Monday, July 8, 2019

Backyard Treasures

I'm the fourth generation to live in the house I now presently own. A few years ago, my great uncle stopped by to visit the house he grew up in. He shared lots of great stories about how the house used to look. He also told us what it was like to live without plumbing.

As we looked out into the backyard, he pointed to where they had the outhouse. From time to time, they'd cover up the hole and move it another spot. The outhouse served not only as a toilet, but also a garbage disposal. They'd throw glass bottles and other assorted trash down there.

This makes outhouse locations kind of the amateur archaeologist/treasure hunter's dream. Broken glass has a constant presence in my backyard. A green piece here, a blue piece there, a clear piece everywhere. They tend to float to the surface, especially after heavy rains.

Several times, my son and I have dug in the approximate outhouse locations. So far we've only found one completely intact piece of glass. It's some kind of soap dish, candy bowl, ash tray or some other thing with an imaginative use.








We also pulled out the metal detector to search around the areas. Doing this helped us narrow down a couple more long lost treasures. The first was a vintage Schrader-Universal tire pressure gauge from the 1910s-1920s. Pretty cool find!





In another spot we found these old metal, matchbox-like toy cars. Maybe from the 1970s or 1980s?