Sunday, August 5, 2012

Mining the Assabet's Archives

The Egg Rock inscription stands high and dry these days.  Therefore, I decided to take advantage of these low levels and mid-day sunshine in hopes of finding a hatch cover I'd lost into the Assabet River last year.  The riverbottom was completely visible in my search area, but alas no hatch cover was found and the case is now closed.  While searching, however, I did find quite a few glass bottles.  Here are a few of the older ones...
The amber one is an Old Molineaux wine pint bottle.  The small clear bottle once contained Old Quaker whiskey, and the bottle on the left was Sawyers Crystal Blueing which was a kind of laundry product, and may be the oldest, possibly pre-1905 according to one online bottle site.

This blue heron was taking advantage of the low water levels as well...
His prey have far fewer places to hide.

Cardinal flowers are now in full bloom...

At the takeout, my day's catch was almost 50% glass...
 There were 17 recyclable containers (1 redeemable) and 21 pieces of misc. rubbish such as nip bottles, fishing product containers, and some plastic bags.  YTD = 4565

All in all, a better day for drifting than for paddling!
  

2 comments:

Harry said...

Wow, the old glass bottles are incredible. Funny isn't it, that century-old "junk" is fascinating, but year-old junk is pretty much just junk.

Al said...

Harry, Agreed. Those old bottles had character and were built to last.
Now if I could just find the old pocket watch that Henry David Thoreau might have dropped into the water!