THE BARBER 

After an hour or so into the project we had two pits located. The closest one to the back of the old house rated high on the probe scale, it  felt totally packed and layered with trash. Down go the tarps, out come the tools and to work we went. At about the two foot level busted 1860s black glass bottles started appearing. It was evident that this was likely the oldest pit on the property due to its location and age of the glass at the top. At this point I decided to let my son Robb take over while Nick and I opened up door number two. The first pit contained 1860s trash and was four by four by five feet deep, producing numerous black glass bottles and a real nice green master ink, lots of liquor.  The other pit we were working on was a huge 6x6 bomber in which  the trash layer was in the last two feet of the pit at the eight to ten foot level. Anticipation ran high on this one knowing that it was likely going to be the 1870s privy. It started out with 1890s refuse and ended on the bottom at the late 1880s, not the pit I was hoping for and not the barbers. Nothing special on this one just a few regular household bottles and a lot of hard work.

It was getting late in the day and everyone was tired, two dug holes and two fill, compact and asphalt repair jobs, we were beat. I thought to myself, could this house of sat vacant for ten years explain why no 70s pit was located or was I just not looking in the right area. It was getting dark and the rest of the family were baked, done and ready to go reminding me that I had been all over that lot and that there was nothing left. As tired as I was intuition told me to keep looking, so back to the locating mode I went in the dark of night. The pits we had dug were on the side property line about three feet from a gas line that ran parrell to property. Not feeling to great about it and with a little more caution, I decided to run another probe pattern closer to the gas pipe and my three foot safety zone. Starting from the back of the house I worked my way down the line and hit an area of brick in an area about three feet deep and four foot wide. Inching a little closer to the pipe with my probe in the brick area it suddenly sank to the handle with total conformation, it was another privy.

The next morning we returned and opened up door number three. The excitement of the previous days dig was to much for my wife and son to handle so they took off and went shopping. Nick and I were on our own this day so to work we went opening up the hole. While digging a curious spectator drove up and started asking numerous questions. The hole was only about two feet deep at this point so I hopped out and let Nick take over so I could deal with our curious new friend. While talking with this guy I kept looking back over my shoulder at Nick watching his progress. After about twenty minutes and having had quite enough, I glanced over and saw two round amber cylinder whiskey 5ths along side the hole. Excusing myself  explaining how I needed to get back to my project the guy finally left.

"Hey Nick, what's up" I asked. His reply was "Whiskey bottles, Cutters and there's more down there"........ The Cutters were early 1870s, "J.F. Cutter" and a "J.H. Cutter" 5ths, both being nice crude examples, it was the missing hole and the age I wanted.  At this point the hole was four foot deep and I took over. After about five minutes of digging and making the hole a little wider out comes another nice Star Shield Cutter in a chocolate amber color with two more 5ths showing along side of it. Being very careful I removed the dirt from around one of the 5ths I couldn't quite fully see yet. It was laying sideways and still heavily impacted in the dirt. I couldn't believe what I was seeing because this one was pure  green and almost glowing in the dark privy dirt. My first thought was that this one would be un-embossed because the color is so unbelievable. Carefully removing it with the precision of a surgeon I rolled it over to reveal the most beautiful  pure light green Star Shield Cutter I've ever seen. With the excitement level being ramped up to the max I carefully continued on liberating several more embossed Cutters and numerous other bottles. Later on while digging out one of the corners of the privy back under a ledge, it was getting dark and hard to see. I could make out another 5th standing  almost straight up with a massive amount of heavy embossing and see it was no Cutter. I asked for my light so I could get a better look at what was that's about to see daylight for the first time in 135 years. Carefully removing the dirt from around it I shined the light back into the cavity and could clearly see that this bottle was not only heavily embossed but was super crude and very green. It was the nicest crudest, bubbly "O.K. Castle Whiskey"  I'd ever laid my eyes on in a killer deep green color with very little amber.

on top of 5ths mixed with numerous floppy applied top pint size flask. This hole was totally packed and most of the bottles were intact but there were also several broken nice whiskies.