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Follow the Yellow Back Hoe is not really what Dorothy sang about but it's what I thought about one day while in search of a place to hunt and find good things.
I was driving through town one afternoon and noticed that construction equipment was tearing up Main street and removing about a foot of asphalt right down to the dirt surface on 2 miles of street!
I then noticed that on side streets Back Hoe's and trenchers were digging a new waterline smack through the old section of town!
looked like they were digging down ten feet or so? Hmmm I thought, It's only March!! had Christmas come early?
Do I need to call Duracell and make sure there's not going to be a battery shortage?
I'm fixin to start a run on the AA battery market for sure I told myself as I whipped a U turn and headed for the house to fetch my detector.
This town is old, the Civil War came here, Gamblers too! heck there were Pirates here! It was already late afternoon but so what I thought, there's street lights and anyway I carry a flashlight of sorts, no problemo!
The Back Hoe's were digging at least ten feet down and piling the dirt about 6 feet high along side the trench they were digging for the waterline. I mean this is sorta like Metal detector golf except the Japanese caddies were back hoes named Komatsu!! I mean a big Lesche shovel on tracks?? this is good.
I hunted until dark and came up with 8 or ten shield nickels and a Pewter whistle. In the 1800's horse drawn trollies were pulled along Main street and the ride cost a nickel. At the time a shield nickel would work just fine unless you dropped it in the dirt! hence the reason for me finding a lot of Shield nickels.
The Pewter whistle was a really cool find I thought, they were used by Draymen who were like early 1800's Uber drivers driving a horse instead of a car that was still on a drawing board somewhere.
The Drayman would stop at a house and blow the Pewter whistle for the resident to come out and hop in for a ride to somewhere.
I would average hunting these ready made streets of good finds three days a week and sometimes more. One afternoon I was following the yellow back hoe when I noticed a round object roll down the side of the pile of dirt he was digging. I thought maybe a bowling ball? it was about the right size.
I walked over to pick it up and right away, I knew this thing was way to heavy for a bowling ball! felt like it weighed 25 pounds or more all covered with sand, shells, and crud. I had found my first cannonball and didn't know it. Five feet away was another one half the size so I picked it up too and headed home.
They were both explosive cannonballs but I didn't know that until while cleaning them I noticed the fuse hole in each ball, that's when I slowed down and became very gentle cleaning them up until I knew there was no powder inside. The one in the photo was made at the arsenal in Selma Ala I discovered later.
I could have told my compadres how I sweated while digging in swamp mud dodging alligators and bugs to recover these dang cannonballs, but when they're given to you free by a back hoe? even I couldn't tell a tale like that.
I could also have told a number of tales about digging privvies in the summer heat looking for bottles and dodging cave in's or worse, getting sliced up by broken bottle parts? But not so, the back hoe gave me the bottles too.
I saw a large number of precious old bottles broken up but every once in a while one would come out encased in a mud ball unbroken with maybe just the snout sticking out! I immediately rescued these from death by back hoe and took them home to the water hose to find I had some really cool old bottles..
My favorite is the American Celebrated Stomach Bitters in the photo in perfect condition. Actually a very rare bottle.
Stomach bitters were in reality a bottle of pretty strong booze that ordinary people would call a medicine elixir of sorts and was considered "socially" acceptable to publicly consume by most. Therefore one could freely and openly drink with gusto to relieve a variety of pesky ailments.
For instance, If Granny was found entangled in the clothesline outside and appeared immobile for an extended period of time? it was likely one could find an opened Stomach Bitters bottle in her apron.
The Coca Marianna Paris wine bottle content was highly favored around the turn of the century because as the name implies? yep, the wine also contained cocaine as did Coca Cola during this time period when Cocaine could actually be purchased across drug store counters.
This practice ceased however when it was noticed that people were acting goofier than normal after freely ingesting cocaine. By the late 20's it was outlawed and declared a tool of the devils workshop causing wine sales to drop and Coca Cola consumers to grumble a lot.
The small green bottle in photo 7 on the right is labeled "For Consumption". Consumption was a name for Tuberculosis back in the old days. Of course it didn't work.
The half of a Crucifix I found in front of an old Catholic church in the pile of dirt but I never found the other half.
The silver Mexican coin necklace was really exciting, It too was encrusted and some of the chains were missing but the coins are all 1850's.
Don't know if I'll ever be in this situation again, the photos are just a small portion of the things the back hoe gave to me. Funny thing though, during the months I hunted this place I never saw another detectorist! They were all hunting the beach a mile or 2 away.
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Just kidding!
