The Next GINeration
By Evan Brearey (with help from Dad)

Of the forty-seven years of my father’s life, he's been a bottle hound for all but 10 of those years. I'm 11 years old and I've been a bottle hound since I was two or three and probably longer if you include my sleeping as a infant in the car while my mother and father dug for old bottles at construction sites and old homes.
Recently, my best finds were diving in the creek in the old town of Beaufort, North Carolina where I live. I've found some nice sodas while walking the mud flats at low tide. My most valuable soda that I found, is a rare drape-sided Pepsi-Cola bottle from New Bern, N. Carolina dating back to 1924.
My family and I have been traveling to the Bahamas for the winter months since I was a baby. We have spent many hours looking for old bottles and other artifacts. We look around old ruins and in the bushes behind old homesites. There are many abandoned homes and even entire villages that have been deserted for nearly 100 years.
Although I have found some good stuff, I always hear stories about the motherloads of old bottles that my Mom and Dad found before I was born. They spent many years searching the water as well as the land and have made some great finds. It's a little disappointing to be to late to find the good spots, since most have been cleaned out!

My Mom and Gloria Knowles in front of the house.	Gloria, Myself and my Dad (Jeb) with the find.

One of the first things I can remember about looking for old bottles in the Bahamas, or any place for that matter, is what could be hiding under the old wooden floors! When we traveled around the island my father would point out the kind of foundations that would have a crawl-space. He would tell me stories about all the bottles he got from under old houses.
In the West Indies, the most popular spirit in the old days was gin. My parents have quite a large collection of case gin bottles and plenty of stories about finding them. This past summer I finally got to make a big find.
For as long as I can remember, my dad would point out this one house in Rock Sound, Eleuthera ,Bahamas. He guessed the house to be at least 150 years old and he said he could smell "gin bottles". It had such a large space under the wood floors and a small access.
Last year we met the lady who owns the house. Her name is Gloria Knowles. The house has been in her family for at least three generations. The house is in bad shape and she is worried about hurricane winds sending the top half of the house flying, which would cause damage to the surrounding homes. She plans on having the house knocked down soon.
We asked if at sometime before they demolished it if we could take a look underneath it for old bottles. She really couldn't understand our desire to crawl under the house to look for bottles. She said "to come back sometime and we could take a look."

On July 30, 2003, we drove to Gloria's house and asked if today was good and she said it was up to us. I was so excited to finally get under this house, but we had to remove a large amount of lumber, which Gloria had stored in the entrance.
Once it was clear enough to get in I climbed in with my flashlight and looked around. At first, all I could see were piles of bottles, but they were not very old! I was beginning to worry that all the waiting was for nothing. So I moved on and saw a second opening to the front of the house. I crawled through and looked to the right and saw a gin bottle, then another and another, and I yelled "GIN BOTTLES"!
Then I looked to the left and saw gin bottles piled high. With much excitement I called to my mother and Gloria that my dad and I had found the motherload! We tried counting them, but in the darkness we just laughed as we uncovered more and more. There were so many that we decided to hand them through a small vent hole above the pile. The same hole that they were dropped through generations ago. There were as many broken as intact. One by one we handed them through the small opening to Gloria and my mother.
Upon crawling out into the daylight, we were very happy to see 26 gins lined up on the wall. I finally made a great find and it turned out to be the biggest case gin haul we've ever found!
Also, they were all so different than any of the many gins my parents had found through the years. Most of the gins they found were embossed with Blankenheymn & Nolet, which are dutch gins dating from the late 1800s. These gins were very common. The ones found under Gloria's house were unembossed clay or wood dip-mold gins, all crude and different. Only one was embossed with vHoytema&C.
We thanked Gloria for making our day one that we'll remember for years to come. We said goodbye and hopped in the car for the long drive back to our cottage.
That night, while my dad and I were cleaning some of the bottles, I told him that the gin bottles were like people. Even though they are all the same type, each one is different, just like us.
This is a fun story I hope to share with my kids someday!

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