New York and New Jersey Digathon:

As fall was fast approaching, we once again began planning our annual weeklong digging pilgrimage to the land of pontil-laden privies.

Previously in these pages, I told the story about one such dig in Philadelphia, where we found three mechanical Haller fruit jar lids along with enough colored sodas and pontiled medicines to make everyone happy. (See "Treasures from the Black Muck of a Philadelphia Bricklined Privy," Antique Bottle & Glass Collector, July 2005.)

As you may recall, we unloaded the lids for a significant sum and set aside the proceeds to fund the next year's trip. This is the story of our all-expenses-paid digathon.

A digathon, at least as we have coined the term, involves taking a week off of work, gathering a few buddies addicted to privy digging, and hitting outhouses every day for seven days straight in a particular city or state. In the past, various members of our regular crew have participated in such digs in places all over the Eastern Seaboard: Philadelphia, New York City (including Brooklyn, Staten Island and Manhattan), Charleston, Richmond, and Baltimore. We have learned the hard way that these trips are much more productive if someone does some serious planning and research ahead of time in the form of lining up dig sites, gathering historic maps of the area, and having a backup plan, just in case.

This year's crew would include our regular full-time diggers: the Denver digging boys, Marty Homola and Mike Saindon, New York legend Scott Jordan and myself. In addition, for at least portions of the trip, we would be joined by Adam Woodward, Winston Krieger, Dave Cutler and Pia Dickinson.

Scott Jordan, as he mans the tripod on the first day of the digathon in Jersey City, eagerly waiting for something other than fill dirt.

As an aside, it takes a certain kind of digger to sign up for a digathon and not everyone who does can last the entire week. In some cases, the issue may be physical, as we dig for at least ten hours a day for a solid week — backs give out, muscles hurt, and pure exhaustion can be debilitating. In other cases, the issue may be emotional, because dealing with different personalities day in and day out for a week while digging all day, eating meals at odd hours, dealing with inclement weather conditions and sleeping in cramped motel rooms can wear on the best of us.

Each of us did our part in lining up possible sites in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Albany and New York City. Scott and I were worried, however, that no single place would have enough pits to keep our crew busy for the entire week. For starters, although I had gotten several permissions for some promising spots in Baltimore, Baltimore is a tough city for diggers because even though there are lots of privies to dig dating back to the 1700s, the outhouses do not consistently have the same quality and quantity of intact bottles as one can find in other cities.

Turning to Philadelphia, the last time we were in the City of Brotherly Love, we got a number of permissions near a hole we had dug. The problem is that the pits in that part of the city are shallow, and considering the size of our crew, it would take less than two days to finish off these holes.

Further north, Scott had obtained permission behind an 1850s house and the neighboring lots in a historic district of Albany. But it is a known fact that the Capital District has been heavily dug, and there was a good chance that these pits had already been hit.

Scott and Dave had also talked to a developer in Queens who invited us to dig his lots in old Astoria and Flushing. In addition, we contemplated digging in Connecticut, simply because we had never explored that area, other than a couple of digs in Stamford.

Mike Saindon, on the first day of the digathon, can barely contain himself as he holds aloft his first pontiled cobalt sided Kickerbocker Soda Water along with a classic Clarke & White Saratoga.

Adam was also working on a couple of spots in Manhattan, but he had not yet gotten the final OK and coordinating convenient dates for both the owners and our crew was going to be difficult. Scott and I discussed the possibility of combining Manhattan and Albany for the week, but we ultimately agreed that it would be impossible to predict our arrival time in Albany if we were digging privies in Manhattan that might be 20 feet deep and take two or three days to dig apiece. In addition, we were worried about hauling our digging crew a couple of hours north only to find that the pits had already been dug.

In trying to make a decision, I kept going back to a conversation I had had with Marty. Although the Denver boys thought the green, pontiled sodas we had found the year before in Philadelphia were cool, their ideal catch would be a sided cobalt soda much like the Dearborns and Knickerbockers that adorn many New York City diggers' shelves.

Frankly, we were all leaning toward the Big Apple. Permission to dig in Manhattan is always difficult, but as a fallback, Scott and I knew that it was relatively easy to get last-minute permissions in Brooklyn, Staten Island and some of the cities in north Jersey. Then, on the eve of the deadline for booking motels and flights, Dave sealed the deal: He informed us of a tip he had received about a construction site in Jersey City, where the blacktop was being scraped and the site preparation contractor was considering granting permission to dig the privies.

Our decision was made: We would gather in New York City with the hope that all would fall into place. We figured that the mass of "maybe" sites would lead to a few successful privy digs.

On the Friday before Halloween, Marty and Mike flew into New York and I drove up from Washington, DC. That night, we gathered at Scott's apartment and gawked at his recent finds, which were an inspiration to us all. We also settled on a plan for the next day: the four of us would be joined by Dave and Winston and we would start by checking out the spots in Queens and then venture to Jersey City to look at the construction site. Our hope was that these areas would occupy our time until Adam and his Manhattan permissions materialized.

Andy Goldfrank shines his headlamp on two bottles he had never seen before: a large teal Huff's Linament and an olive green Hecking's Mineral Waters.

The next morning arrived too fast (as we had stayed up way too late talking about bottles, bottles and more bottles), but by mid-day we had ruled out the spots in Queens. The structures on these sites only dated to the late 1870s or early 1880s at best and, as Mike put it, "we were hunting pontils."

Dave then led us through the maze of New York City highways, streets, bridges and tunnels into New Jersey, where he proceeded to wind us through the endless urban grid of Hoboken and Jersey City. Eventually, we pulled alongside a construction site on Grand Street in Jersey City, which offered a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline.

Andy's sparkling finds, the W.W. Huff's Linament and F.H. Hecking's Mineral Waters, after a simple washing in water.

Every digger's dream lay in front of us: a construction site adjacent to a row of intact, Greek Revival-style, 1830s row houses. We stood on a corner lot in the heart of the original planned part of Jersey City, which had been developed as an early suburb of New York (since the city was just a short ferry ride across the Hudson River) and by the 1850s had become a center of industry for New Jersey.

Shortly after we arrived, we noticed the heavy equipment operator closing up the fence for the weekend. Apparently he was expecting us (thanks to our local contact on the Jersey City police force) because before leaving, he made sure to let us know that we did in fact have permission to enter the site. He told us that earlier in the day, he had to run off an unauthorized bottle digger and he let the guy know that he was not welcome back.

Nodding appreciatively, we all quickly stepped in with our probes and shovels in hand.

Looking over the site, we decided that this spot had been converted to a parking lot in the 1970s or 1980s after the housing structures had been demolished. Although we did not have maps on hand that specifically showed this block, we quickly honed in on the layout of the original structures. The corner of the site had been partly excavated and the exposed foundation walls suggested that these pits were not old enough to contain pontiled bottles.

At the other end of the lot, which abutted the still-standing 1830s row, we discovered the remains of at least two more houses where the parking lot had been freshly scraped. These houses definitely were old enough for pontil-laden pits; we just had to figure out how many houses had once stood here and how many privies remained undisturbed.

Unbelievable finds from the first day of the digathon that seemed, at the time too even the most optimistic of the crew, unlikely to be matched the rest of the week.

In the meantime, Mike had gone to the back of the lot to probe along the fence line, which separated our site from the backyards of the houses on the parallel street. Almost immediately, he hit an ashy stone-lined pit and began a test hole. Marty, Scott and I started probing and digging test holes further down the fence line closer to the existing row houses. In less than 15 minutes, I had probed out a second stone-lined pit. Marty started digging that hole while I probed out yet another privy.

Judging by the locations of these side-by-side privies, I was able to pace off a fourth privy. In addition, we found a fifth privy under the intact portion of the parking lot (on which were stored some salvaged stone architectural pieces such columns).

As we hauled in our tripods, buckets, ropes and other equipment, Marty and Mike continued digging their respective pits. Before the rest of us joined in, I went over to check on Mike's progress. I discovered that although he had exposed about half of the curved stone wall, he had found only turn-of-the-century cinders. This meant that either the hole was not old enough or it had been dipped and thus contained few or no old bottles. With several promising privies still waiting to be dug, Mike and I quickly agreed to fill in this hole and move on to the third hole alongside Marty's. I joined Marty in his hole and Scott, Winston, Mike, and Dave tackled the third pit.

Marty and I eventually set up the tripod over our privy and made decent progress despite the clay, ash and sand cap. Mike and his crew did the same over the third privy, although their cap was much more dense, damp and heavy.

Nice pair of iron pontiled, cobalt, sided sodas excavated by Marty Homola and Mike on the first day - and precisely the bottles they had hoped to find in traveling all the way from Colorado to New York.

As the two crews exposed the curved walls of both outhouses, we learned that the third pit was wider, by about a foot, making it almost 8 feet across. In our hole, at about the 5-foot layer, I pulled out the first pontiled bottle of the trip: a tall aqua Rushton's Cod Liver Oil from New York. We asked Mike to come over and join us, as it was clear that we had broken through the cap and were now entering a healthy layer of trash.

Almost at the same time, Scott found a short W.E. Brockaway clay beer and an intact clay pipe in the third pit. To say that the boys were getting excited is an understatement.

Marty jumped into the hole next and cleared off the rest of the cap layer; in turn, Mike and I hauled and dumped buckets. Less than 20 minutes later, Marty switched to a digging stick and exposed the edge of a bottle. In short order, he pulled out a Patent whiskey and a Stoddard flask. I went back in next and right where Marty had stopped, I gently exposed the edge of a familiar bottle. I immediately urged Marty to come back into the hole and dig a little bit more. Within a few quick strokes of the digging stick, Marty popped out an iron-pontiled, cobalt, eight-sided Boardman Mineral Water from New York and a large, open-pontil Professor Wood's Hair Restorative.

After a few pictures, Marty climbed out of the hole and I went back in to clean out the fluff. Working toward the middle of the pit, I once again brushed the digging stick across glass. Clearing the loamy soil away, I exposed two large, unfamiliar cylinders: a dark, olive-green, saratoga embossed "F.H. Hecking's Mineral Waters New York" and an over-sized, teal medicine embossed "Huff's Linament." Both were spectacular early 1860s bottles, albeit smooth-based. Mike finally entered the privy and quickly found an aqua Wheeler's Genuine Bitters and a green Clark & White saratoga.

Nice transfer Royce & Esterly dental care pot lid of Heimstreet fame found in the privy dug by Mike, Marty and Andy.

Because these also were smooth-based, we insisted that Mike stay in the hole until he found a pontiled bottle. Within a few minutes, Mike's digging stick pried up another iron-pontiled, eight-sided, cobalt soda from New York. As Mike held up the Knickerbocker Soda Water, he and Marty were literally shaking with joy; in the first few hours of our digathon, both had found their dream bottle: a cobalt sided soda. I heard Marty mutter that maybe it was time for the Denver boys to pack up and go home because certainly the digging could not get any better than this.

By the end of the day, Marty, Mike and I had uncovered a number of interesting artifacts from our 10-foot deep privy, including a Heimstreet/Royce & Easterly pot lid with the image of a shield and eagle, an oversized pipe in the shape of a hand holding the bowl, and a dozen smaller pontiled bottles, including a green "S. Fine Blk. Ink" missing its flared lip. In contrast, Scott, Winston and Dave struggled to maintain a positive attitude, as their 11-foot-deep pit was barren other than a few clay pipes.

As daylight faded, we worked to fill in the holes, break down the tripods and collect the artifacts. Over the clanging of the shovels, I could not help but hear Scott and Marty trying to cheer up Winston and Dave by saying that this was just the first day and we still had a bunch of privies to dig in the coming days. Marty assured them that "everyone will go home with a real good bottle before this dig is over."

If you had asked me then, I would have cautioned that Marty's statement was a bold promise that likely could not be fulfilled. But then again, I absolutely would not have thought it possible for each of our Denver boys to have found a cobalt sided soda in our very first pit.

The next morning, all of us, except for Scott who had to set up his weekly bottle display at the Sunday flea market on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan, returned to the construction site and started on the next two privies. Less than 30 minutes after arriving, we were greeted by Jersey City's finest.

At the start of the day three of the digathon, Andy points to Mike where he probed two privies the previous day. Originally three different house lots, these digging fools are straddling the old back property lines in what is now one beautiful yard in Jersey City.

Even though we had received permission to dig there, thanks to Dave's and Scott's buddy on the Jersey City police force, we were told to leave. Apparently, Jersey City has a "no work on Sunday" rule and some neighbors had called in complaints about our excavation. We had to pack up and would have to come back tomorrow night after the workers finished for the day.

As we loaded the tools and equipment back on our trucks and mulled over our options, Pat, a curious neighbor from an 1830s row house that abutted the site, approached us and asked what we were doing. After receiving an abbreviated introduction to our hobby and our annual digathon, Pat invited us to take a look at her yard. Marty and I quickly grabbed a probe and abandoned the other guys.

As we entered Pat's house, we were excited to learn that not only did Pat live in a beautifully restored and renovated row house, but she and her family also owned the house next door which they used for their art studios. She and her husband had purchased these row houses when they were rotting, neglected shells in the 1970s at a time when no one wanted to live in Jersey City.

Andy wonders where everyone has gone as he weakly tries to locate the walls of the first privy to be dug on day three of the digathon.

We were even more awestruck after we walked into the backyard and saw that the two yards for these row houses backed up to an empty lot which served as Pat's driveway and garden area. Looking at each other, Marty and I silently communicated and counted the three possible outhouses.

Pat pointed to an area that had been a sinkhole when they bought the shells but had since been filled. Upon closer examination, we confirmed that this spot was indeed the location of one of the privies. Unfortunately, a large bush sat directly on top of the area and kept us from exploring any further.

I quickly probed out the other two privies, one in the middle of green turf and the other split between the yard and the flower garden. After we explained our meticulous digging procedure to Pat (i.e., cutting the sod, using tarpaulins and wood to protect the yard, bagging the soil, sifting the trash layer, seeding the grass afterwards, and sharing the finds), she invited us to dig without hesitation, so long as we allowed her daughter to participate.

Marty and I each gave a quizzical look, but Pat explained that her daughter, Kaia, was a recent graduate of media and film school and was in need of an interesting project. We quickly agreed and worked out a time to return the next day when Kaia was available. We then met the rest of our crew back at the trucks and shared the good news.

Day three of the digathon has all hands on deck working to dig the privy as fast as possible while keeping the yard neat. Dave Cutler holds the rope, Winston Krieger and Pia Dickinson have bags at ready for the dirt, Mike is ready to drag the bags away from the hole, and Marty and Andy are in the privy.

For the rest of that Sunday, we wandered around looking for other possible sites but to no avail. After dark, we ended up back at the construction site and noticed that someone was digging the cinder-filled hole that Mike and I had rejected the day before. It turned out that this was the guy the heavy machine operator had booted from the site.

This rogue digger was throwing dirt out of the hole without a tripod, or even a bucket, and was about 7 feet into the hole. Curious as to what he was finding, I picked up my probe and walked to where he was heaving dirt. He was still in cinders, not finding anything, and had just hit water (which was strange since the holes we dug the day before were deeper and stayed dry the entire way down). After he indicated that he was about to quit because he had not found a single bottle, I offered to gently probe the remainder of the dirt and see if anything was there. My probe immediately hit a piece of glass and a couple of pieces of pottery and then I hit hardpan, which meant that the bottom of the privy was only a couple of feet away.

I told this guy (as I will tell anyone who will listen), if a pit is old and open and you do not have any other pits waiting for you, you might as well dig the entire privy. I had to leave the outlaw digger and go to dinner with the boys, but afterward we came back to see what he had found: one pontiled black ale. Oh, well, I was glad that Mike and I had skipped that privy the day before.

On Monday morning, Marty, Mike and I were the first to arrive at Pat's house. We probed out the two available privies and elected to dig the one in the middle of the yard first. Mike and I started cutting the sod while Marty went over to talk with the backhoe operator at the construction site next door to ensure that we could dig any privies that he might expose.

Soon thereafter, Dave, Winston, Scott and Pia arrived. I began excavating the hole and, once I found the outhouse's stone wall, we set up the tripod along with our makeshift bucket-bagging system. (The night before, we had purchased a large number of heavy duty contractor bags for the cap dirt with the idea of bagging as much dirt as possible for a clean, easy fill-in when we were done with the digging.)

The pit was big enough across that Marty and I were both able to dig and fill buckets side by side.


Towards the end of day four of the digathon, with the clip lights aglow and the bags pilling up, we are finally into the nightsoil layer of the second privy in the yard.	The evening after day four of the digathon, Marty shared his pillow with the large cathedral pickle he had pulled from the privy's ash fill.

With three potential privies waiting for us (two in Pat's yard and one at the construction site), our goal was to make good use of all members of our digging crew. Our hope was to have at all times two people in the hole with one digging and the other filling buckets, one person pulling the buckets to the surface with the tripod, one person dumping the dirt into bags, and one person hauling the bags away from the hole. This would allow one of the guys to rest and, as we quickly learned, answer on-camera questions raised by Kaia.

As we worked our way down into the outhouse, our focus switched from bagging the cap dirt to sifting because artifacts were turning up with regularity. At about 8 feet, we began to hit the trash layer, which continued for about another 4 or 5 feet. We uncovered a fair amount of bottles, with the crier being a broken amber Phoenix Bitters, and pottery dating back to the 1830s, including two large blue transfer chamber pot lids.


On day five of the digathon, Kaia along with her father Kaare and mother Pat, take a gander at many of the finds from their yard. Front and center are the last two prive recoveries - the Beal's Hair Restorative and the Sperm Whale tooth.	Scott's absolutely beatiful Beal's Hair Restorative in all of its glazed and stamped glory.

Periodically, Scott and Marty ran over to the construction site next door to check on the progress of the heavy equipment. By the end of the day, we somehow finished off the first pit in Pat's yard. Because we had been digging in such a frenzy in an attempt to finish the pit by day's end, we did not have time to inspect all of the bottles; instead, we wrapped and boxed everything and left it on site for the next day.

On Tuesday morning, we returned to fill in the first pit and get started on the second. We anticipated that this would take us the entire day and into the night; in addition, we wanted to get back into the construction site. After filling in hole No. 1 and breaking ground on hole No. 2, we quickly discovered that almost from the top, this second privy was loaded with bottles: lots of Jersey City medicines, sodas and food bottles from the 1870s to the 1890s.


Days six and seven of the digathon were spent in New York City avoiding the rain by huddling under the tarps covering the 22 foot deep privy located in a Houston Street backyard.	The variety of sodas that were found, the evening of day five of the digathon, in the pivy at a construction site near the Holland Tunnel was remarkable.

Apparently, this pit had settled over time and was later filled with trash. This "newer" trash layer slowed us down considerably because we wanted to get all of the bottles out intact for the landowners (who wanted to keep some and give some away to friends). At about the 5-foot layer, the cap changed to pockets of ash and slabs of bluestone in the midst of clay, with occasional bottles from the 1860s.

At that point, Marty smacked his shovel against a bluestone slab which glanced against the arched shoulder of an iron-pontiled, 14-inch-tall cathedral pickle. To this day, I am not sure how that pickle remained perfectly intact.

As we continued to dig this second pit, some of the guys headed over to the construction site and, with the backhoe operator's help, managed to dig one of the remaining pits. We decided to quit for the day at about 10 p.m. and to come back for a fresh start in the morning.


Mike examines the New York City finds at the Big Pick in as effort to trying to figure out what to select.	Antother table is laden with the digathon crew's share of bottles and artifacts from the privies dug in New York City.

On Wednesday, our goal was to finish off this second privy, divide the finds with Pat and her family, fill in the hole, tidy the yard, and load up our equipment for Manhattan. The day before, Adam had confirmed our privy dig on Houston Street in New York; in addition, he had obtained permission at another construction site near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, which needed to be dug as soon as possible. But for now, we focused on finishing this second pit, which just w

ould not end — it ended up being 18 feet in depth, which was at least 5 or 6 feet more than the first privy in Pat's yard.

The highlights of this second privy came in the bottom layer: a wonderful glazed, redware jar stamped "Beal's Hair Restorative New York" and a complete Sperm Whale's tooth.

Arranged on a table at the Big Pick is the digathon crew's share of the Jersey City recoveries albeit after the landowners took their fair share.

An absolute hush fell over our crew when Scott and I brought these two artifacts into light after 170 years of burial. We had uncovered a tangible connection to Jersey City's early days in the 1830s as the home of many a sea captain. We also had collected a dozen large bags of pottery shards that we had sifted, cleaned, and sorted on site with the hope that Scott and Pia would be able to restore at least a couple of nice pieces at a later date. We also managed to find a fair amount of black glass both in this hole and in the last privy from the construction site next door. Before sunset, we rinsed the bottles that came from Pat's pits and took lots of pictures with the family.

We filled the second hole, loaded up our equipment, and carefully packed our finds until well after dark. As we said goodnight to Pat, who knew we were off to dig the Holland Tunnel privies in Manhattan (with her daughter Kaia in tow), Marty and I confirmed that we would be back in the morning to rake the yard, lay the sod, and restore the garden while the other guys started on the Houston Street dig.

I am still not sure how Pat and her husband Kaare remained so calm as mounds of black bags, heaps of sifted dirt, stacks of tarpaulins and piles of bottles and other artifacts littered their yard for three days. Kaia repeatedly assured us that her parents were totally fine with our work and were genuinely enthralled by all of the history being extracted from their own backyard.


Adam Woodward ponders a rare army green pontiled Brockaway porter at th Big Pick.	Adam's first pick was this pontiled, mug based soda from Morristown, New Jersey that was found in the Houston Street privy.

The graciousness of this family was overwhelming to us. In addition to their willingness to let us dig, they also were extremely generous with the finds. For example, although Pat adored the redware Beale's Hair Restorative that Scott had uncovered, she willingly gave it up once she learned that Scott was completely enamored with his find. In return, I figured (although we will never find one again) that the Sperm Whale's tooth must be left with the owners of this house. In the end, we also gave Pat, Kaare and Kaia all of the newer c.1870s-90s bottles from the top of the second pit and split the remainder of finds which included a significant amount of pontiled bottles including black glass, aqua and colored inks, aqua medicines, flint glass utilities, embossed mineral waters and sodas, along with other artifacts such as bone toothbrushes and debossed pot lids.

That night, after grabbing a bite to eat, we headed into New York City to follow up on Adam's Holland Tunnel lead. Earlier in the week, he had stumbled across a rapidly transforming construction site located near the intersection of Hudson, Laight and Varick streets, which also abutted a major access point into the Holland Tunnel.

When Adam first walked onto the site, after dodging the rushing cars bound for New Jersey, a burly construction foreman allowed him to survey the site for potential digging. Although the lot had been vacant for a number of years, the shadow of a two-story pitched roof building was clearly visible on the wall of an adjacent structure. A promising sign, indeed.

Adam noticed that the construction crew was at the basement level of the buildings that previously occupied the spot. Initially, he was disappointed because it appeared that the neighboring structure, a massive late-1800s or early-1900s building, occupied (and, thus, destroyed) the former rear lots of the smaller houses whose privies we sought. But Adam persevered and returned to check on the progress of the excavation: he was rewarded when he saw that the crew had popped the concrete basement floor and exposed the bottom section of a privy. He would need to call in our crew, but we would have to work quickly before the construction crews returned in the morning to finish digging out the site.

Due to the small window of time allotted our recovery efforts, Marty, Mike, Adam and Scott retrieved the pit's relics in rapid succession while I watched our trucks. What remained of the privy was a mortared brick box about 6 feet across and 4 feet deep. We uncovered a nice variety of colored and unusually shaped sodas, such as an iron-pontiled tapered Price, May & Co., along with some quality embossed medicines, including a purple Mrs. S.A. Allen's Hair Restorer. The 20 embossed bottles we recovered were primarily from Brooklyn and Manhattan, which until 1898 were separate cities from New York City, but there were also bottles from Albany (on the Hudson River about 170 miles north of New York City) and Picton, Ontario, in Canada. (See "Tales of a Well Traveled Medicine," The Potomac Pontil, April 2004, available at www.potomacbottlecollectors.org.)

Over the next two days, for 16 hours a day, we dug a monster stone-lined privy along one of New York's major thoroughfares: Houston Street. This outhouse measured over 8 feet across and almost 22 feet deep. And if the massive size was not enough, prior to digging, we had to remove from the yard thousands of pounds of steel, iron and stone, which were part of a sculpture garden,and temporarily move them to a lot down the street.

Clearing the yard and hauling in our equipment took the better part of the Thursday morning and early afternoon, with everything having to be carried through the owner's store. To complicate matters even further, once we started to dig, heavy rains descended upon us which required an elaborate tarpaulin rigging.

When we quit for the day, at almost 2 a.m. Friday morning, we had progressed almost 12 feet into the hole but had uncovered only a single artifact — a smooth-based aqua soda. Upon returning to the site the next day, or should I say later that morning, we learned from the owner of the site that his friends would be hosting his birthday party in his store that evening but he encouraged us to continuing digging throughout the festivities. Imagine the inebriated spectators, standing in the rain and mud along the edge of our hole, inquiring about every artifact and carting out food to feed the diggers — it was quite a scene.

The crier of the entire digathon was this large size, olive amber pontiled Phoenix Bitters - what a shame!

We deduced that the Houston Street privy had been dipped or cleaned a number of times as we found several artifacts from the late 1850s to the early 1860s in no discernable layers, and numerous pieces of the same pottery vessel were scattered at all levels of the outhouse. Unfortunately, the bulk of the bottles we uncovered were either broken or damaged, but we did manage to extract a couple of keepers, including a green iron-pontiled Superior Mineral Water N Morristown, N.J. and an unusual concentric-ring chamber pot lid.

At the bottom of the pit, we uncovered a layer of pottery from the 1830s which confirmed that the bulk of the 1840s to early 1850s artifacts had been dipped from this privy. This was our last dig as a group, as I had to head back to Washington; therefore, at 2 a.m., after hours of digging and finally reaching the bottom of the pit, we decided to call it a day. The rest of the guys would come back later to fill in the hole and restore the sculpture garden. As we packed up our bottles, we agreed on a time to meet at Scott's apartment later in the day to divvy out our finds. Exhaustion practically oozed from our pores. Two marathon days of digging — the perfect way to end to our seven-day digathon.

Throughout the week, we had collected our finds (other than those given to the landowners) with the idea of meeting up at Scott's on Saturday for drinks, food, and the Big Pick. Before attempting to split up the goods among the group, however, we would first hash out what we had accomplished in terms of digging, what each of us had contributed, and which bottles and other relics would be part of the Big Pick.

As for digging, we had dug four outhouses in Jersey City (6 to 9 feet across and 10 to 18 feet deep) from the top down plus the pit at the construction site with the aid of the backhoe, for a total of five privies. In New York City, we dug one massive hole (8 feet across and 22 feet deep) from the top down in addition to the one at the construction site, which was 6 feet across and just 4 feet deep after the construction crew had cleared the basement slab. We dug three of these privies in the pouring rain, which involved setting up elaborate tarpaulin tents; we dug two of these privies in pristine yards which required us to return the yards to the condition in which we found them or as the owners had wanted them, including restoring a sculpture garden, laying new sod, and replanting bulbs and bushes. As for individual contributions, each of us brought different assets to these digs, such as site permissions, equipment, muscle and time, experience, the ability to probe out pits, historical knowledge, and so on.

Looking at our recoveries, we had found about 400 bottles of which we put about 100 into the Big Pick. We also brought along to the Big Pick a couple of boxes containing another 75 bottles, including unembossed pontils or smooth-based bottles, of which we had four or more duplicates for those who were interested in having an example of what we had dug. In addition, we included relics such as transfer pot lids, carved pipes, bone artifacts, pottery, marbles and other smalls.

As a group, we decided that there were more than a dozen bottles with significant collectible value (i.e., over $150) and then another 25 bottles with decent value (i.e., between $50-150); therefore, our solution was to give the guys who dug every day an extra initial pick, which would even out the entire haul for everybody. Thus, the first round was for the core everyday diggers (i.e., picks 1 through 4), and every round after that was for all (i.e., picks 1 through 7). This way, everyone would end up with at least one terrific bottle.

After the digathon, Scott went to great effort restoring many of the pottery pieces that we sifted from the privies. In this photo are some remarkable, restored redware plates, found in Jersey City and New York City respectively, alnong with other resurrected pottery and bottles excavated during this digathon.

Deciding on how to divvy out finds among a large digging crew often can be tricky as someone inevitably ends up disappointed about where they fall in the picking order. With our group, however, we all agreed that waiting until the end of the week to split up the finds was the only way to go. Had we decided to distribute our finds at the end of each day or at the end of each outhouse, too many of us would have been slighted. For example, on the first day, we dug two pits: the pit Marty, Mike, and I excavated was loaded with good bottles while the pit Scott, Dave, and Winston dug was void. Although the six of us contributed the same amount of work, Marty, Mike, and I would have been arbitrarily rewarded because we were lucky enough to end up with the better privy. Another example is when Winston worked for an entire day preparing the Houston Street site for digging by removing 12 feet of the clay cap without a single worthy discovery. Our collaborative system attempts to account for an individual's involvement in an even-handed manner. Our goal is to reward everyone for his contribution proportionately and to remove jealously or greed by communicating about the picking system. Another key to a crew's satisfaction is to ensure that the Big Pick is a good time, to discuss a weighting system that is fair for all, and, perhaps most importantly, to remind everyone that no one will get rich digging for bottles.

After our Big Pick, each of us walked away with at least a couple of awesome bottles. As I prepared to leave Scott's apartment that afternoon, I vividly remember that good moods filled the air and everyone was delighted with their recoveries from this all-expenses-paid digathon. Not a dime was spent on hotels, food, tolls, rental cars, or equipment; our biggest "expense" was time. Looking around, I saw Marty and Mike each holding cobalt sided sodas, Winston grasping a Stoddard flask and a couple of iron-pontiled DeMott's Porters, Adam fondling the mug base of his iron-pontiled, Morristown, New Jersey soda, Dave clutching some colored New York mineral waters and a debossed pot lid, and Scott and Pia examining the redware Beale's Hair Restorative, a purple Mrs. S.A. Allen's Hair Restorer and an 1830s fancy cologne. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were thrilled with their finds. In turn, during my traffic-laden drive to Washington, D.C., I repeatedly looked at my sparkling teal W.W. Huff's Linament and perfect olive green Hecking's Mineral Waters (both lying on the seat next to me) and dreamed a privy digger's delight: seven privies in seven days.

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