I’ll admit that I’ve been on a glass kick lately. Obviously, not a single one of my detectors can find glass–but I’ve mastered a method for finding bottle shards and china fragments. Are you ready for this? I call it… the random-hole-digging-method. You may be asking yourself, what is this random-hole-digging-method and how can I sign up. Well, I’m about to tell you…

Sometime last week, I decided to leave the detector in the trunk of my Forester. Instead, I grabbed my shovel and set off to find myself a bottle dump or privy. For those of you who follow my blog, this is the brick house that my husband and I have been swinging for weeks now–the same house where he found an entire freaking handful of coins in two-hours. I guess you could say I felt a little shown-up–so I decided to show HIM up and discover a bottle dump.

After dragging myself all over this property–trudging through the swamp, tripping over fallen logs, and snagging myself on a million-and-three brambles–I had yet to detect even the smallest sliver of broken glass to indicate a cache of hidden bottles. In–what I can only describe as a moment of desperation–I chose to implement my random-hole-digging-method. Now, despite its name, this method was not entirely random.

As I stood on the property, I proposed a simple scenario to myself…. The year is 1878–the dead of winter. I have to relieve myself… like REALLY bad. How far would I walk through the snow to get to the outhouse?

Standing at the backdoor of the abandoned brick home, I started pacing across the lawn with the scenario rattling around in my head. I stopped at a good distance–not too close but not too far–and I started stabbing my shovel into the ground. I hoped to hear the scrape of glass or feel a distinct variation in the earth. At one point, I eventually struck a rock–which was concealed just under the surface. I poked and prodded with my digger and discovered an entire ring of rocks surrounding a soft center. This had to be the privy, right? For good measure, I went as far as to ask the previous homeowners for confirmation. (Perhaps you remember a little post titled: I talk to dead people.)

Well, the dead people failed to respond, but I don’t hold that against them. If I were a dead person and some crazy woman with a shovel asked where I did my business… I probably wouldn’t take her seriously either.

So–without any REAL direction–I started digging. I dug, and I dug, and I dug some more. I dug about four-feet down with a considerably small shovel and a whole lot of desperation. In hindsight, I probably should have stopped digging after about a foot… the same depth that the shards of glass, pottery fragments, and pieces of bone no longer appeared in my backfill. Then again… anyone who has had the privilege of digging with me knows that I’m a relentless digger–especially when I’m digging for bottles. It took about an hour to dig the hole, but only about ten minutes to fill it back in.

I dug around a bit more, but eventually messaged my detecting buddy–Mike Sheesely–and asked if he knew of any privies I could dig up. He responded almost immediately–as expected–and offered to share one of his permissions! Heck, yes!

A few days later, I met Mike at a breathtaking stone house in the country that overlooked the distant hills. As I poked around the property, I discovered a plaque on the eaves that read 1830. I also happened upon a little brick structure with a pretty little bottle poking from the ashes. I broke out into my happy dance and retrieved the bottle, hoping that it would be complete. Nope.

As you can imagine, I tore that place apart looking for a complete bottle. Mike helped. We found dozens of fragments–not a single whole bottle.

I was relentless in tearing apart that privy–which was full of chunky glass and oyster shells. Unfortunately, when I posted my project to a online privy digging group–I learned that I was tearing apart a smokehouse. I probably should have figured that out by the charred beams and blackened bricks… but I had contracted some ferocious bottle fever and I only had one thing on my mind..

The privy dig turned up short… as would any privy dig being conducted in a smokehouse. As a result, I reverted to my random-hole-digging-method. I dug a lot of holes… I found a lot of cobalt and sun-purple fragments. I’ve come to realize that I might just have to invest in a privy probe… because this random-hole-digging-method just isn’t that reliable.