(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

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- Hello, welcome to "Illinois Stories."

I'm Mark McDonald, in Louisiana, Missouri this time.

And I thought after 1200 and some Illinois stories, we had probably hit on just about every hobby there was, but I learned (chuckles) about a gentleman in Louisiana who calls himself a bottle digger, and I'd never heard that term before.

So we did a little investigating, and we met Jack Klotz from Louisiana, and Jack, since he was a teenager, probably a Boy Scout, you've been digging bottles.

- That's right.

- It started in California, and you have lived in Hannibal, and you now live in Louisiana, and you've dug in Quincy, and you've dug all over the place, and bottles, they're your thing, aren't they?

- They are, they are.

(both chuckling) - Your house is full of them.

- They are, yeah.

Empty, but they're full.

- But that's the best, because I mean, you can really see through them, and you can see their color, and you can see, when they're empty like that, you can see what's embossed on them, and you can see how they were made.

So we're gonna get a tutorial here today on not only how you find bottles, but how you know what you found.

And what I want you to do first is kind of breeze us through the house, and then we'll come back through and take a look at more detail, but you have these bottles in this case for a reason.

- Yeah, the top shelf are part of what I call my cure collection.

Each of these bottles has some form of the word cure embossed in the glass, and collectors typically tend to specialize.

Some are cure collectors, bitters collectors, whiskey collectors, so I try to separate them out a bit, because I collect everything that I'm digging, (laughs) you know?

So any of these all have some form of the word cure, curative or quick cure and stuff like that.

- [Mark] And what about these on the second level here?

- These are my Hannibal bottles.

These are the more scarce or rare bottles.

The back shelf are all soda bottles from Hannibal, Missouri.

And then the next line of bottles are a pharmacy that was in business only during the 1870s, and they were fairly prolific and very popular, but they're tough ones to find still.

And then, we have a smattering of other Hannibal bottles along with my meager bank collection.

(Mark laughs) I have a piggy bank-- - [Mark] A piggy bank.

- [Jack] And a jug bank, and then a funny clown head bank.

- [Mark] So, it's all bottles, it's just 90% bottles.

- [Jack] Yeah, if you look down on the lower, we got a Billy club there that's pretty unusual, because the wood usually rots by 150 years.

- [Mark] Is that how old that is?

Wow!

- [Jack] Yeah, just about.

- [Mark] And then down here, the marbles.

These would have been things that would have been found just outside of almost anybody's home, I guess, huh?

- Yeah, pretty much, and a lot of stuff, like one privy that I dug up, I must've dug up probably about 30 of those clay marbles, and I realized what happened was some poor kid dropped his bag of marbles down the privy by accident.

- [Mark] He was not gonna go after them.

(Mark laughing) - Yeah, not for a bag of marbles, maybe for a bag of $20 gold pieces or something.

- Well, we're gonna talk more about that.

Privies happened to be a gold mine for bottled diggers, and we'll talk more about how that happened to be, but first, take us over here and explain to us why these are where they are.

- [Jack] Well, this used to be full of pre-Civil War bottles on this shelf without any embossing.

These are pre-Civil War bottles with embossing, and these are late Civil War period, maybe middle Civil War period, to early 1870s.

And they're the tougher ones to find, especially the pre-Civil War ones.

- [Mark] Is it because of their age?

- Yeah, and their delicacy.

Typically, back in those days, they really didn't have the manufacturing down.

The annealing process led to bottles cracking just from temperature change.

Or, some of them had such delicate flared little lips, like this one here, for example.

It's paper thin.

To find something like that, that hasn't been damaged.

- [Mark] Yeah, it's still intact after all the 150, 60 years.

- And some of them with bricks and rubble on top of them, you just can't imagine how they would survive.

- [Mark] Well, let's come back and take a look at some of these more dainty ones.

And then you have this window here, and there's a reason why you have all these colorful bottles up against the window, isn't there?

- [Jack] Yeah, people just love color in the window.

They're like their own stained glass windows in essence.

- [Mark] Different time of day, they show differently too, don't they?

- [Jack] They do, yeah.

Unfortunately this one never gets direct sunlight, like the other side of my house does, but it's still presents a nice colorful scene.

A lot of times I'll be gazing out the window, and I'm not actually gazing out the window.

(laughs) I'm reading or I'm looking at the bottles and remembering when I dug them up.

- That's what I'm saying, for you, each one of these has a memory.

You remember where you found it, what your reaction was when you found it, how much dirt was caked into it, and cleaned it up and all that.

- [Jack] Yeah, absolutely.

(Mark chuckles) - And then we go around this way, and now these are soft drink bottles.

- Yeah, those are probably, oh, early 1900s to about 1920s.

These are a little bit older soda bottles.

These are called hutchinson tops, and people specialize in those, and these not so much, but they're still hand-tooled, most of them.

I think there was only one or two that are machine-made, and they didn't really start making machine-made soda bottles until about 1910.

- [Mark] Okay, so yeah, so they have to be old to even qualify for that.

- [Jack] Exactly.

- Okay, this chest is full of... my goodness.

This is a lot more of non bottles, but these are things that you also found just around while you were digging.

- [Jack] Yeah, absolutely.

One of my earlier experiences before bottle hunting was rock hounding, and I learned early on how to keep an eye out for a certain crystal perhaps, and then also look for a certain striation in the ground or whatever, and so what I learned was to multitask when I was looking for things, so anything that's round catches my eye immediately, whether it be a marble or a coin or a button, these are all buttons down there.

- [Mark] On this level here?

- [Jack] Yeah.

- [Mark] They're all buttons.

- [Jack] And then these are all various coins and tags.

I even have a dog tag.

That one there is from the Molly Brown house, dated 1891.

- [Mark] No kidding.

(laughing) - [Jack] So that could have been Molly Brown's dog, 'cause she didn't leave home till the 1880s, I think, or early 80s.

- Wow, okay, we're gonna come back, and we'll review this too, some of these pieces that you think are important, but here in the kitchen then, I mean, this is where you keep a lot of your... You really have more valuable bottles.

- [Jack] Yeah, I try to keep it low profile, if you will.

I mean, these guys have their own shelf for a reason, because they're the highest end bottles in my collection, starting with the green one on the left is probably three to 4,000.

This Amber one, second over, is a $3,000 bottle.

- [Mark] Wow, can you take that down and show it to me?

- [Jack] Yeah, sure.

- [Mark] Now, don't break it.

(laughing) I don't want to be responsible for that.

- [Jack] No, that would be a terrible thing.

- [Mark] Okay, so this is very valuable and-- - [Jack] Yeah, probably about 18, mid 1860s.

- [Mark] What was in this?

- [Jack] This would have been a whiskey flask, and it was commemorating the gold rush to Pike's Peak in 1859, and they made these for about 10 years.

They made them from all the way through the 60s and probably up to 1870.

- [Mark] Can you show us the back again on it.

- [Jack] Yeah, that's the-- - [Mark] Oh that's the eagle isn't it?

- [Jack] The American Eagle on the back with a shield and arrows.

- [Mark] Nice, okay, and that may be your most valuable, and show us the other valuable one here.

- The one that I really like, this one I just dug up in March, and this one dates, this company, it's hard to read.

I really need to have it cleaned, but Ravenna Glass Works from Ohio.

They were first in business in 1857, and they went through a number of changes and owners, and this is believed to be from the first glass factory from 1857 to 1863.

And it's got an early, what they call a hinge mold, and it's got what I thought was a chip when I dug it up, it's actually a dip in the glass.

They were just very crude about the manufacturing.

You can see where the glass is even bowed in-- - [Mark] Yeah, it's kind of sunk in, yeah.

- [Jack] And even on the base, there's I thought were three more chips, and it turns out those are just chunks of glass.

- [Mark] Actually, that's good though, isn't it, for the value?

- Yeah, people just love that.

Collectors love it.

- [Mark] Was this a whiskey flask?

- This was a whiskey flask as well, yeah.

And like I said, this one's probably my best bottle, price wise.

And then, like that commercial says, "50 cents on a good day, priceless to me."

(Mark chuckling) This was dug in 1964 with the Boy Scouts, and-- - Oh, this is one of your first bottles then?

- Yeah, this is, and so it has its rightful place along the most valuable ones.

- If you would, keep that up for just a moment and show us the bottom of that.

It looks to me like that's been stamped or it's been-- - Well, it's actually a manufacturing... oh, probably the bottom of the mold.

It really has no significance.

Usually the stamping is usually pretty clear on these, but the purpling now, that's an interesting thing.

They made these with manganese in the glass to make them clear, like these bottles here.

They're nice and clear.

You see right through them.

But if they are subjected to the sunlight for any length of time, the sunlight changes the glass to this amethyst color.

- When you're a boy of about 12 or 14 years old now, and you find this, do you know anything about it at that point?

- I knew nothing other than it was old, older than me.

- (laughing) It was old, and you weren't - Yeah, right, right, and I kind of go by that philosophy today.

It's gotta be older than me (laughs) to drag it home, but it was like pirate's treasure to me.

I knew it was from the old adobe that was built 100 years ago.

- So that's what got you going.

- Yeah, it was.

- Well, Jack, you obviously know what you're talking about.

I mean, you have an article in the "Bottles and Extras" magazine about a serendipitous dig and this chronicles one of your favorite digs, and this one, again, "Bottles and Extras," and in this one, it shows a dig story, "25 Holes in 49 Days," by Jack Klotz, and it's in Hannibal, of course.

That looks like Tom Sawyer's fence.

How do you determine where you're gonna dig, where the bottles are gonna be?

- Well, a lot of times it's just intuition, but more often than not, a lot of us try to use some form of maps or some form of pinpointing exactly where you want to dig.

- [Mark] You call this a bird's eye view, and a lot of towns had these maps made, didn't they?

- Many, yeah, many towns of any decent size would have these birds eye view maps.

And, the story that I've been told is they would go up in a hot air balloon, and the artists would sketch it out, and then he would fill in the details later with trees and wagons and people.

- Right, but what this does for you is if this is an 1870s period map, this shows you where the structures were, so if you're looking for, for instance, a privy, you would know sorta where to go on that lot.

- Yup, or where not to go.

Sometimes, a lot of times, the maps would show you where not to dig, because privies were typically meant to be a temporary structure.

So, a lot of times when they would make these maps, they would avoid putting down a privy.

But every now and then, they would have a large square that would not only be the outhouse, but it'd be the wash house and the bath house and everything else combined.

And so, there've been a number of times when I have avoided something that size, just because I would think, well, that's too big to be an outhouse, so I'd, pro-ball around it, and then I'd come back as a last resort, and lo and behold, it would be there, or sometimes on a rare occasion, inside a barn.

- Now, for those of us that don't really understand the ins and outs, why would bottles be in a privy?

- Well, that's a good question.

Back in the day, pre-Civil War times, glass was reused over and over until it almost fell apart.

So that's why the pre-Civil War bottles are harder to find, because they would basically reuse them until they broke.

But, as time went on, and bottles became more common, then they needed to throw them away, and it got to a point, by the 1880s, that any hole that was deep enough to throw anything away into was a good receptacle for trash or bottles.

And typically, the chamber maid in the fancier houses was in charge of taking the trash out and dumping them into the outhouse along with the chamber pot.

- I see, okay, so a lot of artifacts, not only bottles, but all sorts of waste that they just didn't know what else to do with.

They didn't have garbage pickups, so-- - Right, and they would have a town dump that they would use, but that required filling up the wagon and going out of your way.

- Now, you also mentioned probing.

Now I've seen probes, but I've never seen one like this.

- Yeah, and this one's a long one.

The barrel, as I call it, is narrow and different from the utility guys.

This has a carbon tip on it, so it will go through the Mississippi clay, remarkably easy.

And typically, when you are probing, you're looking for softer ground than the natural soil.

So you'll do a probing of areas that you're pretty sure there's nothing never been buried there to get a feel for the resistance, and then you'll go and search in areas that are most common to have the privies, which are usually the back property lines or near the barns.

I find so many near the old barns.

I figured out that barns were pretty stinky and so were outhouses, so they must have had the idea if it stinks, keep it together.

- So, when you're going on probing, probing, probing, and you find a soft spot, you go, bang!

That's what you're looking for.

- Well, not always, sometimes it's a tree stump hole, a post hole, could be a utility pipeline, so what we do then is we angle probe for the walls.

You're gonna find either stone, brick or wood.

- And that would be a privy hole.

- That would be a privy hole.

- Because they had to be contained in some way.

- In most cases, it would be a privy hole.

Now sometimes you'll hit brick, and you'll discover it's a cistern, not a privy.

- That's not bad either though, is it?

Wouldn't they throw things in the cistern too?

- Well, they're problematic.

Cisterns were not meant to be filled in other than with water, they use the water, but when they were done with the cisterns, then they would fill it in with trash, but the problem is, they used them right up until usually the early 1900s.

So if you're looking for stuff from the 1800s, it's not to say that there's not 1800s stuff thrown in.

It's just that they're less productive than the outhouse holes.

- Okay, Jack, now I assume you're usually looking for bottles, but you never know, do you?

- You never do, you really don't.

(Mark chuckling) I still have yet to find grandma's fruit jar, full of gold coins or change, but be it as it may, I was digging in a privy in Hannibal, and I come across a set of false teeth, and it's not unusual.

This is a typical set.

The teeth are kind of cruddy.

But this set of teeth was pristine.

- [Mark] Perfect, perfect.

- [Jack] I wasn't even sure if it was old at first.

And I thought, my gosh, that's a beautiful set of teeth, and they were not cheap back in those days.

And so I kept digging, and I came across this little jar, and it says, "Calder's Dentine," and it was half full of this hard powdery substance.

I recognized it as being an early version of denture adhesive, and I thought, well, that's interesting, so I set it up along with the teeth, and then further down, I came across these old toothbrushes, and actually, I've got this a little bit out of context.

This was the first thing in the hole, but you have to take it backwards, because if you try to figure out this, and every hole has a story.

I always tell new diggers, "If you don't see the story to what you're digging in, "you're not paying attention."

So obviously, the fellow lost his teeth, threw away his toothbrushes and got himself a nice set of dentures.

Well, then he probably got sick, food poisoning, bottle poisoning, (laughs) you know, rushed out to the outhouse, puked down the hole and lost his-- - [Mark] And lost his teeth in the process.

- [Jack] And came back in the house and kind of went, "Well this stuff didn't do any damn good," - [Mark] Not gonna need this anymore.

- [Jack] And threw it away.

(Mark laughing) Don't need that anymore.

It didn't matter what this cost.

- [Mark] He lost his perfect set of teeth.

- [Jack] He wasn't climbing back down into that outhouse.

(Mark laughing) Another dig that I had was actually more heartbreaking.

I was digging in a... a lot of the doll parts, mainly those big doll heads came out of one privy.

I must've dug probably about 10 dolls altogether, arms and legs, and none of them were broken.

But before I got down to the doll parts, I dug up probably 50, 100 half pint whiskey rot gut flasks, you know, just the cheapest stuff you could imagine.

And I thought, geez, this is weird, what's going on here?

And it dawned on me that, oh-oh, somebody lost two or three of their little girls, cholera epidemic, or, you know, you name it.

Kids were afflicted and wiped out, whole families at times.

And I figured out, oh, they got tired of looking at their little girls dolls laying around the house-- - Grieving, yeah.

- Threw them down the outhouse, and then he started drinking afterwards, and the whiskey flasks just piled up on top of the old doll parts, so there's always a story that's there to be told, whether accurate or not.

One can make some intelligent guesses anyway.

- Jack, we're almost out of time, but we have seen this bottle.

I wanted to revisit this bottle though, because this is probably the most valuable in your collection.

- It is at this point, yeah.

And it's so crude, and the glass is really so thin in parts.

One of the drawbacks of being a buried bottle like this is that the minerals in the ground have a tendency to etch away at the glass and actually eat into the glass to a point where it's not desirable.

And so, what we typically do is we'll send something like this off to a professional glass cleaner.

And I contacted a fellow out in California, Lou Lambert is one of the best in the business, and he wouldn't touch it.

He said, "It's just too crude."

He said, "I'm really afraid it won't survive."

What they do is they tumble them like rock hounds tumble old rocks.

And so, with his advice, to just leave it as it is, that's what I'm doing.

- Well, it's so valuable too.

What did you say the rough value of this is?

- Three to 4,000.

- Three to $4,000.

I mean, yeah, I wouldn't want to tumble it either.

- And then, who knows, I mean, an auction, you get two people that want it bad enough, you never know where it'll end.

- You were rewarded, because you spent 10 years looking for the privy where this bottle was located.

You didn't know this bottle would be in there.

- I did, and at least once a year, I'd stopped by this old abandoned mansion, and go probing for the privy, because I knew there had to be something back there, but originally, that mansion took up the entire block, which has been parceled out now.

But again, it comes down to how far do you want to run to use the bathroom?

(Mark laughing) You don't want to go to the west 40, so it had to be within a reasonable distance of the house.

And I finally found it and discovered why it was so hard is because one of the stone walls had collapsed into the hole so that it shrunk from about four feet wide to about half-- - Oh okay, so probing, you couldn't figure out what the heck that was.

- I couldn't, and it was too narrow really for a privy, so I just assumed, well, I'm barking up the wrong tree once again, and after three cisterns, two stump holes, (Mark laughing) and a couple of postholes and tons of cement, I just had given up, and as I said in the story that I wrote about it, I said, "I'd drive by the house and hang my head in shame, "'cause that darn yard had defeated me again."

- [Mark] But back year, after year, after year-- - After year and never gave up on it, not entirely.

- [Mark] And if you don't ask permission, just go ahead and see what you find, and then if someone chases you off-- - Beg for forgiveness later.

But yeah, the success in this hobby comes to those who keep plugging at it, and I'm sure there's been a few times I've given up before I should have.

As a matter of fact, I know there are, 'cause I've heard of people coming in behind me, going, "Oh, I found that hole on such and such property."

I'm like, "Oh great, I missed it, huh?"

So yeah, persistence is the name of the game really.

- Well, Jack, thanks for sharing this with us.

It's been a lot of fun and very, very interesting.

Jack's collection has changed recently.

He told us when we got here, he said, "I turned 70."

He said, "I thought I got to start thinking, "what am I gonna do with all these bottles?"

Well, he has 1,000, but he used to have almost 4,000.

So he has trimmed down his collection somewhat, but he's really not finished yet, because I said, "Jack, do you have any future digs planned?"

And he says, "Well, yeah, just a few.

"I've got this much lined out for the coming year."

So persistence pays off in more ways than one.

With another Illinois story today from Louisiana, Missouri, I'm mark McDonald's, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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