Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
I couldn't stand it any longer.....I had to hunt....but where? Everything here is frozen rock solid .....As many of you know,I live along a lake that was formerly the river ,before the big floods in early 1900's. I live on one of the original curves of the river and decided to follow it to see if any of the sand banks would be diggable . I remembered seeing bottles earlier this fall up one of the banks and thought I would check that out. These were on a steep bank about fifty feet up from the lake. I pulled myself up by using the trees and overgrown honeysuckle vines. As we have alot of snow yet,I could makeout bare patches of ground with shiny bottles and lots of rusty items,so headed for those. I didn't take my detector ,because I figured I would be just digging bottles.I started shifting through a pile of broken bottles, pottery,stoneware and old metal...when I found the dumbbell..." It's a sign", I thought...LOL...... No wonder everything was broken....The iron dumbell has a stamp on it # 7....it was so cold, it frosted when I brought it in the house....I only had brought a small garden trowel and I started digging....flattened out buckets and larger pieces of old tin covered the area, so it took forever to drag off them off the pile because they were so frozen into the ground...the tin resembled the kind that was on ceilings in the1800's...I kept pulling,digging and getting caught in the vines...LOL...Finally I lugged off a sheet of tin and there was the Blue pitcher with the swastika on it....I was so afraid to move ,because it was encased in dirt...and only the top was exposed...dig.... pray ' its in one piece'......dig ...pray 'pleeeeeease be in one piece'.....I pulled it out and began to wipe the mud out of it when I heard ''clink" Thats when I pulled out the Atwoods Bitters Bottle , so blackened with mud I didn't know what I had until I got home .....I was so happy with the pitcher, that I thought that was enough for the day ...thats when I saw another spot of blue....I started digging and same thing...mud covered Blue Windmill pitcher along with the taller bottles ...I carried those finds home and got Carhartts on and went back but only found broken items.....So bright and early this morning I was back out there...this time warmly dressed with pick and shovel.I moved more rusted metal and thats when I found the skates,the iron and the misc. rusty pieces . ...my knees were rubbed raw from kneeling on that cold metal...I started for home and half way down the hill I spotted the old brown jug ,it was under a huge oak that had its roots all exposed ...you could crawl right under the tree where the dirt had washed away..so of course I crawled right in there...I started digging around with my hands and thats when I saw more bottles and the tan little stoneware jug....the tan jug was full of dirt......By this time I couldn't carry everything, so I stashed it all under the tree and went home to get some buckets and small daughters to help. The girls helped me carry all my treasures and we started cleaning them as soon as we got in....I had cleaned the pitchers and some of the bottles the night before and had been admiring them ,even tho they are pretty damaged and cracked. We had everything laid out on newspaper in the basement and were scraping and washing off mud and dirt in the utility sink...I placed the small tan jar in a five gallon bucket of warm water to loosen the dirt and mud ...and started swishing it out...thats when I caught a glimpse of silver....My heart stopped and I kept swishing ...more silver and thats when the 1937 Merc dime appeared.....Yeehaw!!!! and I started yelling for the girls....and then another 1919 five cent piece...then the Indian cents ,1893,1890 and 1899 appeared and honey I tell ya...I know what heavens feels like....LOL....I took the last clump of dirt out and crumbled it and thats where the last two pieces were ...1900 Morgan and the 1942 Liberty....There was alot of dancing going on in that basement with mama and two little girls....I talked to one of the neighbors this afternoon who told me that an old farmhouse used to be by that spot and that they had bulldozed it over the hill sometime in the fifty's....Lucky Me ...I will be back at daylight on Sunday....
lol
Wow, WTG Gypsy, I am happy for you, persistence does pay off. 
