Blithe Button - Behind the Scenes: August 2008

Mom had the past week off, so we spent it doing lots of fun things...including our first bottle dig together since 1998. All those other times we went digging were different though...usually we would be walking through the woods and stumble upon a pile of broken bottles and pick through...but now we had a couple places to explore so we went out early.

The big Jewett City dump was the one that's been on my list since I pulled the crock out of the Moosup River, so we went there. It's been dug a million times and we didn't find anything but killer shards...so we decided to leave after a couple hours since a dig there is going to take a more concentrated effort. We did find a stick bug, which I've never seen in the wild before (science museums/pictures...but not up close & personal).

And Mom in front of a very large & hollow tree.

We drove out to Sterling for a picnic lunch and headed over to another spot that Nick told me about (Nick now lives in Beverly Hills, going to the LA Film School)...he said he and his father used to dig there when he was a kid. Well they must've found killer bottles because all we found were killer shards and a billion rocks, so actual digging with a shovel was impossible. It was a pile of glass and rocks. We left there after a couple futile hours and decided to head over to the dump I dug a couple times (and had an awesome dig with a friend back in April). When we got there, we noticed fresh POSTED signs...not like that ever really stopped me before, but the people who live across the street have posted/no parking signs all over the place too, and I don't really feel like getting arrested. Believe me, in all my years of exploring abandoned buildings with Zack and others, I've had my share of run-ins with the cops and luckily still have a squeaky clean record. This includes run-ins with security twice at Norwich State Hospital (and a high-speed car chase around the buildings...fun!)...so I figure my luck is going to run low pretty soon.

So we got coffee.

And then I remembered this tip that I got from someone on the Antique Bottle Forum who told me of a place that's in the town I live in. So what the hell, if today was going to be fruitless we may as well go explore some place new, right?

:)

So this new place has no decent parking. I couldn't pull my car completely off the road without going in a ditch, so I got as close to the ditch as possible and left half the car in the road. (Also have never been towed because of a parking error...knock on wood). Where's the dump? Mom was all gungho at this point and started digging a hole where there was no indication that there was anything there to dig. And a canning jar lid popped out of the ground. LOL.

But that was all there was to dig, so we just started walking the property. Found a dump full of plastic bags...that's NOT a good sign. Found a bunch of abandoned tractors, a plow dated 1878...these are better signs. Mom was digging test holes here and there and at this point I was just wanting some interesting pictures for the blog, so I left all the digging stuff with her and went exploring.

Found a car!

And then found 5 more!

??????

The last thing I pointed at in the last video didn't turn out to be a car after all, but a 1941 Frigidaire refrigerator. And there we found a dump. Mostly broken ball jars and metal pails...then Mom found a doll head (which I love finding doll heads in dumps, but sadly still not found a whole one myself)!!! She found some other cool stuff in the fridge, like a pale abalone shell with weird cut outs in it...the shell was in amazing condition considering that shells you find in dumps usually disintegrate in your hand, and this one didn't.

Still something was bothering me though, because the person who told me about this place said there was a turn-of-the-century dump here...and this dump was obviously a bit more recent. But now that Mom found a decent place, she didn't want to budge...and I was worried that my car would likely get towed soon. And the sun was starting to set. I figure we can almost always come back...so we started moseying on back to the car. And then we found two more dumps. One might be the previously mentioned TOC dump, but we didn't really have time to dig...though in the time we were poking around I found 41 glass canning jar lids. LOL. It was such a ridiculous pile (39 later found to be without cracks/chips) that we went a little crazy. The next dump had stuff from the 40's-60's. Something tells me we certainly haven't found everything there.

A tea tin left behind.

THE FINDS!

I piled up the lids, but all 41 are here. I haven't cleaned them yet so I'm sure as I find more broken/chipped ones that number will go down. And I did take many of the killer shards home, because I have an artsy idea in my head.

Found in Jewett City:

(The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company later became A&P, the grocery store...bit of history..)

What's this? (above & below)

PAT'D FEB. 16 97
PATENT PENDING

(Yes, this Jewett City shard was found in the town.)

Final finds, starting with Mom's doll head! (It had one complete glass eye, and the other was broken in half)