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Dig of Porcelain Insulators (Two Sites) In One Day. :)

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    Posted 8 years ago

    SpiritBear
    (813 items)

    Story time!
    A dump and an abandoned lot-turned-danger-field turn up a few firsts as well as an endangered species of bird!
    So I'll start with the dump as it came first albeit is less exciting: Riding my bike down to an area that has turned up blob bottle shards, I selected one promising-looking spot that did not appear to be very old but definitely had glass. Taking my mini-shovel, I began to dig down a couple of feet and was finding nothing but clear, shattered, unembossed glass. Rats! Nothing there, right?
    Suddenly, my shovel popped up a milk-glass jar from Armour & Co., which existed as one entity from the 1860s to 1980s. I put it in my pack and keep digging.
    I spent over an hour in that patch of woods and was so discouraged-- shard after shard, 1940s stuff, unembossed and non-ACL flasks. Suddenly, a knife popped up out of the ground. Woo-hoo! My first dug knife. Although it looked like something for a pirate, I was quite sure it was a hunting knife, and my neighbor verified that.
    Being eaten by the mosquitoes, I was starting to get angry when I popped out a fence-post insulator. Nothing too exciting, but it was better than the shards.
    Suddenly I hear a bottle shatter-- my shovel stuck one directly, but I'm pretty sure it was broken before I hit it. It was also only base-embossed.
    The area stops turning up much of interest, and I was getting hungry, so I take a walk and ate before leaving. I did, though, find a couple of interesting items.

    TO THE LOT!
    I go back down to the site of what was a TOC (Turn Of [20th] Century)building-- as SCA (sun-colored-amethyst) glass typically ceases to exist by 1920, the SCA shards I was finding put the building at likely pre-WW1. Sadly, the construction crews had found the privy first and dug it up, scattering and shattering everything. There had been so many gorgeous plates in it that you would not believe--some almost half-intact even. Pictorial Chinese, cobalt blue design, soft flowers in light colors, etc.
    Alas, even the brown insulators-- including one that would have been at least a double-decker, were even shattered-- I'd been there before but never fully walked the lot.
    I stop poking around the dirt-bank holding up the sidewalk, and I start walking around the lot. One section still has its tile floor down there, but most of it is cement and covered in sand. It's obvious that there had been additions several times. Throughout the lot there are giant pits filled with water and manhole-like holes that drop down several feet--very dangerous, but nothing saying, "NO TRESPASSING."
    All around me, twisted cable claws at the sky in rusting agony, and shattered cement walls lie in ruin upon rough, uneven ground. Bricks are scattered about-- a few I brought back as they're TOC-- and glass lies where it had been for decades in basement-corners where the crumbling stone under heavy equipment had shattered it all.
    Between one water-filled basement and some still-standing walls, I'm scanning the ground as I search for items and analyze what the company had done.
    It appears that they had cast and finished metal products in copper and aluminum. I was already carrying a grinding-stone that I thought would be an interesting addition when I suddenly saw what looked like a ceramic crucible for metal. Although I could see it wasn't all there, I thought it would be worth going to just to look at it.
    As I stepped toward it, I noticed something in the ground--something brown. What could it be?
    I look at it better and see the rim, instantly realizing it as the bottom of an insulator. I keep looking at it, trying to see where a side is broken or chipped and wondering if any of its top was left-- of which all the others lack if nothing else.
    I take my mini-shovel and step it into the ground, gently lifting out the dirt containing the insulator and lying it aside.
    Amazing! It was likely the only one to survive as several other by a couple companies were shattered, and so I stacked their pieces on a cement slab lying in the lot.
    Carrying the grinding wheel, the insulator, the shovel, and a cast-iron metal item I forgot the name of, I continue walking rows when suddenly a bird starts screaming at me.
    Too focused on the ground strewn with metal items-- most looking like coins, much to my annoyance-- I give the bird no attention until it begins dancing on the ruined foundation of a part of the site. Even then, I keep walking.
    Suddenly my eyes pick up just 2 inches from my left foot 4 very well-camouflaged bird eggs, and I finally get it.
    Listening to the bird and looking at it, I recognize it as the endangered Piping Plover.
    Whoops! A land-laying species, this bird is endangered because is lays its eggs in often the worst location. Thankfully, the heavy-equipment was focused on the opposite side of the lot near an extant building and many mounds of dirt and casting-molds.
    It'll teach me to give heed to birds next time. LOL. So I walk away quickly, and the bird shuts up.
    THEN, I find a manhole that lead to some old pipes and glass shards. I begin to lower myself down as it continues on a ways but suddenly find wasps flying from within the hole. Whoops again! Maybe after the snow begins to fall. LOL.
    In the end, I bike home from the two locations I went to with a few embossed/debossed TOC bricks, a Pinco Insulator (Pinco 1921 - 1980s, if I recall) along with two others, a very ruined knife, a few bottles, a silver-plated copper spoon, and a few other items.
    The spoon, though, is ruined as it was burned.

    Above is nearly word-for-word (I edited some) my write-up on my own site of this adventure, albeit fewer pics.)

    Pinco: My second of its kind, circa 1930s-1940s.
    Nat-Ready, white wiring insulator: Circa-1920.
    Unmarked broken radio-strain insulator, blue: 1940s?

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    Comments

    1. AnnaB AnnaB, 8 years ago
      Another great story and nice find! Thank you for sharing.
    2. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      Thanks for the compliments. :)
      I'm on break from college, it's been raining here, and my friend is online, so.... *Sits at computer posting away various things on several sites.*
    3. AnnaB AnnaB, 8 years ago
      Enjoy the break, and happy holidays and a joyful, healthy and prosperous new year to you and yours! Many great finds in a new year!
    4. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      May God continue to bless you as well. Thank you. (:
    5. SpiritBear, 8 years ago
      My pleasure, Valentino. I don't usually bring a camera. If you read my 1869 Indian Head post, I think that I left out (can't be certain) that I had my camera in my pack when my normal ride to my dig-site ended up with me flying over the hood of a car, my bike going over me and my pack flying out of its basket and smashing into the ground.
      Especially after that incident, in which my camera did survive as I had it wrapped up, I don't like to bring the expensive little machine. LOL.
      If you want to see the Piping Plover site, though, which is now totally gone (and I found a 1903 penny there later,) here is the place (on another day: )
      https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/105829219381567141804/albums/6176672349241845857

      As for the first little place, it was directly across from this old house on a dirt road:
      https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-e0X7JyO7yG8/VYSK1CEsZpI/AAAAAAAAM-U/wTzt7cJU4ZE/w769-h577-no/Arctic%2BFrost%2BBite%2BCure%2Bbottle%2B047.JPG

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