Hilo Digs

[sodetraveler]

Just got back from a trip to Hilo to visit my Mom - or at least that's my cover story

The real purpose was of course to dig for bottles

My Mom lives in an area of Hilo that's been populated since at least the 1880's and as a kid I often dug in our backyard.

This time I got permission to dig in one of the neighbor's yards and was lucky enough to probe out a couple of outhouses and a trash pit

The outhouses were likely 1890's and turn-of-the-century, but the trash pit looked to be solid 1880's!

Unfortunately the vast majority of the stuff - and all of the sodes - was broken

There was one Pacific Soda Works with the bottom missing in the outhouse hole and a really old applied top hutchinson in the trash pit - just the top though. Probably a round bottom Hollister #202.......

I did find some awesome black glass gins - one of which has the crudest applied top I've ever seen!

I got another surprise when I was looking at some of the bottles I had left displayed at my Mom's house. I would have sworn that I never found a pontil'd bottle in Hilo, but there it was on the shelf. Just a little clear blank med with a flared lip. I checked the base and there was the pontil mark. Needless to say I brought that one back with me!

All this digging got me fired up to give my backyard in Saratoga, CA another try - and I score hitting an 1860's trash pit! But those are not Hawaii finds so I posted them up in Bottles & Glass under the heading Last Night Under the Deck.

Sorry I didn't get any action shots, but here are the bottles I found:

[808beginnerdigger]

Nice finds! Always liked those shoyu & bean pots. They make great decors in any setting. Hoping some day I will find a the square shaped shoyu bottle.