Trash or Treasure?
God help me. MTM is building a bike storage shed under our downstairs piazza so that puny, lazy me can get my bike out and ride, ride, ride. Now, it is stored in his man-shed in the back yard. Between the flesh-eating mosquitoes and the piles of man-stuff, I cannot wiggle my bike through the door without scratches to my person and bad words galore.
So, Labor Day Weekend has turned into toil and travail for MTM. Not only has he re-pointed the footings with historically accurate grout and constructed a perfectionist-fantasy of level concrete to hold the walls of the bike structure, but he has also conducted an archeological excavation under our very own porch. I think I am going to crawl under there with him and start sifting through the dirt. Who knew people in Charleston used to just throw their trash under the house?
I wonder what child lost his army man to the hidden depths of dirt, what dog buried a bone, what person threw a half-eaten orange so casually, not knowing it would petrify? Who dragged river stones all the way from someplace else, only to deposit them in the dark recesses of the porch? And, the bottles he unearthed, rainbows of old glass, elixirs of promised healing through quack doctoring or moonshine, some with the names still intact, blaring down through the passage of time and the pressure of dirt. Who left the toy cement mixer to tease MTM and his cement-mixing self into thinking his hand system was inferior?
I guess this stuff is trash, or was trash to someone. Did the person who swilled Buffalo Elixir sleep in my bedroom? Maybe the army man crashed down my stairs more than once, flung by the hand of a vanished little boy who liked to follow it with the tiny cement truck. Oranges grow in my back yard; did this one originate here or elsewhere? I studied each bottle, hoping for a wadded up note, a few remnants that would make it a time capsule, anything that might yield a message from someone who came before me.
Alas, the trash is the treasure, the only clues to the people who once called this house ‘home.’ What can I leave behind to excite some future someone to wonder about me?
Those old bottles are definitely treasure in my book. I’m salivating over the ones in your photo there. Very, very cool.
So I think you should bury a cheerwine bottle in the foundation of your bike shed, for future generations to find and puzzle over.
Ha! What is funnier about this suggestion is that I went around the corner to Charlie’s Grocery yesterday for some club soda, and he has a Cheerwine cooler, a big fridge with Cheerwine all over it. I started to ask how much he’d take for it, but I feared MTM’s wrath at such a purchase. Your idea is good. Is that what you would bury?
Poor MTM, being worked so hard by the Queen A when he should be enjoying a labor free Labor Day weekend. Just so she can have a bike dungeon where the spiders and snakes will be able to weave their magic on said bike. oops, hope that doesn’t deter you from said dungeon.
Now, as to the treasures, I can definitely go there with you, great fun finding these things, unique little bric a bracs. As you know, in my other life, in a place far away in time and space, I restored an ancient farm house and found many similar goodies. There were old bottles, letters in boxes found in the attic, treasure chests of gold doubloons…..OK, that was a mind fantasy, darn.
What can you leave behind for future archaeological finds….well, obviously it should be your sparkly red 8 inch stiletto heels. That will give them a reason to think they they live in a former Charleston speak-easy. How exciting will that be??!!
http://www.starletsandharlets.com/v/vspfiles/photos/TEEZE-01-BLACK-RED-2T.jpg
No way would I allow such amazing footwear to languish buried in a hole in the ground!! How could you suggest such a thing??
I remember your story of finding an old deed in your farmhouse attic. That was very cool.
Cool finds!
I can’t decide which bottle I like best. But, they are pretty cool.
Ooooooooo, is the bottle at the lower right corner of the photo a cobalt blue? If so, I am green with envy!
Maybe you could put some sushi samples in your time capsule – petrified dancing shrimp would surely raise an eyebrow someday! Of course, you’d probably also consider that a colossal waste.
Yes, Karen. Cobalt blue and intact. Maybe I will give some of it away at the holiday blog party. Hmmmmmmmm.
I know Charleston doesn’t have a long history compared to some other places in the world, but finding this stuff makes it seem older, with a real history. Now. If only I could be like that farmer in England who dug up a whole stash of Roman coins……….
Well woven words. My boys loved to dig holes. I’m sure that is a trait not only dominant in dogs. They would dig giant holes in our backyard and find all manner of Charleston treasures.
As we walked around Charleston, the family would pluck shards of dinnerware, long smashed, from the dusty margins of the sidewalk, secreting them in pockets, only to have them plink-plink in the washing machine.
Eventually my former husband took the hundreds of shards and with the children’s help made mosaics from them for Christmas gifts.
The old bottles make great vases for single stems or a handful of posies.
Little Oak Island was once the city landfill for Folly Beach. You can imagine the multitude of bottles they retrieved to the house.
The treasure is the mystery as much as the stuff!
I did not realize Oak Island had that past. Interesting.
Cool that your sons found so many shards of pottery over the years. Those were some great Christmas gifts.
Poor MTM having to labor on labor day weekend. We feel for you MTM….
As for Andra having a nice safe place to park her bike, that will be pretty cool and convenient too. As for finding the stuff under the porch that is pretty cool. It is like having our own private geocache that know one knows about. I think that the bottles and the army man are great finds. I would put the army man in our Ar moire along with the bottles. Each one of those items has its own unique story to tell, that is for sure.
The army man has to be recent. But, it is still really cool. I can’t imagine a kid living in this house, though I’m sure many have.
ah, i absolutely adore those bottles. matthew has been working in our yard, too and has found about 4 bottles so far. i’ve been bringing them in and cleaning them off. we are going to fill them with a bit of water & flowers and use them for able decoration at our wedding in june. <3
That is a fabulous idea, Dena. Obviously, we have some to spare if you need more.
Glad you commented. Seeing the mom bear and baby bear photos from your yard was a doozy. I think I screamed Eek! at the first one.
Value in someone else’s trash? Why most certainly. My bachelor pads were furnished by borrowing vans or pickup trucks and cruising the excessively well-to-do towns nearby on collection days, where there was a large sampling of items sitting at the curb simply because they didn’t match the new furniture or the color the room had just been painted or because they didn’t know what could be done with a bit of Elmer’s Wood Glue and a clamp. We used to pick up things that looked brand new all the time.
Then there’s the more unpleasant, bottle side of my trash story. I worked on a survey crew for the company that designed all the access roads for Giant’s Stadium in NJ when they were building it in the Meadowlands back the early ’70s. The only reason there was solid ground out there to build on in the first place was that they’d been throwing trash into the marsh for over 100 years. One of the more unpleasant duties was having to climb down into the holes the contractor dug for the bridge footings to take measurements used in calculating the volume of “stuff’ moved, which was how they were paid.
The odor of 100+ year old garbage on a 95+ degree day when you’re walking around the bottom of the hole in waders (did I mention this was marsh, the bottom of the hole was a swampy mess of floating “stuff”) is indescribable. And the collectors of old bottles and glass came out in droves to pick through the reeking mountain of stuff the excavator had piled next to the hole. Still turns my stomach to think about it.
Blech!!!!! I just ate my breakfast!!!!! People really did that!!??!!?? Ick. How did you stand it?
One of my friends picked up what looked like a perfectly good sofa from the front of a student rental, only to get it home and note a vile urinal odor……..good to know when considering something from the front of the land of the slum lord.
I can relate to this Bill. In my younger days I worked for a Master plumber. Most of the time I dug irrigation ditches for sprinkler systems. Man, I got very good with a shovel and could dig a trench in no time. My reward for doing good work was to be allowed to drive the van back to the shop and smoke weed with the boss. Anyway, one of the not so pleasant jobs was to replace metal sewer pipes underneath old houses and replace it with more modern materials. Wow, you want to talk about making sure your mouth and eyes were closed when you disconnected a section of pipe. I learned very quickly. LOL…
Hence, the need to smoke weed. Blech!!!
Perhaps a Bleinheim bottle or…pantyhose
Sorry for the mispelling…I meant Blenheim of course.
It happens to the best of us, particularly with obscure Southern beverages.
Go with the hose…
I already put a run in the bondage hose, so I could bury those…..
That ginger ale would probably preserve itself……..
The Homeschool History course at the Charleston Museum (run by brilliant Stephanie) included a session on trash as an introduction to archaeology – it’s all about what we throw away. And I have to back up Andra’s reaction – the red sparkly shoes may become a fascinating artifact one day, but that suggestion is almost blasphemous…
If the girls want to come and dig under the house, they are welcome any time.
I would pay good money to see either of you fine ladies wearing that red shoe….
Lou did find a cute one, didn’t he?
“Cute” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Of course the only thing that worries me is that Lou picked them out so quickly.
Ha!!
I am the “shoe whisperer”…..don’t tell anyone.
Your secret is totally safe with the Internet, Lou.
Another amazing post! What it must be like to live in a house with that much history. We’ve always lived in homes that are new. The house we’re in now had one family before us. They left a few things in the attic… trash to them. And even though the stuff is not that old, it’s still a bit haunting.
Oh, the story I could tell about things in attics. But, this is a mostly clean blog, so I shall refrain.
What did they leave in your attic?
And, mostly, the years are indicated by the dust inside. This house was once insulated with newspaper. Imagine how much fun it is to dust.
Love finding “treasures” in our yard. Not the one the dog leaves, but definitely the pretty bottles and old bricks we have found under our porch here in Summerville. We have a painted brick with the name “Pratt Thomas” on it and a picture of what looks like the Citadel. I also have various lawn ornaments and nice shiny rocks.
On another note, I know the woes of trying to retrieve your bicycle from a man cave. My bike was forever buried under so much stuff it would have taken a small bulldozer to free it from it’s burial ground. Then my husband decided to hang it from a structure, only he is a bit taller than me so for me to get it down without bodily injury I had to be up on a ladder to retrieve it…like that is so much safer. We have finally found a home for it near the garage door and only covered with a half dozen miscellaneous garage thingies. My biggest fear is pulling the cover off and seeing a palmetto bug on my seat….(UGH!!!!). I won’t get started on those awful things.
I am with you on not burying shoes…it’s almost blasphemy to suggest such a thing. Shoes are to be adored and collected like rare coins. And every women should have a red sparkly heels in her closet. Dorothy would have never made it back to Kansas without them
MTM measures everything to fit his eye and reach level, too. Those men. What would we do without them?
I love how treasure can be found all over the Lowcountry. Like you, I used to find old bricks all over my back yard on James Island. The neighborhood had been a plantation.
Well, it seens the lovely ladies have strong feelings about the act of burying shoes. I concur to a point, the stilettos must all be buried to save you from yourselves.
Lou, you are on dangerous ground. I would not even waste my Jimmy Choos by being buried wearing them.
I am indeed Dr Practical.
Have you been hanging out with some podiatrists or something? I know we shouldn’t wear those shoes of pain, but we women love the way it makes our legs look longer, and in our minds leaner. And if need be can be used as a weapon.
I concur with Andra…I am not even going to be buried with shoes on.
Lou is infinitely more practical than we.
I am so fascinated by your finds! Have you heard about the Mann-Simons dig in Columbia? There was a lunch counter trash pit (1891 to 1909) that was excavated just a few years ago…a piece of history brought back for us to see today. You can see photos here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=10150225231667647
I have not heard of that dig, Laura. Thanks for sharing the link. And, congrats on your new blog endeavor, lauracatherine.co!
Thanks, Andra! I am really enjoying the new space. xo
I need to list it in my blog roll. Will take care of that tomorrow.
When I was in college at the C of C I used to help out some family friends who were restoring a beautiful old house over on Pitt Street. In addition to having a grand time working in the house, we also from time to time worked at digging out the old privy. Since there was not garbage pickup back in the old days, discarded household items like bottle and such would often just be thrown in the privy. Add to that the occasional personal items that fell in and these well-like structures were an amazing treasure trove. And the best thing is that since they had been sitting for over 200 years, there was no smell or “residue” left.
Still did wash my hands after every dig though.
There’s a local environmental engineer who gives a fascinating talk on the things people have thrown away throughout the peninsula’s history. Our soil content is high in arsenic, for instance, because of the arsenic wafers people used to eat to whiten the skin.
I bet digging around an old privy was fascinating. We find stuff buried all over our yard, so it is hard to know where the privy was.
They ate arsenic wafers to make their skin white or more white? Really?
I mean, I thought that stuff was poisonous to consume? What am I missing here? Bad gene pool back then? LOL
Yes, they were poisonous, but pale white skin was the fashion, and arsenic wafers gave it. They also used mercury as makeup. I will go find a link…….
Here’s a link for further reading:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22546056/ns/health/t/suffering-beauty-has-ancient-roots/
The one I used to dig in was walled, much like a well, so not hard to find at all.
Hmmm. Maybe that is the brick ruin on the back of our house then. I thought it was an old well.
And there was some chemical or food that made one’s urine smell like violets or some such thing too, wasn’t there?
See link.
So cool. When I was little I tried to dig for treasure in our side yard. I found a lighter and was so excited about the booty (ew girl, not that kind!) that I set the yard ablaze!
Haha! You and Lou have childhood fire-setting in common.