you know I could not have done this without your help. THANKS.
I have located 2, possibly 3 other privies on this site and will dig them all this year. Watch this space…one thing is for sure: the privies can only get earlier!
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