Resurrection of old

(Pictures in this post were taken with my old digital camera, which is why the closeup quality is lacking)

1996: I was 12 and went to my friend Conni's mother's house for the weekend in RI. We played in the woods and she told me of this bottle dump that was on the property. We were digging around and found a ton of stuff that looked like it dated to the 1930's (art deco glass...mostly broken).

I don't remember the moment I found this brown bottle (at right--my mom found the bottle on the left when she was little)...but it's a brown glass CLOROX bottle, and from that moment on, I was hooked. Last week I was able to identify the Clorox bottle...it's from 1929!

Naturally, this kicked off a ridiculous obsession. I picked up bottles from EVERYWHERE. If it was glass, it was mine. In fact, in a short amount of time that spring, I amassed a huge collection of peppermint schnapps bottles from the side of the road, and about a pint of peppermint schnapps, when you put it all together. (Gross).

And Sterling had its own bottle dump, right in the middle of town (ok, that's not true. But I'm not telling where, and it's quite picked over anyway.) My mom and I attacked it that spring, and found these prescription bottles.

I still have all of these. The dates, from left to right, are 5/6/55, 5/11/63 (hard to read except in person), 8/2/63, and 9/27/66. There had been a fifth bottle at the time, but it was broken and the label was illegible. Some of these have pills in them (gross). The dark bottle's pill reacted with the paper, which is why it's a different color from all the rest. Only one has an actual label of the medication inside, on the far right--Desoxyn. In 1966 it was used to treat depression and suppress the appetite in young women, but today it's used to treat ADD and narcolepsy in children, and in rare cases, depression.

These were finds too, from left to right--a glass cup found in the woods in Sterling, a Pepsi-Cola bottle found at the same place as the prescription bottles, a Vicks Vapo Rub bottle and nail polish bottle found at the site of the abandoned house on Newport Road (which was demolished and built over in 1999).

Today I was floating around antique-bottles.net and came across this topic, where some guy found a Connecticut colonial copper coin in an abandoned house (I always wanted to find a coin the way he did) and that reminded me of this find when I was 9 and poking around old foundations. I found this bone and metal fork in the foundation for a colonial house in 1993. Today, that area has been bulldozed and built over (the area was so cool, there was an old well to fall into (you couldn't see the bottom!) and a foundation...today it's someone's front yard, so maybe they have unknown treasure. This is very close to where Mom found that soda bottle in that first picture (actually, she's found tons of things around my grandparent's yard).

Sorry about the quality (or lack thereof) in these pictures, if enough people complain I'll take new ones. LOL