Well, I'm woefully behind in this blog,
but hey, that's a good excuse for me to play catch-up!
Some dumps are just so uninviting that
I wonder why I try to dig them. One particular dump I braved this
summer was carpeted with poison ivy. In fact, the vines made up for
most of the vegetation on some trees. Nevertheless, I nimbly
navigated my way to a spot that was relatively clear of the stuff.
After pulling 10-15 tires out of the way, I started finding bottles.
Suddenly, an Eagle Beverages Bristol, RI deco soda comes out!
I didn't know they even had a deco soda, and with embossed eagles, it
is already my favorite deco soda from RI!
Completely unlisted medicines (aka a
bottle from a druggist who does not have any known bottles) are quite
exciting to come across. When an F.M.P. St. Germain Central
Falls, RI medicine came up on ebay, I sat up extra straight.
With a cool name and uncommon city, I couldn't pass it up!
I'm still hitting the marshes, and they
are still producing bottles! My most recent find was a damaged S.H.
Farnham Westerly, RI ABM crown top. The real surprise was that
it was ABM! Mr. Farnham left the soda business after 1912, making
this a very early machine made soda (and consequentially unlisted).
For those who are curious, machine made bottles were first
manufactured in 1903, but narrow-necked bottles, which were harder to
make by machine, didn't make the ABM switch until around 1910.
Freshly pulled from the marsh, a Burke
Bros. 15 to 27 Eddy St. Providence, RI blob looked a little
different. Sure enough, this example with an oval slugplate also had
EddySt embossed with no space.
A newly opened antique shop featured
over 1000 dirty bottles crammed onto tabletops. Many were common
junkers, but I managed to find a few gems. A Providence Bottling
Co. John E. Good Providence, RI blob would sound common, but the
style is uncommon. Most of their bottles feature embossing in script
letters, but this one has plain lettering in a slugplate.
