"La Femme Sage" or How I Learned to

Stop Worrying and Love My Probe

By Claudia Ritter

The French have a saying, "la femme sage construit sa maison," which means, "the wise woman built her house."

I wonder how they say, "The wise woman dug her hole"? Now there's something to say worth learning French for!

Having totally exhausted my yard for potential privies last summer, last fall and this spring, I remembered that after I first caught digging fever last summer, my neighbor Cindy across the street, when initially asked, had given tentative permission for her yard to be dug up at some later date.

Cindy's little 130-something year old house.

Just itching to be down in a hole during the new spring digging season's beautiful sunny-but-cool weather, I approached her one afternoon in the last half of May after school was out for the season. I knocked on her door and she appeared.

I hedged.

"Am I still allowed to dig in your yard? Maybe? Or maybe not?" She leveled her gaze at me, peering through the screen of her storm door, with her characteristically calm and imperturbable stare. I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity.

After a second or two, she answered.

Luckily, despite the hiatus of a year, her answer was still the same: "Sure," she drawled. "Dig up the whole yard if you want to. I ain't gonna worry about it." I let out a sigh of relief. Is there any music sweeter to a digger's ear? If there is, I have misplaced the tune!

I raced back to my house, changed into my diggin' clothes, and collected my tools. Into my bucket went my big short-handled shovel, my little short-handled shovel, my spade, my hand rake and my probe, with which till then, I had had a love-hate relationship. After digging all last summer without one, wasting time hacking at the ground where there was no privy or sifting through the trash on the bottom of one that I was lucky enough to find without it, and thus continuously casting about without any sense of direction, I was really beginning to feel the lack of a probe, that most essential component of a digger's toll kit. My great uncle Bob had offered to buy me one, and I initially wanted to save him his money. However, I finally broke down, took him up on his offer, and sent off for one.

I experimented with it all fall and all spring, but I still couldn't quite get the hang of how to use it. Well, all that was to change when I encountered Cindy's yard.

Her house is a cozy, little, itty-bit of a thing. It is only one and a half stories with the downstairs boasting a small living room, dining room and kitchen, and upstairs with two tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. There is what appears to have been a summer kitchen tacked onto the back of the house, in which some previous owner, possessing with no sense of history, cemented over a brick fireplace that still stood along one wall. I figured hers was one of the older houses on the block and I had seen it represented in the 1886 Lancaster, Pa., Atlas, and also that there had at one time been six such tiny houses all in a row on her side of the street, though now only two remained: hers and the house attached to its right. The others had been torn down and replaced by massive three-story, five-bedroom monstrosities.

The right way to cover a hole.

I went to the end of Cindy's yard and probed along the back boundary. Interestingly, per the Atlas, her yard had once been much longer, going practically all the way to the little alley behind it. At some point in time, however, a set of small houses had been built fronting that alley and some of Cindy's yard had been commandeered for theirs. So, even though I was now probing at the farthest possible point from the house at the back of the yard, it was not the original back of the yard. Of course, I kept wondering if the really old privies hadn't been even further back, which was now part of the next yard and on the other side of a six-foot-high stockade fence.

Probing, I yo-yoed from one back corner of the yard to the other. I couldn't decide where to start. Should I flip a coin? I didn't have an 1890 Indianhead penny on me. At the left side of the yard though, it seemed that the ground, after initial resistance, was particularly soft. I convinced myself too, that I heard the scrunching of ash.

Then, I saw it.

On the last thrust of the probe and its withdraw, I saw white ash clinging like freshly fallen snow along the entire length of the probe. That was it. What the probe had intruded upon had to be a privy. I looked at that probe and stood it against the stockade fence like a trophy. Here, all these months, I had been looking at the TIP of the probe for the telltale signs of ash, when all along, I should have been looking at the shaft! I had been misusing the gosh-darned thing for months, which is no doubt why I had dug so many unpromising test holes. Now, I had suddenly become wise. My eyes were opened.

And that hot little spot of ground at my feet? That was the next thing that now needed to be opened!

I dived in and hacked away and went through approximately one foot of dirt and one foot of clay before subsequently hitting ash. In the clay layer, I found an aqua ABM "Chas. H. Fletcher's Castoria" bottle. In the ash layer, I found several smashed and one whole clear pint whiskey bottle. One of the smashed ones had a beautiful label. Circling a golden eagle perched on a golden globe, were the words "Old Rye Whiskey."

Eventually, the ash began to dry up and then I hit a layer of lime, which blanketed the entire bottom of the current circumference of the hole.

Have probe, will dig.

"Well," I thought, "I am either at the end of a very shallow, not-so-good hole, or the beginning of a very deep, very good hole."

I decided to stop, in case it was the latter and in case Cindy or her family wanted to be on hand for the excavations. It wasn't all that late in the day and weather conditions weren't adverse, nor was I tired enough to stop digging. However, there was a second set of reasons that made me decide to call it quits for the day. I know we diggers sometimes find ourselves in highly unusual situations due to our obsession and the locales that it drags us into. There happened to be a rottweiler from two yards over who kept climbing through a hole in the wooden fence that was meant to restrain him, and who every half hour or so would charge right up the flimsy four-foot high chain link fence that separated him from me in Cindy's yard. He was all muscle and he'd stare me right in the face, inches away, He seemed to be playing a little game. "You're afraid of me, right?" was the message he appeared to be telegraphing,

I decided if I just acted like I was supposed to be there and paid him no mind, he'd eventually tire of his diversion and decide it wasn't worth jumping the fence to kill something that wasn't afraid of him. It worked

I looked around for something with which to cover the hole. For years, Cindy had used an old outhouse door, of all things, as her gate, replacing it only recently. I carried the outhouse door back to the hole and placed it over the opening. What better hole cover for a privy dig than an old outhouse door? It looked perfect lying there atop the hole. Maybe it was thinking, "Reunited at last!"

After gathering up my finds and my tools and locking Cindy's gate, I wrote her a detailed note of my day's finds and stuck it in her mailbox. The next morning I took my finds over to her house and she liked them. I explained why I had stopped digging, but said maybe I should finish today after all because we had rain on the way according to the forecast for the evening. Again, she gave me permission to do whatever I wanted and even dug a tarp out of her basement to cover the hole with when I was done. Now I ask you, how many people are there in this world who would not only allow you to dig up and destroy their yard, but also loan you a tarp in the process? Also, over night, someone had boarded up the rottweiler's escape hatch. With those auspicious signs, I figured that today was the day.

My three babies after their first bath.

After I uncovered the hole, I probed through the lime. It appeared to be very thick, but once the probe made it through, it easily flew down the rest of the way. I started to cut into the lime with my shovel. At four inches thick, it turned out to be thicker than the crust of any Sicilian pizza I'd ever eaten, and I've been to Italy twice.

I hit more lime, and shortly, my first bottle of the day, and it was an oldie, an amber pint-sized slope-shouldered whiskey with a little star embossed on the front. Soon, joining it in the soapy water of the keeper-bucket was a massive forest-green wine bottle with a crude rounded lip.

Soon, there followed several smalls. There was an aqua "Gotchall's Cough Balm / Harrisburg, Pa" with a long, crooked neck exhibiting exceptional whittle, and a rectangular amber "McKeeson & Robbins," which I don't know what it could have contained. Also a mystery was a tall, skinny clear bottle with a very delicate neck. It sported embossing that read "Trade Mark / Insectine." My first thought was that it was insecticide, but later it stuck me that it could have been a bite or lice remedy. The smalls kept following, most of them unembossed, but at last among them a tiny 2 1/2 inch cobalt bottle with mile-high lettering that said "Bromo Seltzer / Emerson Drug Co. / Baltimore MD."

Bottles probably once kept in Cindy's kitchen: a sauce, a cough balm, an indelible ink, and a "Larkin Co., Buffalo".

My favorite types of bottles are those for polish and for alcohol. I like to tell people that this combination is reflective of my German heritage: cleanliness and inebriation. So, the next bottle I found, though it is not rare, sent me swooning. I had fashioned a little dirt shelf that I was using as a seat about a foot up from the bottom of the hole, which was by now somewhat close to five feet deep. I had another shelf, which I was using as a step, about three feet up, but I hated to get out of the hole every time I had to empty a bucket. I had been lifting them up and dumping them while standing in the hole. Around its perimeter, I had amassed a semicircle of dirt that got ever higher and steeper, so that stuff was starting to fall back down in every time I dumped.

At last, I relented and climbed out of my hole with a brimming bucketful of dirt. When I had stepped out of the hole, the floor of it had been clean. After I dumped the bucket, I walked back to the hole, and saw a bottle lying in it. I had been slowly working on undermining my seat, so it must have fallen out of the side right after I climbed out! Perhaps my heel had even been holding it in. I dived in the hole to retrieve the bottle and here it was, a gorgeous little aqua "Bixby's French Polish" bottle with fancy scrolling and in perfect shape. I loved how the "s" in "Polish" was fashioned backwards and how the shaft was almost lumpy in its crudeness. I jumped up and down while clutching it before slipping it in the keeper-bucket. I thought of how great it was going to look displayed beside my amber "Whittmore Boston / French Gloss" bottle and my forest-green "Mason's Shoe Dressing / Bright Drying / Don't brush" bottle.

My next treasure I found almost immediately. I was scraping inch by inch through the dirt and I saw the shiny beige surface of stoneware. Even though I was digging alone, I uttered out loud, "Oh, my God"

I just love those tall, indestructible German jugs, and this one was a beauty! It was oriented spout and handle down and it took me a good 15 minutes to ease it out, but the wait was worth it. I worked around the spout and handle carefully so there would be no pressure on them while I eased the jug out of its 100-year-old resting-place. The last thing I wanted was for either one to snap off during the extraction.

In the end, the time was well spend, for the jug was pristine and the color of chocolate milk. It turned out to be 11 inches tall and incised "J. Friedrich / Grosskarben / Frankfurt aM," and sporting a circular seal above the name. When I didn't think it could get any better, a few more inches into the dirt, I found another jug. This one was again 11 inches tall, but was of a burnt ochre color. It was incised with a seal only. In a circle was a crown atop a shield surrounded by the words "Roisdorfer" and "Mineral Quelle."

Redware pot, amber whiskey, pressed glass decanter stopper and cobalt Bromo Seltzer.

Right near this second jug, I next unearthed a terra cotta handle jutting from the side of my hole near the bottom. There was very hard dirt compacted all around it so I couldn't imagine that what the handle was attached to would be anything that would turn out to be in one piece.

Again, working slowly with my spade, I was able to ease it out of the wall. To my surprise, it was intact. I was now the owner of a very old piece of immaculate redware: a 4 inch high, 4 1/2 inch diameter, single-handled bean pot, of unfinished terra cotta on the outside with an orange and brown speckled glaze on the inside.

I decided that since I was digging alone, I better test all the sides of my hole to see that they were sturdy enough so I didn't have to worry about cave-ins, since I was getting and sitting ever deeper in the bottom of it. I decided to shave off one wall and make it more perpendicular. I took my short-handled shovel and struck at the wall and instantly hit yet another jug. I decided to abandon concerns about the structural integrity of my hole and immediately dig out this jug. To do so, I was going to have to start by removing dirt above it. I switched to my spade and took one stab into the wall and immediately exposed a huge 3 1/2-inch-long pressed-glass decanter stopper. I carefully dug that out and laid it on my shelf and then returned to the job of jug extraction #3. This one also was in one piece and proved to be a repeat of jug #1, though of slightly more yellowish tinge and with a matte rather than glossy finish.

Though I like my jugs brown, I'm not one to look a gift hole in the mouth and will take whatever it decides to yield. I climbed out and slipped the stopper into the keeper-bucket and placed the jug on the grass beside its brother and sister. Like the proudest of parents, I admired my triplets, Franz, Edel and Hans.

By now, I felt that surely I had gotten my allotment from this hole. I was satisfied with my take and couldn't be happier. How then to describe my elation when, within minutes, the unmistakable bulbous lip of a Hutchinson bottle protruded from the wall that I was still in the process of shaving.

My first dug-with-my-own-hands Hutch.

I dropped everything and took up the spade again.

The Hutch was jammed in there really tightly. There was no way it was coming out unless it was completely dug out. I worked carefully and slowly and eventually could pull it safely from its resting place with just an inch or so of it still encased in the dirt in the wall. It turned out to be undamaged, still sporting its wire stopper. It was green and comfortably heavy in my hand. I rubbed the muddy front where I could feel there was embossing, and within the slug plate, I could read "Chas. Zech / Lancaster Pa." I had never dug up my own Hutch before, though I have read countless stories about diggers who have. Hometown Hutches are the hottest commodities in the bottle hobby today. I never thought I'd have one, ever.

Now though, I felt just like the words of that 1990's club classic and could hear its lyrics bounding around in my brain, "Finally it has happened to me / Right in front of my face / And I just can't deny it!"

Had it, heavy as it was, been made of solid gold, I couldn't have been happier.

As is only right, and as I felt there was no reason to become greedy, the hole finally began to dry up. There was a good foot or so of loosely packed ash, intermixed with trash at the bottom, which turned out to be mostly just that, trash. Bones, busted whiskies, busted plates and busted lamp bases seemed to finish out the hole.

I did manage to unearth an intact white porcelain chamber pot lid. Nestled beneath it were stacks of broken eggshells. Also, some interesting buttons turned up, and one appeared to be made of glazed red clay. Earlier I had found two broken doll's heads, and now, sifting through the trash with my fingers, I uncovered the lone brown glass eye of one of them. I shifted and sifted and probed for at least another half hour and came up empty handed except for a broken white-and-green striped bowl. I decided to wrap it up for the day while I still had the energy to carry my treasure across the street to their new home above ground. I covered the hole with the outhouse door and added Cindy's tarp, anchoring the corners with bricks.

The next day it rained, so I researched Cindy's property for her and discovered mention of her house in the various deeds going back to the one recorded in 1873. At that date, Michael Wolpert had bought "a certain one story dwelling and lot or piece of ground" from William Simon for $800, "lawful money of the United States." Deeds earlier than that one made no mention of a house, only a "piece of ground," but they went back to the year 1865.

The next day I spent cleaning my bottles. The triplets looked very nice and clean now after their first bath. On the Chas. Zech bottle, I performed very delicate surgery. It had been soaking in soapy water for more than 24 hours, which hadn't done a darned thing to improve its appearance. The problem was that an enlarged rusty stopper with a filthy and decaying rubber seal still attached to it was securely lodged in the neck of the bottle. Long whitish and blackish streaks ran down one side of the inside, and smashed bugs were plastered to the walls of the bottle in several places.

It was not a very pretty sight to say the least, so how was I going to get inside this bottle to clean it? It was going to take some creativity. Sometimes, I said to myself, to clean the inside of a bottle, you have to think outside of the box. So, in case, I resorted to that old motto, "Better living through chemistry!" First, I soaked the bottle, neck down, in a coffee can filled one third of the way with CLR. After about an hour, the wire stopper was slightly loose. Next, I took a needle-nose pliers and sliced the wire. It collapsed upon itself and slid right out of the bottle. The decaying rubber seal remained inside. Finally, I took a hemostat, and reached into the neck and was able to snip the stopper to pieces, which came tumbling out when I shook the bottle. Once all of the obstructions were removed from the neck, I easily got a soapy toothbrush in there and the streaks and bugs simply melted away. The bottle was gorgeous, once it was all cleaned up. It had no damage and no discoloration. I now, definitely, possessed the centerpiece of my bottle collection.

Cindy showed up at my front door shortly after and ushered her friend Deb and her parents into my house, just like she owned the place. Well, actually, she sort of did by now, since so many things from the depths of her yard were now soaking in various buckets all throughout my house. Her parents admired all the artifacts and we then high-tailed it over to her yard to check how the hole had made it through the rain. The tarp and the outhouse door had done their jobs, and it was nice and dry in the hole. I jumped down in it to get my picture taken and to demo how digging and probing are done.

French Polish: our hobby undervalues iridescence.

Cindy's dad, Jim, started probing around the outside of the hole for the next site. I had been a little discouraged though, knowing that I didn't have access to Cindy's full original yard since a third of it had been taken over by the yards of the other houses built later. However, Jim provided me with some reassuring information and I definitely brightened up.

When he was a little boy, on the property where he grew up, the outhouse was not located in the extreme back of the yard, but in the middle of the yard. Beside it stood a chicken coop. The back of the yard was reserved for parking the car. Thus, where I was currently digging was only a tad more than halfway to the back of the original yard! If Cindy's yard was anything like her Dad's old yard, I still had a shot at a few more holes if her outhouses had at one time been located in the middle.

Other interesting things Jim told me both dispelled and confirmed some of the urban privy-digging legends I had encountered over the past year. First, I had been told by various diggers that an outhouse hole only lasted 10 years. Jim told me it wasn't necessarily so. Growing up, he had lived in one house for 17 years and the outhouse had stayed in the same place that entire time. His parents had it cleaned out a lot and doused it frequently with lime. Second, they didn't throw coal ash down the hole of an in-use privy. Rather, the chickens in the coop beside the privy dined on it. Ash was an essential ingredient to the production of the shells of their eggs. Third, and this corroborated digger hearsay that I've heard before, his dad used to dig long trenches around the perimeter of the yard and bury all kinds of stuff. That last one made me positively giddy!

"So it is true," I thought. "There is trash long the edges of the yards!" Here was first-hand information of how stuff was buried in the old days and where we diggers of it, arriving on the scene years later, could have hopes of finding it.

Looks like next I'll just have to take my shovel to Cindy's flowerbeds while she's not looking.

After everyone left, I set about filling in the hole. I got rid of some old stones Cindy wanted out of her life, and found a baby garter snake under one of them. I probed around with my newly found skill of how to read a probe, and my new-found knowledge that I didn't need the back of Cindy's yard for my future privy-digging prayers to be answered.

It took quite a while, but I stayed hopeful and patient and continued probing. Plus, with the prospect of more Hutches, crocks and polish bottles potentially underfoot, I didn't want to give up. Finally, my probe brought up ash. The shaft wasn't completely coated like before, but bits and pieces were nevertheless clinging to it about halfway up. The ground was initially resistant, but then gave way. I probed in a concentrated area and decided to mark the spot with some old bricks for the next sunny day.

Wild horses wouldn't be able to drag me away from this spot, nor, I decided, could vicious rottweilers ...

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