My youngest brother lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in a house that he thinks was built sometime in the 20's. A few weeks ago, he mentioned that, as he tried to dig a new vegetable garden, he kept finding a lot of broken glass. I'd stumbled across the concept of bottle digging several months ago while trying to date a local beer bottle. These guys have some really cool finds, tho' I get a bit bogged down in their jargon sometimes. Thinking back to the site I'd found, I suggested that he try digging deeper. I guess he still hadn't tried by the time I visited this weekend. When I brought it up, he pointed me to the shovel and let me dig. Lo and behold! Bottles. Lots of different ones, a few emobssed. Since I live near Racine, I asked for the Horlick's Malted Milk Bottle. Most of the bottles were broken, of course, but we dug up a bunch in the short time we dug. Only a few were embossed: the Horlick's bottle, a laundry bluing bottle, a slightly cracked flask-shaped bottle labelled "Union Made", a blob-top "Theo. Harm, Sheboygan", and a tiny one labelled "The M-E Co., Milwaukee". Lots of fun! And all of that in a hole less than 2x2x2! I've got to get up there another weekend with boots and gloves and see what we can find deeper! We didn't go any deeper yesterday, because we hit a dark sulfurous layer that made us think "privvy" a bit too strongly!

The HOrlick bottle had a rusted out cap which retained what I first assumed was a sludge of wet malted milk. In cleaning, the cap began to fall apart, and it became obvious from the smell that it was something more solvent-oriented... maybe a jar they used to rinse out paint brushes? Anyway, it's a screwcap, so not very old. But, I like it. I hope I can convince him to share one of the green bottles shaped like small beer bottles. The had applied lips, so they're somewhat old, but I have no idea what they were for. Can't wait to see what comes out of the hole next!