So I Went Down to the River...
I have never been a serious bottle collector. I went out to Galveston after hurricane Ike where I found hundreds of old beer and soda bottles from an old bar that was on the beach in the 1940s. It was good fun, but I never kept any of the bottles long-term. When I was treasure diving about five years ago, I would find old soda bottles that were frosted like Seaglass because they had been tumbling in the surf for decades. I have about a dozen of those. They are some of my favorite pieces. I have always wanted to scuba dive the Key West harbor and look for old bottles, I have just never gotten around to it. And that is the extent of my bottle collecting.
This all started in early March. I saw a video on a popular Treasure Coast blog. It was of a blob top bottle lying in the water on the bank of the river. I was pretty sure I could find the spot from clues in the video. The search for that bottle was the spark that ignited five weeks of bottle hunting insanity. For two days, I tried in vain to find that spot. I knew the stretch of river, but I was still missing something. So I figured I would just go down to the River and start looking for bottles. The first day I think I found six bottles. Old soda bottles and liquor, but nothing special. I knew very little about the history of bottles or the bottle making process at the time. The second day I went out, I found a blue apothecary lying in the water just like the blob top in the video. I couldn’t believe it. And it was only my second hunt. I was super stoked. Looking back now I laugh because I had no idea what was in front of me. I had two nieces come stay with me for a week. I took them hunting one night, And one of them found a really cool old embossed milk bottle. Now I’m super jacked. On the day I took them home, I had to drive from Fort Pierce to Jekyll Island and back. I’ve got back around 7 PM, grabbed my gear and raced to the river to catch the low tide. A couple of hours later, I found the 1 gallon jug with two rings on it and the round bottom bottle. And that was only my fourth hunt. I started hunting more often. I started rescheduling work. Every hunt was as good as the last or better. There was one stretch where I hunted 10 low tides in a row, Each hunt being about five hours. I am barely sleeping, living on Wendy’s cheeseburgers, honey buns and coffee, and smoking LOTS of medical. Walking up to 4 miles per hunt sometimes carrying a backpack full of bottles and two 5 gallon buckets full of bottles. I was constantly in this exhausted, sleep deprived, dream like state of mind. And it was beautiful. After five weeks, I had pulled over 700 bottles from the river. Mouth blown beer and whiskey bottles from the 1800s. Old bottles with corks still in them. Dozens of apothecary bottles. A round bottom bottle, a torpedo bottle, and a ballast bottle. Two ink wells.One from the mid 1800s that is Coke bottle green and another clear one. A straight sided Coca-Cola bottle that was mouth blown and has the Coca-Cola logo on the bottom. A green glass bottle stopper. Many mason jars. Dozens of Coke bottles and every other soda bottle you could imagine. 30 or so aqua blue beer bottles.
Four or five aqua colored embossed beer bottles. Five intact insulators.One embossed blob top soda bottle. And on and on and on. I’m still hunting but not as frequently as I was. Don’t see how I can stop. Last night, I found my third round bottom bottle and my oldest beer bottle. The glass is almost black in the bottle is made from five pieces. One of my favorite finds.
I’m going to post this thread without photos because I just saw the limit for the file size on this website. It is ridiculously small. So, I don’t wanna have to retype everything above, yet I have to find a way to reduce my photos. Which are many. So stay tuned for a good picture show. Guaranteed to impress. 😀
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