S8 E10 - Bones in Water - Bob Lee of Relic Rescue USA Joins Relics Radio - Relics Radio show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, DK here from Adventures in Dirt. Welcome to
a Wednesday night. Boy, I'm not gonna say Thursday ever again.
I probably will, I probably will. But welcome to another
Relics Radio. Good to see everyone rolling in the chat
and if it's your first time here, howdy, good to
see you. Make sure you check out the audio portion
over on spreaker dot com of Relics Radio. And for

(00:22):
those of you that are listening over there, come on
over and check out the video sometime. We'd love to
see you here. Introducing my co host. You guys know man,
he's been known as Chicken Man, mister toy Tony Tony,
and mister Adventures.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Happy Wednesday again, trying to get that right. We were
on Thursday for how many years?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Forever?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Well? The show, yeah, the show was on for eight seasons,
seven seasons on Thursday night. We're moving at the Wednesday.
But you know what, we're making a home here.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yep, We're we're doing well. If you're start ah, it's
going it's going good. You got you and I have
been talking this week.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
You've been busy.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, I got two out of state projects starting next
week early next week on Monday. As a matter of fact,
and how you do it. Yeah, there's so much to
get ready for that, to be prepared for taking people
out of state. This week is just you know, all
the last minute things that come up. You've been planning
it for months and months and months, and now it's

(01:27):
finally coming to it. Was like, oh, man, I forgot this,
I forgot that. Oh I gotta think about this and that.
Man crazy busy.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah good.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
How about you be honest? I see you got a
new studio there.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, I'm in a in a new studio temporarily hopefully
a grand one coming soon. I uh, we're doing renovations
on the house and I'm in Believe it or not,
it doesn't look like. I don't want to turn the
camera out. I'm in the laundry room right now and
that's where my that's where my studio is going to
lift for a couple months maybe, But yeah, a whole

(02:03):
new set up here. I'm glad everything plugged in correctly
and works. You know, you can hear me, you can
see me, right, That's all that matters.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Have you ever watched any of Daniel Patel's videos? Yes,
he's in a closet he's in a closet and it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Isn't that awesome?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Got the guitars hanging all over the place. Yeah, it's
so good, amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
You never know what's going on in the other you know,
seventy five percent of the room that's going on, you
can only see a little bit.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
So if I turned my camera this way or that way, yeah,
it's not good. I have somebody come over here one
time and they go, let me see your studio. They
came down and this is not what I expected.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah. Well, we're hoping to uh to sell the house
and then move into a new house and everything, and
I've got big, big plans for a big studio, so
multi dimensional and different camera sides and all that kind
of stuff. So it's gonna be pretty awesome if if
we can make it happen.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
You got a cool looking book sitting over there back
in that corner.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
You like that?

Speaker 1 (03:00):
You like that?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
That's going to come up here pretty soon. Yeah, John
Collins Black, there's treasure inside.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
That's a treasure hunt buck right there.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, that's gonna be in the next couple of weeks here.
Maybe something coming on with that. So yeah, everybody stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
The weather's nice this week. We always talk about the weather.
I couldn't believe it. We just had tons of snow
and freezing cold weather. This week's all been in the sixties,
almost seventy degrees.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, we're almost we're almost dry. I think the perma
frost line is still frozen, so it's not really absorbing
all of the moisture that we've gotten, but the initial
top of it's pretty dry and you could do some
digging in some bright spots.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
So the weather gets nice like that. I mitched. I
know the news is said, don't get used to it, but.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Right, yeah, Well, I was telling a buddy at work.
I said, you know, it's it's nice enough for us
to get that eighteen inches of March snow that we're
so good for every single year.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, March week sored in March usually, and it's that wet,
it's that heavy, wet snow that my snow power does
not like to.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
That's all right, we'll get out soon. Let's get over
to the chat.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, lots of people rolling in went to welcome I know,
first one into night, Dirty South digger, hey man, what's
up Dirty South?

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Amen? Yeah, mister Hayes. Hey, did you get a text
from him today?

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I certainly did. Wow, he forget man, I know, I know.
It's over on Facebook there. You have to chat with
him after the show, maybe about what he was doing
and finding.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yep, some good stuff.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Metal teching and see Ei there everyone, Mike all Ray,
good to see you. We got the ski searcher in
the house.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Heyt see Yeah. Have you seen some of his posts?
Eightly he is found numerous pieces of like newspaper plates,
you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the whole page.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Oh, it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Back to work in the printed page for us.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's right. That was cool, man, Yes, very very cool.
Then Blue Diggers Nick joining us tonight.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Hello, Nick, good to see you.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
We'll go a couple more here.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Robert Thompson, how are you from Nebraska?

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Hello Robert Thompson, Good to see you.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
We got that ill digger guy.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
How are you? Clad Warrior? Check this out? Clad Warrior?
I like it.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Clad Warrior.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I like I like that name.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, aren't we all aren't we? All right?

Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right? Uh, let's you know what before we get
clad right, before we get to our guest. Uh, let's uh,
let's talk about the rest of the Rockies real quick.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Okay. Rush to the Rockies is May thirtieth, thirty first
in June first. That's a three day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
It's happening this year and Kiowa, Colorado. Boy, if you've
ever been to a Rush of the Rockies, you know
how it goes very well organized, very well put on.
We have got a lot of things going on. We got, man,

(06:25):
we are close to making some announcements that I just
can't make yet. But man, I sure hope like maybe
by next next maybe two shows, I'll be making some
cool announcements on that show. But if you want to
come on out see Tony and I come out in
beautiful Colorado. You know, it's a seated hunt. We put
all the money, even more than all the money into
the ground. Everyone says, well, how can you say that, Ken, Well,

(06:48):
we have club funds that we put together to help
run the hunt, and we're always buying extra stuff and
putting it into the ground. So it's a lot of fun.
But beyond that, we have all kinds of Uh. Tony
and I are both on the committee and we are
just every week or two we're having meetings and our agendas.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Like this big and we just go over to every
single thing, two hour meetings.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, it's excellent, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's gonna be it's gonna be good this year. Different location,
but definitely a nice change. We're gonna be a little
bit flatter ground, but still high elevation. Yeah, beautiful view
of Pikes Pike's Peak where we're gonna be at. Lots
of really cool hunts, lots of silver, lots of good prizes,
lots of good sponsors, and that's what we'll be announcing

(07:35):
here pretty soon too.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, we have some homemade stuff that's really cool, some
homemade artifacts that are made out of silver, and we've
got a lot of silver silver in every hunt, but
a lot of the hunts have themes to them, so
there's extra stuff for themes. Lots of prizes for token winners.
If you've never been to a seated hunt before, we
plant tokens along with the silver and other items that
were that were sort of burying, and you find a token,

(07:58):
you get a prize. And uh boy, we got kids
Hunt on Sunday. We got free kids Hunt, which is
always really cool to see. I think last time we
had a hunt right, letting me like a two year
old one to metal detector. Yeah, it was, it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
It was great, great event.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Make sure you I threw the links in the chat there.
They'll also be in the show notes, the description and
all that kind of stuff. So check out the website.
Come on out and join us. We'll be here May
May thirtieth of June. First. So what do we call rockies?
This one's called Rendezvous twenty five.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Rush of the Rockies. Rendezvou, Yeah, twenty five. So come
on out and rendezvous with us.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
You don't have any of those stickers in uh within reach,
do you? No?

Speaker 2 (08:47):
No, no, I've got some. I've got some clean laundry
into fold right over there.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Oh, let's bring our guests in man.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
All right, Well, I want to welcome mister Bob Lee
to Relics Radio. Bob, how's it going, buddy?

Speaker 3 (09:07):
It is going fabulous, guys, and thank you so much
for having me on. Listen. I'm delighted to be here,
but you kind of you kind of scared me a
little bit when you start talking about that permafrost. Listen
I got to explain something to you. I'm a native Floridian,
so anything less than seventy degrees is cold to me,
all right, So you're not joining you'd even relate to that.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Seventy degrees man' that's nice.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, I feel so bad for you, Bob.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Well, you know, the summers here can be beastly, but
I mean, right now, oh man, the weather's been just fabulous,
like forty degree fort prescent humidity and low in the
mid fifties, high in the mid seventies.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Where about some Florida Are you north or south?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
So I'm in northeast Florida. To make it easy for
your listeners on about an hour and a half south
of Jacksonville, or about forty five minutes inland from Saint
Augustine and about a mile from the Saint John's River.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Oh my goodness, Saint Augustine. That's a hot spot, right
right right, Yeah, that's what the original that's is.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
That the originals to the sixteen hundreds. And let me
tell you what you talk about rules you you don't
even want to think about sticking a spade in the ground,
as they will put you under the jail. I mean,
the rules you can't believe strict until you've read them.
It is. I think it's if you if you, if
you dig less than more than three inches, you got

(10:41):
to have a permit. I mean it's crazy, you know.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
But sounds like Boulder of Colorado. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Anyway, I went to Jacksonville one time and then went
west and I was in the middle of this thick
jungle and the bugs are about that big, and I
had just budge Connell me. I was just sitting there
trying to be quiet. I was doing like a meditation
type thing, and oh my gosh, they were crawing in
the cracks of my eyes and my mouth. And why

(11:09):
was it was real practice to.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Keep my I think I think there's I think you
have a gap in your story. Why were you meditating
in the woods in Florida with the bugs?

Speaker 1 (11:17):
I mean, is this I was a martial artist back then,
and my teacher thought it'd be fun to bring us
all out there and spend.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Like a retreat a little. I have a little background
in that too long long time.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
There you go. Oh man, yeah, so it was, man,
it was I felt like I was in the jungle.
It was pretty crazy. So you you so Saint John's River. Man,
that's got to be pretty exciting.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
So the Saint John's UH, because I doubt there's many
of your listeners that are familiar with un less unless
they've been here. The Saint John's is the largest river
in Florida totally enclosed within Florida. It's three hundred and
ten miles long, and it flows from south to north
and uh, which is a little different most rivers go
north to south and and in its lower sections it

(12:02):
can very much resemble and with the Mississippi, although the
water would not be as muddy as I guess the
Mississippi might be as more of a dark tan and
translucent kind of color. And so over the over the
complete three hundred and ten miles, the elevation drop, it
descends thirty feet, just to give you an idea. So

(12:24):
it's a very slow flowing river. And where I'm at
there's actually a tidal influence, so it'll come up and down.
There's an incoming and an outgoing tide, and so it'll
very foot foot and a half.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
And I'm sixty, I'm sixty, No, No, I'm sick. I'm
about seventy five miles upstream. From Jacksonville.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Do they ever find shark's teeth in that river? Now?

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, So in regards to that, I have one you
to where I go out with a couple of fossil
hunters in their boat, their divers, and they've been doing
this for forty years and it's Tony and Mike and
and so you get to see they go. I film
on going down and I film on coming back up,

(13:15):
and there's an assortment of fossils they've come up with.
Sharksteif would be one of them, and they old bannite bones.
These are just a variety of stuff they had that
particular day. And I think it's about a fifteen minute
did And then I've got a couple of tiktoks. I've
done with them too. While if I'm out there fishing,
if I see them, I'll stop buying. I'll knock out
a quick TikTok because they've always got something in the

(13:35):
bottom of their boat, right, and they're experts. And so
in the Saint John's River you can dive legally for
fossils with a five dollars permit from the state. However,
you cannot dive for man made antiquities, anything from the
Civil War. Technically probably old bottles, no eraheads, no Native

(14:00):
American artifacts at all, that would be that would be illegal.
But since fossils are not man made, so far they
have made that illegal. It wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, they're working on that.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
I had to make that illegal as well, But so far,
so good.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Tell us real quick, how how people will find you
on social media and all that kind of stuff, because
you want to throw at some some links for everybody.
Where can we find you?

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yes, I've got several. First is Bobhlee dot com. That's
my website. Now, that's my author website. I was a
game warden for thirty years. I met a lot of
interesting people on both sides of the law and had
some unusual experiences, and so I write about them my
first two nonfiction books, and then my third book just

(14:50):
came out, and I think we'll get to that later,
called Bones and Water. It's a murder thriller that's set
on the Saint John's River, but there's a lot of
fact to support it because I spent thousands of days
and nights patrolling the Saint John's and the tributarias, particularly
the aqua Waha River. Which would be the lower section
of the Aqua Wahhall would be. It would make a

(15:12):
perfect bat drop for a Jurassic Park movie. I mean
not kidding at all. There's nobody lives there. It's at
the northern border of the Acalan National Forest.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Wow, that has to be pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
To like, it's beautiful. And the lower section there's a dam.
So there's a ten mile section from Robin Dam downstream
to its confluence with the Saint John's. But it is, guys,
it is. It's gorgeous. It's it's unbelievable. And then there's
dozens of little side creeks that spider off of it
or break off, and then you know they'll come back

(15:45):
into it. And it's an amazing piece of water, it
really is.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
And real quick. And we're going to talk about your
book Bones and Water later. But his other books are
Bad Guys, Bullets and Boat Chases. Now, if you guys
want some good read, you definitely need to go check
out that one. Another one he has his Backcountry Lawman
True Stories from a Florida game Warden. It's all about
history and culture there in Florida. Man sounds like very

(16:11):
exciting books for somebody.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
To Yeah, the first book is basically a compilation of
my first person stories the guys I worked with, and
there's more humor. But what makes that book That book
went well? And mainly because I write about the most
notorious poacher in Putnam County, which is where I'm based,
or perhaps even all of northeast Florida. His name is

(16:33):
Roger Gunter. It took me five years to get him
to sit for an interview, and when I and he
told me, he says, I'll do it finally, but only
after you've officially retired. And so then I went over
to this house and I spent four days doing recorded
interviews with him. So when I write these stories about
us geez mainly attempting to catch Roger, I changed points

(16:53):
of view, and I tell you how he thinks as
a professional serial poacher, even though he doesn't know we
are there, He always tries to anticipate how we would think.
And I think it makes well. From what I've told
it makes for some really colorful stories, let's put it
that way.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Wow, I would imagine that is pretty incredible. Like what
was that movie about that guy that for he was
a pilot? Catch me if you can or something like that.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
You can with exactly. That's what the whole that's what
the whole game, Warden game is. Anyways, catch me if
you can. I mean, that's that's what always drove me.
I mean, I wanted to catch I mean, you know,
and forcing game official laws isn't the only thing we do.
There's like boating safeties, search and rescues and so on.
But the you know, the meat and potatoes of it,

(17:42):
at least up in this particular area, we do have
a lot of poaching, or at least we did, particularly
on the river. Now not so much on the river anymore.
There's a variety of reasons for that. But when I
began in nineteen seventy seven, like I was telling you
all earlier, it was like the wild West, chasing the
outlaw commercial fishing men. And you know, for a twenty

(18:02):
four year old young man, I mean, I got a
little sporting blood in me, and it was it was great.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Now Saint John's a party river like for uh, you know,
college kids and stuff. Is there much of that going
on there?

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Where? At different spots around springs, around certain sandbars, they'll
stack up and you might have hundreds of boats and
they'll get drunk and they'll they'll set up big slides
out there. And now there's one particular spot I've been
thinking about going and it would be legal to metal
detection because it'd be modern. Is one particular sandbar where

(18:38):
they've been partying for years, and there's got to be
a pile of gold rings down there, because I know
some of them told me they were throughout there two
or three o'clock in the morning. They've got these slides
set up and they're and they're you know, they're diving
off of it and they're drunk, and yes.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
I haven't got lotion on their hands, and the water's
a little cool.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's got to be a ton
of stuff down there. I just haven't bothered to go
out and try it. But now that be legal, because
that would be moderate, right. Yeah, So you know, gold
rings and so forth.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
So Donny and all, come busy you and we'll head
out there well three yeah, Yeah, that'll be fun.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
I've been I've been threatening to do that.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
I just you know, that's on my Yeah, here's a
question that came in for you, boy from Full Metal Digger.
Good to see you, Dave, you guys have problems with
the invasive snakes that far north.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
No, no, not no. The Burmese python is mainly so far.
I'm knocking on wood here that it hasn't come up
this far. It's a little too cold for them, and
I hope it, I hope it remains that way. We
actually had oh gosh, I think we have fourteen fifteen
freezers here this year, so that's that's that's enough to

(19:43):
keep them away. But down in the Everglades they've ruined
the Everglades. They've eaten all the mammals, I mean of them,
and it's horrible. I mean, it's it's bad.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Have you seen some big ones in your career?

Speaker 3 (19:56):
No, all My whole career was up here, so I
never really dealt with the python or anything.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah. Yeah, just those snaky type guys.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
But I mean not to say we I havn't a
I've counter plenty of poisonous snakes, okay, I mean, you know,
moccasins and battlesnakes and and that. That's kind of typical,
all all all in day's work, so to speak. But
nothing nothing, nothing exotic like like the pythons you.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Were thinking of, you know, yeah, uh, we have so
much to talk to you about, Like we could go
all kinds of different you know, your bottle digger, metal detectors,
you're game warden. Like if you don't have stories in you,
I don't know who would you had enough stories to
write a few books, you know what I mean? So sure,
how did you get into We call it treasure hunting,

(20:44):
but you know bottles and.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
That's another that's another way to categorize it. In my
head is kind of just I catch all of relic hunting.
But so about probably nine or ten years ago, my
wife and I went to get Itsburg Battlefield. And after
I left there, let me tell you what this this.
I was hooked on the Civil War. I mean really hooked.
I started going to other battlefields. I've always been a

(21:10):
big reader, but now I'm reading books upon books upon books.
I'm reading about Lee and Grant the Civil War, and
that leads me to taking an interest in the Civil
War in northeast Florida and then local history. And before
you know it, I say to myself, this is four
or five years ago. I got to go out. I
got to get me a metal detector. I got to
I got to find me some of this history, right,
So I did, and that I probably metal detective four

(21:33):
or five months and I found my first bottle, and
then Buddy, that was I kind of transitioned over the bottles.
Then I really like the bottles, and uh, the last
I beg your pardon.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
You still have the bottle I did? I got it.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
You want to see it.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
We want to see it.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
I gotta, I got to see you.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Yeah, let's see. Dave popped in with let's hear a
good poacher stoke. We'll have to get to that.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah. Hey, if you guys are just joining us, We've
got Bob Lee from Relic Rescue on with us and
we're talking poaching and relics.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
And I gotta put my I'm trying to be all
fancy here. I've got these earpod things in my head.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
So I had found for first of all, let me
back up on this bottle.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
So, I was using a nineteen twelve topographic map to
find old home sites. And on this map there are
little black dots the size of this pinhead right here.
You can you can barely see them on the map.
Each one of those dots represented the home site, and
I knew from previous experience that this surveyor was extremely accurate.

(22:47):
So I took that topo map. I went to nineteen
forty three Aerial Maps, which was the oldest aerial shot
in Florida. I tried to find the area there. Then
I went to the modern property praisers map. The short
of it all is I found on the parcel of
the land, there's a ten acre parcel. I happened to
know the property owner. I know a lot of people
in Putnam County. I've been here for thirty years, trust me,

(23:08):
but I hadn't talked to her in decades. But anyway,
I got hold of her. She says, sure, you can
go out there and metal detect, but I want to
go with you. I haven't looked at the property in
forty years. My husband won't go. I said, well, come on,
and so you know what, within thirty minutes we found it.
It was on her property and I was within one
hundred and fifty feet of it. So I felt pretty
good about that. Now we're out in the middle of
the woods, now, okay, and so yeah, so we found

(23:31):
the old home site. It kind of looked like it
had been dug at least the bricks had been dug up,
and I really didn't find a whole lot there. But
I came back later without her, and I got a
hit with my metal detector, just a metal hit. This
is very soft sugary sand, the best digging you can get.
It's super soft. It's not packed. I mean, nobody's run

(23:54):
over it in decades. And I start digging. I come
up with these rusty cans, right, food cans. They're only
it's only like two foot down. And I thought to myself,
you know, I've heard this is where they can find
a bottle. And sure enough, a bottle fell out of
the sidewall right into my hand. And I look at it,
and this is it right here. It's a patent med
and I know it's kind of hard to see, and

(24:16):
it is lettered that says Ackerman and Jackson Placka, Florida.
And so I took a photo of it. It's in
perfect condition. So I took a photo and I sent
it to the local historian, who I knew. He came
back and he said that bottle is eighteen seventy eight
to nineteen oh one. I said, boom, that was it buddy,
I was done. I started. I went full of bore

(24:40):
on bottles after that, and I don't know now, don't
get me wrong, I still medal detect some, but I
don't know. You just have to come up with so
much junk. I mean, there's a you take brass, for instance,
I mean I dig all brass. I mean, because you
don't what happens is it's a brass Civil War belt buckle.
I mean, you never know, you don't profound one. But

(25:00):
this is what I got in my head, right, and
so you got to dig it all up browse belt
buckles and everything. So but I do, and we pretty
much focus on bottles though the last year I haven't
done much because I think I explained early I had
a couple of operations on my left hand. But now
I'm kind of getting to where we can go out
and do a little bit. So that's what That's what

(25:22):
got me hooked, you know. So I found the bottle
dump with the metal detector, and that's not the first
one I found with a metal detector either, because you know,
I had another. I'm trying to remember how it's a
metal pan. It's a particular ash to name, it's a
particular coating. They put on a kind of a porcelain coating.

(25:43):
They put on these old pans and pots. Well, anyone
I was metal detecting, There's this thing is only like
six inches down. I dig it up and some glass
comes up with it, and I said, holy cow, I said,
this this was a mass. This was a massive bottle dump.
And they had it was seven feet down and what
was an old cistern, but probably not the kind of

(26:06):
cisterns you may be thinking about where you're at up there.
But I worked on that for weeks. That was during COVID.
That was my hobby dig and that was on my property.
So I come out of it. I got eighteen acres.
So I come out of the house. I go up
into the north pasture. And that's what I did every
afternoon for six This is all COVID. You can't do
anything right. Yeah, So I'm digging the hell out of it.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
I found found quite a few bottles, and some of
them are some of them are even found some hutches
out of it. I think I found four hundred.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Wow, you're familiar with the hut Yeah, So that's what
almost everyone's after. Any poisons and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
I know that I did not get any poisons out
of that one. We have found a few poisons. I
found one, uh, that's in perfect condition. I'm looking at
it now. That was That was Owen's Glass. That was
nineteen nineteen fifteen, nineteen twenty nine. I don't know. If
you you are familiar with Owens Illinois Glass, you know

(27:03):
they started machine making bottles, and both of those companies
made huge quantity of bottles. But they have on identifier
on the base. It's a boxed O for Owen's Glass
and or the Illinois it's a diamond with a tiny
eye in it. So if you found fine bottles with

(27:23):
either of those two maker's marks in them, it has
to be between nineteen fifteen nineteen twenty nine, because after
nineteen twenty nine, Owen's Glass and Illinois's Glass merge and
then they had different identify er mark and so if
you see that, then you know it has to be
after nineteen twenty after nineteen twenty nine, and so at

(27:43):
least in this area where I'm at, there are a
lot of bottles made, you know, a machine made by
Owen's Illinois Glass. And of course you know before nineteen fifteen,
generally you you're kind of getting into your pre machine.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
You know, you can really go down the rabbit hole
with bottle collecting and stuff.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
I have.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
I've you know, and I'm sure a lot of your
viewer slash listeners know this. But there's a website on
bottles that is it is guys, it is fantastic. I
don't know who put this website together, but the enormous
amount of research and the photographs, I mean, it's awesome.

(28:22):
I've wore it out. I mean, just it's I don't
have it.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Well.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
I might be able to send it to you later
as a link. I think you're I think the guys
out there would be interesting, and I mean it's it's
fantastic for doing research.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
That old West bottles one or something different.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Now that way man, Old West Bottles. That's that's that's
where I buy the probes. Okay, all right, that's different.
I'll I might have a minute here, I can I
can look it up.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Quiend it everyone in the chat. Let me know if
you know the site he's talking about, go ahead and
throw it in there. Uh yeah, are you Bob, are
you familiar with Tom Asham, I am not. He's a
YouTuber bottle digger younger guy. Below the planes used to
be his uh YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
It used to be what's this new? What's the new one? Now?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, I'm not familiar, but he is a forever bottle
digger young guy. So it's always cool to see younger
guys get into it. But he is how many how
many pits has he dug? Sixteen hundred or something? Pits?

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Now? He's the one I watched earlier on your channel? Yes, heay,
I just watched him earlier. He's sixteen hundred.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's lost guys lost.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Well, I haven't done sixteen hundred, but I've dug quite
a few bottle pits though, you know, my buddy and
I have. It's it's kind of pathetic. I'm seventy one
and I got all sorts of joint issues. My buddies
had four knee surgeries. So for digging a hole, he
he is unable to kneel. Okay, so it's pathetic. Two
of us together almost make one human being. But so,

(30:00):
of course, excuse no, I'm serious. I mean you got
to be you know, and so so I'll get down
in the hole and then I'll hand it to him
if I'm filming, and then I'll found him talking about it,
you know. But we've kind of had a little break
there this last year, but I haven't I was watching
a lot of YouTube bottle videos four years or so ago,
but I kind of just really don't have the time

(30:22):
to do a lot of that anymore.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
But a lot of those that I was I was
watching was up in the Northeast. I'm watching some of
those guys dig these privies up. Now, I'd have to
tell you you're going down thirty feet into privy enough.
To me, now, that's really sketchy. I mean sketchy, dangerous,
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
For a cave, I mean, I think twelve foot is sketchy.
So further than that in previo and.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Go down below trust deep. I mean because even then,
some of the ones I've done, I mean I've had
a partial cave and I have my legs covered up
and I'm by myself, and it's like said, you know,
I'm thinking, you know what, that's a lot of weight. Yeah,
and it's all it's a lot more weight than what
you think.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, I think the coolest thing about bottle digging, and
somebody had mentioned that the you know, the local bottles.
I think that's what kind of has a draw I
guess is you know, you're digging a very specific bottle
to your area and to your spot location that I'm
not going to find in Colorado, and you have such

(31:25):
a good history and the rabbit hole that you can
go down for your area. Correct, And Colorado is different,
North Dakota is different, Boston is. I mean, I think
it's just so incredible that yes, we're finding the same
type of bottle, but it's made by this company with
this embossing, for this product, for this pharmacist. I mean,
it just it becomes such a unique item that that

(31:47):
I think that's one of the the draws of bottle digging.
Now Ken and I have done some bottle digging out here.
We would love to do more because just talking with
the guests that come on that that bottle dig the
passion and the I'll be honest, with the knowledge of bottles.
It just blows us away how people can know so
much about a specific bottle. It's it's incredible.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Well, you know, you study it, but I will reiterate
that website that I'm talking about is it's beyond fabulous,
you know. I mean, there's another one out there for
shotgun shells that is just incredible. I mean because you
find these old shotgun shells, so to me, that kind

(32:31):
of I mean, they're not worth anything, right, I mean,
you find a lot of them, but it dates it,
and on a shotgun shell, it's a very narrow production
production date range, where say on a rifle shell it
could be thirty forty years, but on a shotgun shell
it might be eighteen ninety eight to nineteen oh two.
A bingo, I'm in the right time here. If I

(32:54):
find any bottles, hopefully they're going to be pre machine
which is what my buddy and are we kind of
shoot for. I mean not to say there aren't some
great bottles in a machine made there are. I'm in
there fabulous, you know, but that's kind of what we.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
I'm on that headstamp site all the time. It's called
Cartridge Corner.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
That's it, Cartridge corner, right, I think it's Cartridge hyphen corner.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
There.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
That guy is he's excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Prode's a great service because I don't know how many
times you've been on his his site looking at some
old shot you think.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
I think I even think his site will help you
date the brass shot on shelves which were which came
about in mid and nineteen eighties. I found a couple.
They're in nineteen eighteen eighty four, eighteen eighty five according
to the head stamp on it. So yeah, so then
you know, obviously before that you're much older than you're

(33:47):
getting in the muzzle leaders with you know, porn shot.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
In the battle. There used to be a guy on
the forums that that that gave a lot of that
shotun headstamp information. His name was Turtlefoot, and he.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Used to do now I've heard it. I've heard of
him before.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, he's of information. Then he just kind of disappeared, yeah,
and didn't didn't do it anymore.

Speaker 3 (34:07):
But I just think it helps. It just help. It's
a it's kind of a confidence builder to me, right,
I mean, you're here, so okay, well maybe I'm going
to find a coin in that date range. I mean,
you know, but.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, well it just reaffirms your research or you know
you're in the right spot, you know exactly. Now, narrow
it down, go a little bit slower. If you're metal
attecting of course. Uh, and it really start to kind
of dig and pinpoint everything at that point.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Right. But but when we're here, I mean we we do.
Our town is Placca, which is a population of ten thousand,
so it if we're in town, and if you can
find a site that hasn't been metal detected, which is
almost impossible, but if you can find one, you'll you'll
come up with some coins. I did one house that

(34:58):
was a virgin house that had never been detected, and
I did. I came up with quite a few coins.
But once you get out into the country, boy, you
don't you don't. We we don't. We don't typically find
many coins around an old home side just dumb. There's
one I pounded it. It was an eighteen eighties what
we call a grove house, and it burnt down and

(35:20):
there's bricks and I found an eighteen sixty four Indian
headpenny and nineteen forty seven wheat penny and I bore
it out. Now, I did find some other interesting relics
to go along with that, but that as far as
coins go, that that was it.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Why do you think do you think because it was
hit or if they dropped so I think.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
I think that they bartered a lot. I don't necessarily
think they have a lot of coins. I really did.
Here in the South it was poor, you know, particularly
after the Civil War. I mean, it was rough going.
And that's that's what I'm kind of thinking. And the
people in town, a lot of the homes were doing
in town. They are more prosperous, they're more wealthy, they
were shop owners. And you know, we know the history,

(36:04):
we know the history of all these different families. And
so once we get permission, if you can get permission,
you know, and.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Need to know somebody that knows somebody that know somebody.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Well, well, my buddy I kind of looked into him.
He happens to live in the North Historic district of Placque.
There's a South historic and a North historic district. The
older homes well, now some of them are pre Civil War,
but most of them in eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties. Well,
he goes out and he walks his dogs there every evening,

(36:37):
and he's talking to people, shaking hands every evening and so,
and of course I still know a lot of people
in town. And between the two of us, we've hit
a lot of the old homes there, and one of
them in particular was the low Hellborn House. And this
thing was a gold mine I have. I must have
four or five youtubes on that one, and we we

(36:59):
actually did a we did one YouTube, just a tour
of the house. The owner gave us permission to do that.
But but anyway, the owner of the house happened to
be a guy who had just come out and painted
the house my wife and I own. He was our painter,
and so when I ran into him, oh yeah, Bob,

(37:20):
you can come out and dig in my backyard. It's
already been mel detected three or four times, but you
dig it happened to Doug. Now, we didn't get much
MEL detecting, just a couple of coins, but boy, oh boy,
we got in that back there's a carriage house behind
the main house. The carriage house is still there, guys.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
And there was a huge pit right behind the carriage house,
and then every few feet there's another dump, and there's
another dump, and there's another dump. We worked that thing
for a year. We dug our butts off, and it
was it was pretty good. That treated us real good.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
That's what I like. About your YouTube channels. Do you
do all kinds of different things, like you take us
to old Air is like that Old City Jail video
you had that that home you're talking about is just
beautiful Queen Anne home.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
I mean, yeah, that's it. That's the Low Pilburn, the Low.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, the Low Pilburn's home. Man, that's a great video
because it's absolutely beautiful home.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
And I also try to mimic I don't know if
you picked up on it, the horses clopping at the
very beginning of the video, and I have the camera
swing because we're coming up to the carriage steps.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
There's only two homes in Placa that still have the
carriage steps. And for those of you don't know what
I'm talking about, they would the servants would pull up
at the carriage and the owners would get out, they
go up the carriage steps and take their you know,
the follow their walk on into the house. The servants
would return to the back of the house into the
carriage house and you know, unhooked the animals and and

(38:47):
and everything like that. So but I will I will
share with you there's something I just found out about
and I'm gonna do this I'm gonna put this up
as a YouTube and probably a probably a TikTok uh.
During the Civil War, there were fifty five hundred Union
troops that occupied Palaca for six weeks. Wow. And during

(39:08):
the course of that six weeks, a Union soldier stole
a Bible from an Episcopal church here. Okay, So fifty
years later, the Bible is returned to the church with
a note. Now that's I think there's a story there,
and I'm going to film it. I'm getting up with
this story for the church Friday morning, and I'm going

(39:30):
to film that. I can't help but do it. I'm
just because. And she says, there's a there's a note,
and the Bible is there. She took the Bible out
of the safe. She's got it ready for me, So
I just forget. It'll be a short one, but I'm
that that's something I've got going. I'm coming up.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
That's amazing. But I can't wait for that.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Yeah, I think it's you know, it's different, it's interesting,
it's it's serious history, I mean.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
One hundred and you're there to touch it and to
hear the story, you know what I mean that you
can pass along to all of us watching your YouTube
channel amazing.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Well, I'm programmed coordinator for the local historical society in
a in a town south of me, and so i'm
you know, I'm all in. So some of those videos
are kind of coordinated with them to try to help
that historical society out a little bit and tell the
story of it's in Crescent City.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
And we tell everyone all the time, you got to
get involved with your local historical society. I'm sure your
involvement with him Bob has led to some interesting contacts
with history and learning about history, but possible you know,
some good contexts too out there too, Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
Doing a little digging as a result of those contacts.
So that's always a possibility too. Although that's all that's
kind of in the back of my mind. But if it,
if it happens, it happens. But I just enjoy it.
I'm I do enjoy the old homes. I don't really
know much technically about them, so I'm kind of winging
it a little bit. You know, I'm not an expert

(41:01):
in an old house architecture, but I've got you know,
I try to study on it before I do YouTube
on a little bits.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
We interviewed this guy, Brass Medic on YouTube and he's
a big, huge bottle digger and he dug in San
Francisco area, so on the West coast, and he said, Uh,
what's cool about that is we talked about finding local
bottles and that's all cool. But he find because people
would bring on stuff there as they pushed west, they
would bring bottles from wherever they were at, bottles from

(41:30):
all across the United States. And yeah, it's all exciting
because that was a big migration point.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Well, he must have a heck of a bottle.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Do Yeah, he's crazy.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Oh, he's he's pretty crazy like what he's gotten into
with bottles and these old bottle like legends. Because in
the in the we'll call it the hobby of bottle digging.
There are legends out there right there. Oh yeah, yeah,
out of dug bottles forever. And he's met a bunch
of them out there digging bottles himself in San Francisco.
We'll go, I guess one guy walked up and he

(42:01):
turned out to be this big legend guy.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
You know what, I what I find interesting out there
in the West. It's so dry, there's no you know,
very very little rain compared to Florida with this successive humidity.
Most of the time. I do remember seeing some youtubes
they get these bottles, they're just they've been laying out there.
I mean the labels are still on them, guys, the

(42:26):
labels are still on them.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
That just they're baked.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean here in Florida, we've only my
buddy and I have only dug one site where we
came up with some nine olive oils from Bordeaux, France
that still had the label wow and uh and and
they as soon as you put it in the air,
it starts flaking. But there's some things you can do

(42:52):
to keep that from happening. So one of them is
I had to do some research was to take some
class A wrap, get it up around the bottle, take
a rubber band and wrap it around the neck. You
can clean the inside, then take it off, kind of
knock the dirt off the as best you can, or
brush it off that level and spray it. There's a

(43:12):
little glue you can buy it Walmart for hobby glue.
It comes in the spray and I do I use
painters tape around. You got to do this real quick
and spray it. You know, it works pretty darn good.
And then after you after you spray it with the glue,
you take the painters tape away. Now you very carefully
clean the as best you can the exetery of the bottle.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Right sure, sure, So you usually clean your bottles, Bob.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
As best I can. Some of them use yeah, some
some of them the glass is bad, is not good glass.
And so I mean you obviously you know you you
put it. A lot of the professionals put them in
tumblers with copper shavings and they'll tumble the bottle. And
I don't have a tumble. I just do the best
I can, and some of them turn out really nice

(44:00):
and some of them don't. But you know, like the
bottle I just showed you now, it is kind of
the glasses the well right here, it's kind of got
a little bit of the haze on it that's in
the glass. You're not going to get that that at
that hour on the inside, I don't think. But for
the most part though, it's it's in really good shape. So,

(44:24):
like I said, some of them clean up well, and
some of them, like you know, if you have an
old ale, I like black glass. It doesn't really matter
because you can't you can't see through the glass anyway,
you know, it's it. Yeah, so that kind of relieves
you from that stress of you think you've got to clean.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
And I know some people use mradic acid treatment and
all kinds of different stuff to try to clean their bottle.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
I tried. I've tried different things, but I've tried just
about everything. But I mean, it's it's it's either gonna
get cleaner, it's not. Of course, I got brushes, you know.
And there's one particular brush I bought that worked out
really good. I should have had it with me. I don't.
But it's got a it's it's it's got a curve
to it, and and so and I guess the brush

(45:12):
and the hell I gotta do it. It's about it's
about that wide right when you put it in there.
You can get up against the sides of the inn
really easy with it. And uh, I like it. It's
only like it was like eleven bucks.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Like a nylon brush or something like that.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah. Yeah, but it had a curve to it that.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
We had some comments coming in. Let me see, uh
what do we say here? Snap snapping Scabbage said, I
just started digging bottles about six months ago, and he's
completely hooked there.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
We know where he's at.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, let's know, Snap, I don't know, but his his
his icon right there is little bottles. He's got a
real deal, very cool.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
He's doing pretty well already.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Six he's he's doing really well. Yeah. Yeah, because the
hunches that most all well, all bottle collectors want to hutch,
you know, you go back to the local. The bottles
that I'm looking at, I'm looking at hutches now, but
they're made in Placca, and I don't have any true
cokes there. These were carbonating waters. But it's got the

(46:23):
logo and the slug plate on the side. Uh, the
same Placa bottle works and uh and I think down
toward the base of does say co Cola bottling company.
But they weren't. They weren't filled, the contents weren't coke. Okay,
although the first cokes were bottled in a hutch, I
think from I don't have it with me, I'm guessing

(46:45):
now eighteen ninety eight, nineteen oh two. Then it went
to a straight side, and then nineteen fifteen you went
to the hobble skirt for your for your coke that
everybody's so familiar with, right.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
It's so interesting, gosh, all that stuff. I love the
history how it changes, and like some something like Mason
jars or bull jars, you know, based on the curl
or the or of the bee and things like that,
you can date it, you know, very specifically. I just
think it's absolutely amazing how we can figure that stuff out.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
And that's and that's on the ball.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:13):
On the Mason jars, you are absolutely correct. You can
date it by the script. You can do the same thing. Uh,
with Clorox bottles too. I'm not mistaken. I'm not too
big into I found a lot of Clorox bottles, but
I mean they take up. They're big, some of them
are big, and they just take up. I've only got

(47:34):
limited space from the bottles, right, So you got to
you gotta have a break point somewhere. But I know,
I know some people do collect them, so.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, yeah, Dave full Metaldigger said, for some reason he's
fascinated with the ginger beer bottles. They're tan ceramic bottle
with many different embossing.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
No, yeah, a ginger beer that's tan ceramic, Okay.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
It's gonna be almost like the uh uh what those
are called?

Speaker 3 (48:03):
You mean like a crop? Is he talking about rock?

Speaker 2 (48:06):
I was thinking, yeah, the Kroc leaders.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, hold on, I'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Oh oh, collection in four of them, I know, full
metal diggers. But hang on, buddy, here we go.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Don't break them, Bob, heard you crash in the background. There,
don't be breaking them.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
Had a lamp fall over there.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
But oay, guys, all right, don't don't drop those bottles.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Man, Yeah, we don't care about the lamp. You saved
the bottle, right. Oh look at that.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Oh yeah, is that what he's talking about, Dave.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Let's know, is that what you're talking about?

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Yeah, so we call it kind of a crop beer. Now,
I did not find this. My buddy gave it to me.
He comes from New York, and uh he did. He
when he was a child, he and his mother used
to go through historic homes before they demolished them, and
they came up all sorts of crocs. And so this
is from his collection that he gave to me. So,

(49:05):
although I have seen one just like this that was
found along Crescent Lake, which is not too far from me.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Is that in boss Bobb or is this mooth.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
No, there is no lettering on it at all. So
it's just the two different.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Condition.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
It's a perfect condition. And I think you were talking
eighteen fifties maybe, I mean, I'm not sure, but.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Geez, when you're digging bottles, like like when you find
an embossed bottle, is that like, oh yeah, Like is
that the high highlight of a dig?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
You know, you reach down there in that hole and
you start touching that bottle and you're digging in it,
and you're feeling it, and you're going under roots and
and you can feel that, you can feel that lettering
with your thumb, and that's like a portal in time.
You're touching history there, right, because nobody's touched that bottle,
this first thrown in there, and so it's it's just cool.
And then you pull it out and you look at it.

(50:02):
And Chris is the guy I dig with, and so
we between the two of us were debating, and I'm
pulling out my phone and I'm googling the Son of
a Gun and I'm trying to figure out, you know,
if we don't know the history of the bottle exactly
what it is, right, So.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
I bet it the school one is finding it.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
The research part.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
I bet it's cool when you don't immediately recognize a bottle,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little
take off or jump off from that other guy that
I was listening to, Tom I think was it, and
the one who dug sixteen hundred.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Pits, Yeah, Tom, tom Asham, Yeah yeah, and so he.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Was he was talking about getting kicked off a piece
of property. So so Chris and I we get permission
to dig a home site that was probably nineteen hundreds
plus and minus. And so the owner comes out and
it's uh, and she says, I don't really care about bottles. Well,

(51:04):
we started probing. We we always go into the backyard.
We start with uh. We go to the back of
the lot, probe there around the edges, and then we
work our way into the center up behind the house
right because sometimes as well, that's how we do it.
So we find this great bottle dump and we're pulling

(51:24):
out really nice stuff and she's there with their phone
googling every bottle. This is worth seventy dollars. She tells us.
We wait a minute, I've never sold a bottle yet,
neither is Chris. That's our stick, right. We we tell
the owner we're not in it for the money. We
only want one bottle that we don't have, and the
rest of them we give away. We'll get way to

(51:45):
the owner and then she's we pull out another bottle
and well, we tell her we're going to give her something. Now,
this is work for old guys, right, because we're sawing
to roosts. We got the saws all there, we're doing
the whole deal, and so we were giving us their bottles.
And then the second day we're there and we're in
the more bottle dumps and one of the things we

(52:07):
found we had never found before was this one right here.
And so this is a snuff This is this is
a snuff bottle. It still has still has the closure mechanism,
and I know it's very hard to see, wow, but
it's double patent dates on the glass lid, right, a

(52:29):
patent date for the closure mechanism, a patent date for
the bottle. We found five of these, I think two
of them were complete. It's the only place. Now, this
is a lot of snuff that went in that bottle, right,
I can't imagine somebody using that much.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
But it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
But that's an example. One of the bottles we pulled out,
and we pulled and we pulled some nice sodas out
because typically I don't know why, but we don't find
a lot of soda bottles. And the third day we
go there and she says, you need to stop digging.
She thought we were making a mint off of her

(53:04):
property because she keeps good right. It was. It was crazy.
But when at the time she told us to stop,
We're in the middle of the backyard and I just
hit a bottle with the tip of my probe. I
just touched it. It's only like eight inches down. She says,
you need to stop. We'll take over. I'm having my
sister come in anyway, listen, just you don't we don't

(53:25):
get excited about it. That's human nature, and you just
go on, you know. And I saw her the other
day in the supermarket and I talked nice to her
and it was fine, and yeah, there's no sense getting
excited about it. You just there's another there's always another
dumb And.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
So after you guys left, we didn't find nothing.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
I doubt that she ever dug it.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I really right. A lot of people would just rather
know that it's there on their property than necessarily it'd
be dugout or somebody else find it.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
She she was very into that that we were stealing
things from her.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
Sure, yeah, you know, and that.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
And because we met, as you all have all sorts
of personality types. When you walk up there and you
start talking to them, and I just you know, I've
talked to so many people. I was in law enforcement,
so I just kind of improvised, and you go up there,
try to get a read on them, and and on
the metal detecting, we'll show you what we find. But

(54:25):
on these bottles, now, no, no, no, no, no, that's
a little bit of work. We tell them, well, we
by this time, we've got a lot of the bottles
that can be found in Pulaca, so we're looking for
the unusual one. We'll tell them we want to keep
that we have. We find one, we have already found.
It's yours and so.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
And so.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
A good example of that is a very nice lady.
We dug a carriage house that was some distance away,
interestingly from the main house, which is eighteen seventies, and
there were a lot of good bottles. Jumps in the backyard,
and she'd come out and check on us, and and
every day we'd give her some bottles. And so finally

(55:07):
we gave her and you have the photograph of one
of these. It's that cit tren colored bottle I sent you.
It's a Saxon. It's a saxlone, her spring water and
when you put it up to the sun, it's gorgeous.
That has a cit tren color to it. Eighteen nineties
from Buddha pest hungry. And so we cleaned. We cleaned
the bottles for her too, before you know, before we

(55:28):
give her to them. And so I went up to
her door one day and I said, here, this is
what we got. You know, we want to give it
to you. And I gave her the history and the bottle,
and she looked at me. She said, my family is
from Buddha pest.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Oh my god, it was.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
She was just gobsmack and she says, I will put
this up on display. And we gave her some other
really nice bottles.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
So love that.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
If the owner will just be patient with us, yeah,
we're going to end up with a bottle collection. But
I mean, you're digging, and this is work. I mean,
the metal detecting, you know, that's a lot easier, but
the bottle digging, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
That's I don't get that, Bob. How do you convince
a landowner to let you dig a pivy? You know,
we asked Tom the same thing, like what how do
you go about doing that?

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Like, but we go up there and we you know,
we we you kind of soft pedal. We're into history
and some of the stuff. You know, my buddy's on
the historical board in Palaca, and so when you tell
somebody that, it kind of makes him like he's an
historian and he's gonna protect things. And I'm programmed coordinated

(56:40):
from my historical society. And yeah. Well so one house
we went up to and I told the lady that,
oh my gosh, I love history, and she starts bringing
out these books and I actually got her to come
down to some of our presentations that were done at
our historical society, right, you know, so that out really

(57:00):
well for us. But I mean we just kind of
soft pedal it explain what we're doing. We're gonna cover
up the holes. Now if they've got a really nice
it makes me nervous at the front yard is a
really nice lawn, okay, And you're not gonna be digging
big holes in that. That ain't happening. You might dig
like you were talking about, with a little plug. And

(57:20):
then you've got your towel there or a little tarp
and you're gonna take it out and you're gonna put
it back. And I've seen it, you know, I get
how to do all of that. But a lot of
times in Placa, the backyard is pretty rank. It's not
good ground for I don't know why. It just doesn't
grow grass well. So it's like spotty and kind of weedy.

(57:42):
They mow it and and so they're not they're not
very protective of it. I want to add one more
thing I found out about getting permissions. If that home
is fenced in with a gate, you are probably not
gonna get permissions to one hundred percent. There's no gate

(58:03):
and there's no fence. There's a psychological thing. I'm telling you, guys,
that's psychological. This home owner, if they got their property
fenced in, they they're more protective of it, they really.
But if that if it's open to the street, you
stand a much greater chance of success. At least that's good.

(58:23):
That's been our experience.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
They wanted to ask you real quick, what was the
color of that bottle? Was it a til one?

Speaker 3 (58:30):
The the one that the Saxon spring water citri?

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (58:35):
That was citrine? If it was kind of okay, So
it's kind of a yellowish green. And I think I
I've got it. I've held it up to the sun. Okay,
I don't know if you I think I sent it
to you. I think I did. There. That's it right there,
and so you can see it's the color is beautiful.
And I really like that cit trine. And that's a

(58:59):
that's a perfect boy. I mean, if you're into the
money end of day, I think they sell for around
forty but that would be eighteen nineties. And it's a
it's a spring water from Buddha. Pest Hungary. I don't
really understand. I don't understand why they're shipping spring waters
or carbonated waters over from Europe. I don't. I don't

(59:23):
understand that. I don't. Why don't you just drink water
out of the well? Maybe I'm too simple a person.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Practically. Ken asked the question a while back when you
were showing that snuff bottle. Do you know what year
that that snuff jar is?

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Yeah, So while the patent date on it is uh,
it's old, but that's not one patent date is eighteen
seventy six. The other patent dates eighteen seventy two. I
think it's around eighteen nineties on that particular bottle.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
I think some of in the chats that it may
have been from a store or a merchant. So they
had it filled with the snuff and then they would
you know what I mean, they would to me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
They wouldn't sell the whole bottle. Well, that's interesting. I
had not thought about that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, because you found numerous ones around.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
We found two complete, three that were broken instant only.
The only place that we found that and we're talking
about I'm sorry, I'm gonna take my ears off. I'm
gonna turn them back around trying to knock over the
lamp again.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Tony, your new studio looks like that sticker. You got
a big sticker on your wall.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
I didn't have to I didn't have to go far
for this one. Now, I sent you guys a photo
of a young girl on her belly digging in a pit.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Can you put that one up that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
I didn't transfer that one? Give me a s.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
That's okay, it doesn't matter, all right. So here's a
here's a torpedo.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Wow, look at that thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Okay, so some of them are lettered. Now I know
some of them are lettered. I don't possess any of
the other letter but I do know they come lettered
or slick. Now, this is a carbonated water from London, England.
This particular hole that we were digging with that young girl,
that was her. She goes to my wife's church and
so this is our Christmas present. We dug the church

(01:01:21):
grounds which was pre Civil war, and I had found
this pit. It was pure bottles. Eighty percent of them
are whole, and we got some incredible We found six
of these intact carbonated waters London, England. Now there it
is right there, so you can see one of the

(01:01:41):
carbonated water is about right to the right of that
hand right there. Yeah, up higher.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Now right there behind the hutch. Oh, there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
That's not a hutch. That's a patent med that that's
a beautiful okay, right, so, and that's a beautiful patent
med wish I had a closer up photograph of Low, Massachusetts.
It's perfect condition, nicely embossed. She's got some black glass there.
There's one bottle that might be poddled. I think it's

(01:02:13):
that that black glass there. Now, some of your viewers
might know more. I think that's been polished in a
either fire polished or maybe polished in a turn mold.
I can't I can't quite remember. She's got some champagnes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Gosh up there to that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Yeah, this one up here.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
I had another picture of her with all the bottles,
but I can't show her face, guys, so because she
was twelve at the time, So I don't just don't
want to go.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
That's not a very big pit, no, So.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Okay, So this thing's about a foot and a half
wide and went down about three feet and and so
what happened? And the church is right behind her. You
can't see it. I went in there a few days
before to save time, and I found this hole and

(01:03:04):
I did a little test dig going down to the
top of it, and what I was getting out and
told me I was in the right date range, right
by eighteen eighties seventies. So we came back and she
dug the whole thing by herself, and she told me
later that's the best Christmas present I ever had. But
she ended up with a whole bottle collection out of that.
And the other half of the day we metal detected

(01:03:24):
and we found a few coins, but none of them.
We're super old, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
So, but the cool that she got into it, you
know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Yeah, Yeah, she's all about it. And one of the
things we're going to do is go under not the
church itself, but we're going to go under the office,
which is where the original church was. The original church
was built before the Civil War, so I get my
hand fell a little better. We're going to crawl underneath
there with a light and some probs. We're going to

(01:03:54):
see if we can find some bottles just beneath the
surface or anything like that. Just here, Rent, Yeah, yeah, geez.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
So I've never seen a torpedo bottle before. I think
it's the first time I've ever ever.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
And they also have round bottoms, and those are those
are a lot of those are ginger Rales from Dublin,
I think, yeah, and some of those coming boss. We
found a few of those, but not not too many. Now,

(01:04:28):
these were stored sideways the store them, so they stored
they stored them sideways to keep the court deam so
the carbonation wouldn't fizz out, right, and so, and you
can see the lip is really really crude. You can
see how uneven it is and everything. I mean, it's

(01:04:48):
just Yeah, that's a cool bottle, man, you gotta you
gotta like it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
That's a cool bottle. We uh yeah, I have a
contract here that he found some bottles. One time. I
told the story a couple of times and I showed
an interest in it. So now every time he goes
on a new job site, he's sending me pictures. Ken,
is this worth anything? You know, most people that are

(01:05:13):
lay people, right that aren't in the hobby, that's usually
all they want to know about. How much is that worth?

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Yeah, they wonder how much it's worth. And unfortunately, you know,
if you flip it over and look at the base,
well you know it's this machine made and it's kind
of modern and yeah. Yeah, so while we're at it,
and before we forget it, I have to show you
my most favorite bottle is that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Okay, yeah, absolutely, here it is, guys.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
This is this is the bomb right here?

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
What is that that's the one I was asking about.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
Yes, this is a cathedral, all right, This is a
cathedral pickle and that check it out. Now for those
who know what I'm familiar. This is an this what's
an iron puddel. When I cleaned it, I shouldn't have
cleaned the The iron came off when I hit it

(01:06:03):
with a solution of fifty percent clorox fixty percent of water.
But this was all rusty here. So you can see
the poddle mark, which means generally you're talking Civil War
or older. Because after the end of the Civil War
they went to a different, different method that didn't require
a punty rod, which makes the poddle mark or this

(01:06:26):
divot in the model in the bottle. And there's different
kinds of a pottle marks, right, So this was it's
called a cathedral. This is the and if you look
at the lip, it is perfect. There's not a flea
bite in it. Nothing. Soon when I found this bottle,
I found it on the home side of a Civil
War veteran on the bank of the Saint John's had

(01:06:49):
a big storm come through and a piece that was
sticking out. And so this is the only bottle I've
ever put up on the antique bottle form, never been
there before, took the photographs I had. Well, there you go,
that's it right there. You can see it looks a
lot better there. I did leave some dirt on the inside,
just to show that it was a Doug bottle. I
could get all that dirt out and I put it

(01:07:12):
up there. And these are the pros. These are the
guys that go to the big auction houses in New
York to bed on bottles. And there was one guy
that had been collecting cathedral pickles since eight see nineteen
seventy five. He wanted to buy it from me immediately,
and another guy told me that if I put it
at one of the big auction houses, it would fetch

(01:07:33):
at least two grand because the mold is very rare,
and they got it very technical about it. The one guy,
he said, this is a rare mold, and so it's
called a cathedral pickle, But that doesn't mean it had pickles.
It could have had brandy cherries, it could have had
spice lobster, something really much more exotic than your common pickle.

(01:08:00):
It is. It's a fantastic bottle. And I found it
on the home side of the Civil War veterans. His
name was John blan Hazel. He was a private and
a scout who rode with Confederate Captain JJ Dickinson. Now
I'm sure probably none of your listeners are familiar with him,
but he is the most consequential rebel to have thought

(01:08:23):
in Florida. He was in over probably thirty five to
forty skirmishes and small battles, never lost, probably only lost
three of his men. I mean he was wicked. I
mean he was hell on wheels. And so anyway, this guy,
John blan Hazel, like I said, was a private scout

(01:08:44):
who rode with him and my buddy and I what
remains of his estate. Originally it was four hundred acres,
but the people who own it gave us permission. We've
been out there numerous times and looking and poking around.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
I'm wondering if I got friends and buddies that dig
out there at digging in Virginia, and they go out
there by Richmond and Culpepper and they do these digs
out there, and I know they're always looking for pickle jars,
but I don't know if it's the cathedral pickle jars
they're looking for those out during the winter camps and stuff,
or are they just too big?

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
This is a pretty exotic bottle. I think that John
Bland Hazel actually has some money. He you know, after
the Civil War, they built a kasha, a large frames,
two story house in eighteen seventy and it was there
until nineteen eighty and when it burnt down in the fire.

(01:09:41):
I can't help but think he was a cattleman. I
can't one way or the other. I think he has
some money. And I think you had steamers or paddle
wheelers came up here and they offloaded and I don't know,
I don't know, but that's a one off. I've never
found anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
I'm medic found the bro beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
I think they come in different shades, right, They come
in different shades, I think, and different types of green.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
There's a there is a museum. I've got the photograph
somewhere where they when they display their cathedral pickles. It's
one bottle at a time, set off by itself with
a light underneath it. There is an amber cathedral pickle
that sold that auction, and amber one in New York
and it fetched forty hundreds now, but that was amber,

(01:10:34):
which I gather probably rare. It is a much rare color.
You Now, I don't know what kind of mold that
was either, but I'm just you know, I'm just I'm
just sharing that just for grins. There you go. There's
some others. I was just looking at it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Yeah, I got pulled this up and saw the blues
and the greens, different sizes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
They're gorgeous bottles.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Yeah, yeah, they're absolutely amazing. I've never even heard of them,
but I love how I mean cathedral, right, I mean
you've got that. Yeah, yeah, it's it's absolutely gorgeous.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
It's because of some of the designs on it on
the side.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
M h.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
It's about it's about eleven and a half inches high.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
So wow, yeah, you got a great one.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
I was just looking it up online and I could
tell I could go right down the rabbit hole if
I keep looking at you know, that's I'm already there.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
So I've never put another bottle yet up in the
antique bottle for him, you know, I mean, because those guys,
the kind of bottles.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
They put up, I mean, you know, mean business.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Yeah, yeah, they're serious. There's yeah, they're they're very serious.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
They are. Yeah, jeez, that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Well, hey, let's uh, why don't you why don't you
tell us a little bit about bones and water? So
we've talked a lot about bottle digging, and uh, tell
us a little bit about bones and water first? What
is it? Because if people are joining us late, they
don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
Sure. So I'm gonna author my first two books for
back Country law Man and Bad Guys Bullets and Boat Chases.
They are non fiction, and my first book is a
compilation of my stories as a former game warden. Trust me,
I had some unusual experiences. And the Bad Guys, Bulls
and Boat Chases covers all the peninsular Florida. Is quite dramatic.

(01:12:18):
I basically I am a reporter here I've done. I
did three years of research for the seventeen stories I
write about in that book. A lot of them are there.
It is quite dramatic, and a lot of them. I
came to know these officers throughout the course of my career,
and so they felt comfortable in talking to me. And
of course I did a lot of research. And if

(01:12:40):
it was a gunfight, for instance, I will pull the
arrest summaries, or if it's a plane crash like Flight
four A one. I looked at the NTSB crash wreckers.
I actually interviewed a stewardess and a passenger that survived
the crash a flight for A one. And that's the
first chapter in Bad Guys, Bullets and Boat Chases.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
And so the book I worked on for over three years.
It is a novel that's what I call a murder
thriller and maybe suspense action adventure takes place. It's a
river story. Now, for your listeners who are familiar with CJ. Box. CJ.
Box is an immensely popular author out of Wyoming. He writes, Okay,

(01:13:21):
you're familiar, right, and he's got Netflix and Amazon. He
sold millions and millions of books. So this is my
take on a Southern iteration of kind of what he does.
Although this is this is mainly a river story, and
I wanted to make it that way because it makes
it different. And in the beginning, theme is that there's

(01:13:45):
a manatee that has to be recovered by Jay Hawkins.
He is our protagonist, the Florida game warden, and this
is a typical manatee recovery. All manatees have to be recovered.
It turned over Toreene mammibiologists for a nee cropcy. Anyway,
when he comes up to the mint manatee, which has
been dead for like seven or eight days. This is
my own personal experience. I'm just you know, putting it

(01:14:06):
in here, he finds out that it hasn't been killed
by watercraft. Instead the rib bones have been cut out,
and so this begins one layer of conflict. Because the
ribs on a manatee are pure ivory, They're known as
bone ivory, not elephant ivory, which grows through accretion. So
that begins one part of the story, and it evolves
from there. But it's all laid on the backdrop of

(01:14:31):
these waters that I am intimately familiar with. I spent,
like I said earlier, thousands of days and nights patrolling them.
I ride about the commercial fish and industry too. I
have some fictional fish camps there that I create from
all the working fish camps I used to visit. I
used to have thirty three in my area. There aren't
very many now, but there's a history and culture to

(01:14:54):
a fish camp, and so there's a commonality to it.
So I try to create that in one particular fish
camp I write about, but there is there's a lot
of action for the last half of that book, and
I actually, for one there were several chapters involved a
helicopter and one of our guys whose name was Lance Hand.
He flew for US the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission,

(01:15:18):
but he was also a decorated Vietnam gunfighter helicopter pilot,
so I went to him to make sure I had
everything right about how a helicopter flies and so forth.
So even though it's fiction, I try to do my
homework to get the facts right. And see, listen, ce
Jay Box does the same thing. Okay, he's telling these

(01:15:40):
environmental stories, he's interviewing game wardens. I mean, he's getting
his fact right before he writes his fictional stories about
Joe Pickett, and it just I think it just makes
it that much more so all in my pitch with this.
About a week ago, I got an email from the
Tampa Bay History Historic Ampa Bay Historical Society book Club.

(01:16:03):
They have picked Bones and Water to be their book
of the month.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
May Okay, that's miles.

Speaker 3 (01:16:09):
They are two hundred miles from me, so it's curious
that Okay, this is an historical society book club. But
yet they chose Bones and Water. Now they know me
from my previous books, right, But still I think there's
a I think they see enough fact in history and
culture of this river that it kind of makes it
seem real, right, And I think that's every fiction author strives.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Yes, And if you look at the reviews so far
as four point nine out of five, so I'm happy
about that. Not I mean that can change. But I'm
just saying, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
We've got some excited people in the chat. Told them
we're going to do a giveaway on that book. We're
going to give it away to somebody listening tonight and
lots of positive you know, some Metal Shark sounds like
a fun read. Yeah, I mean, it's uh, gots got
some some fans out there. So what we're gonna do
is listen.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
I was I was gonna say, guys, I mean, you
figure out who it is, you let me know, get
me the address, I'll sign it and and all.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
No, that's nice autograph copy. You're you're yeah, you got it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
You know, you just can't mail my book.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
You gotta mail that book in that cathedral pickle bottle. No, no,
Ken says that Bob. Bob didn't say that. No, No,
I thought I'm in love with that. That's one of
the I bet you love with that bottle.

Speaker 3 (01:17:36):
I mean it was. It was. Listen, guys, it's a
one off and.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
It was just like beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Yeah, I mean it's it would be like finding that
pot of gold.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Right, like the clouds opened up and they dropped that
right in your hand. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Yeah, kinda neither, Tony.

Speaker 1 (01:17:52):
Let's do that, man, Let's get that giveaway going.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Yeah, and let's uh, let's keep it to the lower
forty eight so we can kind to hang a little
bit on shipping there. But uh, if you guys are
interested in entering the giveaway for the book, why don't
you go ahead and in the chat right now, type
in hashtag bones, bones and water. Just put in hashtag bones.

(01:18:15):
We'll start collecting some entries and then we'll we'll run
the drawing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Yep, if you're listening, you're lurking, pop on in the
chat and just type in hashtag bones all one word,
no spaces. You can enter multiple times, but the picker
we use will eliminate.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Duplicates, so I'm gonna throw hashtag bones in here for myself.
Hold on, I didn't know it was gonna be autographed.
I mean, well sure, sure, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Yeah, we did get request. As a matter of fact,
I know we haven't talking about metal de techting too much,
but it's been a lot of shows.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
Right, Well, wait a minute, I got oh, no, no, no,
I got something metal detecting.

Speaker 1 (01:18:52):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that. Let's get through this
tubeway and then we'll get to that, and then.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
We want to listen. We don't want to forget this
because I need some help on this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
Yeah, that's you talked about it. We have it on
our list. Yeah, hashtag bones everybody. And we did have
a requests for a quick good poaching story that you
might be able to tell us also, so we'll get
to that after this giveaway.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
I don't know if there's any quick good I've got
a lot of punches, but I don't think I can
put into a sound bite. But I'm going to tell
you this. In the third chapter of my book, I'll
write about what was a defining moment in my career
as a river patrol officer. So it's midnight in the
Okawaha River, which would make the perfect backdrop for a
Tarzan or Jurassic Park movie. There's nobody there, nobody lives

(01:19:34):
on it. There are thousands of thousands of alligators up
to thirteen feet and eight hundred pounds. My patrol boat
sinks and I am left floating out through a gauntload
of alligators on a six gallon gas can at midnight.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
You're kidding me.

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
And nobody knows where I am at. And that's chapter
three in Backcountry Lawman.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
And you start thinking about that too. My gosh, no
one knows where I'm at.

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
After an hour, you have to you don't splash. We're
in When you're in a river, it's surrounded by alligator.
So I was like a big green sea turtle, very slowly,
you know, very quietly, doing a kind of a modified breaststroke.
But after about an hour, and this is dark of
the moon, all my lights are back with my boat.

(01:20:18):
It's there's a whole story to that. But and then
I hear an enormous splash in front of me. I
can't see it, but it's a bull alligator that flushed
off the bank, probably easily twelve to thirteen feet and
shortly the waves wash over over me, and now the
waves are only like maybe ten or twelve inches. But
I was on top of a metal gas can, and

(01:20:40):
I can remember to this day there's a metal chain
that hang down, hung down from the gas cap, and
when I was being rocked by those waves, I can
still remember that chain going King King James with the
side of that metal gas can. And it was at
that point in my twenty four year old life that

(01:21:00):
told himself this was not his wisest course of action
to float out of this well, I won't use any expert.
Is this this dang river? Because this listen, this is
the real deal, okay, And I'm on I'm in a
radio des zone. I've been up there drifting for three

(01:21:20):
hours looking for poachers, and there's a series of events
that led to the boat sinking. And we don't have
time for that now, but trust me, it happened, and
that was a defining moment in my career.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
So I'm not going to ask you how it turned out,
because I want people to check out your book. But
anything brush against you? Did you have any brushes against you?

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
No? I didn't have anything brushing against me, But you
have to stay away from the side from the banks
because there was wax myrtles with these stinging hornets. They
got hornet nests. You got to watch out from a watermarktsin.
I mean, yeah, this is this is like, this is
Indiana Jones Territory. We're entering here.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
So I'm not going back.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
I'm not I'm not exaggerating. I mean it just it
was oll bleap happens, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
I mean, all right, Tony, let's pull that trigger hashtag bones.
This is your last chance to get it into the chat.
Looks like everyone has had a good run at it
right there. Yep, we have fourteen entries. That's going to
get some more. But uh, all right, here we go.
Let's draw this, uh for an autograph copy of Bones

(01:22:30):
and Water from bobb Lee.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
Let's go.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
All right, here we go. It's rolling. Good luck everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:22:35):
This is kind of cool that you can do that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Yeah, it just randomly picks it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:39):
I'm not I've not seen that before.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
Oh wow, Metal Sharks U Jamie all right, relations.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Yeah, congrats Metal Sharks. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Yeah, so you.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Guys will get his address later. Is that how it's
gonna work?

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
That is exactly how it's gonna work, okay, uh jamn,
get a hold of me at DK at Adventures in
Dirt dot com and send me your contact info. I
might already have it, but go ahead and send it
just in case I don't, and we'll get it over
to Bob and we'll get you a book autograph copy
of Bones and Water. That's very generous of you, there, Bob,

(01:23:16):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
That's a Let's go right to the metal techer right now.
How long you've been metal teching abot? As long as
you've been bottle digging?

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):
Yeah? Well I I started me I metal Detective six
months before I got into the bottle, so we'll say
four years. I really haven't been at this this long.
About I guess four maybe four years a little bit more.
Here we go.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Yeah, all right, so this is one of your most
interesting finds. Let's put them up there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
So I'm trying to and I've got a light here,
let me see if I can.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
Oh, so, all right, so.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what I found out
so far, and I want to know if anybody else
has seen something like this. I'm going to bring it back.
This is two thirds of a cast iron plaque of
Robert E. Lee. The entire plaque it's broken off here,
so it would have kind of come like this and

(01:24:17):
down and around, and there would have been a hole
right here to put a nail through, so it would
hang on a wall. I've only seen one of these,
went for sale back around twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen. It
was kind of painted. It's supposed to be from around
this is post Civil War, from around nineteen hundred and

(01:24:39):
I suspect it was sold as a souvenir at a
battlefield site somewhere, or a store in a merch store.
But I'm curious to know if anybody else has ever
seen the plaque, found a plaque like it, or if they,
you know, they know any more about it, because there's
really not a whole lot of information except that it

(01:25:01):
was poured in a it was casting what they call
a sand mold. But yeah, sure, that's all I know.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
I've seen. I saw a picture. I just looked it
up real quick. I see a picture of a cast
iron Roberty Lee wallplaque, and it's got the same flare
above his head to the other side there too. That
we're going to flare off like this right with this,
but it's it's a straight The one I'm looking at
is a straight on image of his face. It's not
three D looking off to the side like that. That's

(01:25:30):
pretty cool. Yeah, that is really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
It's probably the same plaque. You just can't get the
three dimensionalck on it. But I can tell you that
I went back and I metal detected that area. Now,
this old cabin site was in an old peanut field,
so it had been plowed hundreds of times, right, and
undoubtedly the plow or the horror I had hit it
probably and I could not find any more pieces of it.

(01:25:55):
But now it was completely coated in rust when I
and I de rusted it, wow, and went through the
whole process. And so anyway, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
I just think that's kind of anybody out there in
the chat ever find anything like that. I know, we've
had people find stuff of Roberty Lee, you know, adornments
and and different things because people adored him, you know
what I mean, Like they really did absolutely love that man,
and so they would have different things with his face
and his likeness on it. And I hear about it

(01:26:27):
all the time. But that is such a cool man.
When that came up, you had to like, one, go,
what is this? But it's you know right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
At my first thought was it was so rusted. I
thought it might be Stonewall Jackson.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:26:42):
But then when I looked at it more and more
and I thought, nah, they're gonna do it over general.
And then then I started cleaning it. There it is
right there, and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
There you go, is that it?

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
Now they they're saying this is eighteen sixties. I let
me let me look at what I go out here.
See if that's the same, that's that's going to be
the same. That's the same thing. That's the same plack.
My other research told me that it was more from
the nineteen hundreds. I would love for it to be
from the eighteen sixties. Yeah, but I suspect that it's

(01:27:19):
post Civil War and it was sold as a souvenir
on one of the one of the battlefields. That's my guess.
But I just was curious if anybody had any hard
information on it, you know, So I don't know if
you have anybody from Virginia watching or.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Usually do have some good friends in Virginia for sure,
Matt Howe, if you're watching this later, if you know
anything about this, get a hold of me. We'll pass
that along to By.

Speaker 3 (01:27:46):
That'd be great. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
So, hey, Bob, I found this. So this was another one.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
This was there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
And this is nineteen hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Yeah there, I think that's about right.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
So, and it's from an estate collection from Richmond, Virginia.

Speaker 3 (01:28:02):
But that's cool. I had not seen it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):
Just just some just some additional information just from initial searching.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
Good.

Speaker 1 (01:28:09):
Good, interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
And it also tells you automatically what the sympathies were
of the people who lived in that cabin.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:28:18):
And for all you know, I mean, for all I know,
it might have been a Civil War veteran that lived there.
I mean, because we're talking the cabin. I date that
I date this cabin from early eighteen nineties to nineteen
twenty five, and I think it burnt after that from
what I can tell.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
Wow, we were digging in England one time, Tony and
I and Tony found this head about that about that big.
It was like this head, this face. It was three dimensional,
you know, it was complete around, but it was kind
of squished and flat. We didn't know what it was.
But when you find something like that, you're like, oh
my gosh, like why would this have a likeness of

(01:28:55):
this person? You know what I mean? It got to
be so important? Or was it metal or it was metal?

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
No, it was yeah, it was actually copper. And I
can't remember. I can't remember which leader they had said
that it was, but it was I think mid eighteen hundred.
But it was just a very unique piece because it
was it was like a three dimensional head, really very
very did they say cane top maybe, Oh that's that's

(01:29:25):
a good that could you got?

Speaker 3 (01:29:27):
You got? You got to keep it right or you
didn't have to? Did you have to turn it? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
We we I submitted it. Yeah, we got to submit
all the fines in but I was able to get
it back about nine months later or something.

Speaker 3 (01:29:38):
I kind of think, I kind of think that that's
a good way to do things. And I think you
take here on these on these rivers. You take the
rivers for instance, they they've shut him down, man, I
mean you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
You can't hunt them at all, huh, not.

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
For not for arawheads, not for the Civil War artifacts.
Because we had a lot of go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Would you know, would historical societies are they Are they
able to get in and kind of do that kind
of stuff as organized type events rather than just you
know one nothing like that.

Speaker 3 (01:30:16):
Huh No, the state, the professional archaeologists, they yeah, the amateurs,
you know how that is? I mean, I think you know,
and so there's always that. I mean, gosh, I was written.
My dad was a big erahead hunter, and I found
hunters of eras in the Tampa Bay area growing up

(01:30:37):
with him. I found we found so many that finally,
by the time I turned fourteen or fifteen, I said, Dad,
I got a This was every weekend, you know. So
when somebody says I've got a place in Alabama, I
could go thousands of acres and it's got areas all
over and the guy says, I can go up there
any time. I said, listen, I got you know, if
you got but you got bottles, I'll go. But I mean,

(01:30:59):
I know that you might have some people listening to
that find that hard to believe. But I found a
lot of areads and I inherited my dad's collections.

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
So is it the is it the history? Is it
the history story side of it that draws you in
or is it the relic side of it?

Speaker 3 (01:31:17):
It's now that I'm so deep into the history, it's
kind of it's kind of that duality. It's both, right.
I like to learn the history of it. I think
most every it should will take that plaque, for instance,
Well what is it?

Speaker 2 (01:31:31):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
I mean, you know what was it made for? And
say you or or the torpedo or the snuffboard or
the cathedral pickle. What's the you know, what's the history
of the.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
Purpose, the story of it?

Speaker 3 (01:31:42):
Yeah, they all got a story absolutely, And and so
now some of my programs, uh, they'll have there's one
historical society up in Placu or they have a big
genealogical historical thing, and everybody takes whatever they collect and
they display it. Well, I'll set up a huge bottle display.

(01:32:03):
I'll have I got old lanterns. I've collected some of
them off the river here. Uh, and so I even
put lights in them, and I'll have them labeled, and
they come by and we're just geek out on bottles.
I mean, I'll talk bottles or lanterns or whatever. Yeah,
there's a couple of really neat lanterns I got while

(01:32:24):
I was on the job. I was able to to
purchase them from different people I had met, and they're
really very collectible.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
So listen, Bob, you've been an amazing guest man. I
knew you would. Uh. Loved your stories, love your energy.
You make us all excited to go dig some numerous left.

Speaker 3 (01:32:47):
In my lamp. It was a two lamp. It was
a two ball lamp. I've got one left. But that's okay.
I have everything. I got everything. I'm trying to get
more light on me in here, right, So that's what happened.
I got this thing that's right off to my left. Well, listen,
I've enjoyed it, and I congratulate you all your success.
You've got a ton of subscribers and I subscribed earlier

(01:33:08):
by the way, So yeah, I congratulate you because you
know this is there's a lot of work to putting
together a podcast and keeping it going. My son's got
one for the line of work he's in. He's in landscaping.
And I think you're a year into it, but it's
they got to grind it out. I mean it's I
know you guys enjoy it, but I mean it's it's

(01:33:29):
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
It's worked, but you get the reward of talking to
people that have the same passion. You're in Florida, we're
in Colorado. We'll talk to somebody and in Arizona or
North Dakota or over in England, and we all have
that same passion and we can all connect even though
we're thousands of miles away. And it's just the stories
and the passion that comes out that just makes it
so incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:33:53):
And so yeah, and that other link we're going to
talk about for the bottle where where my buddy and
I buy our bottle pro his old bottles. I think
you're going to have that link for him. And I'm
matching a lot of your listeners or they're they're aware
of them, but they make a really good product.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
So yeah, we're always being asked like where can you
get a good bottle Pro? So it's good to have
that link. And for those of you who listen on
the audio replay, we'll put the link down in the
description of the podcast. So and also with a lot
of all of Bob's links to his website, to his
where you can find his various books, we'll put all
those links down below. So if you want to support him,

(01:34:31):
and you've enjoyed the show, make sure you head on
over there and check out Bob Lee. Very interesting guy,
a man to talk to. Bob. We really enjoyed it.
Why don't you hang out in the green room. We'll
finish the show and maybe we'll say our goodbyes off
the air. You okay with that?

Speaker 3 (01:34:45):
That'll be fine?

Speaker 1 (01:34:46):
All right? Last words before we put you down.

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
There, no other than I've enjoyed it, and I'm proud.
I'm proud to be on your fifty two. What is
it fifty eight to twenty or I've lost my I've
lost my the heck do you call your guys fifty
to eighty adventures? There you go, No, I've I've enjoyed it. Him,
Messley and I had a big time, and it's it's

(01:35:10):
been great, you know, it's it's always a lot of
fun to talk about one hobby.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
We'll have to definitely have you on again. I haven't
more ses. All right, hey, hang on for us, We'll
be right now. Well okay, m hm, wow, quite a show.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
Incredible, I you know, I having the connection obviously law enforcement.
You know, we we Bob and I could talk stories.
I'm sure I know that, but then having the connection
with bottles and metal teching and history and yeah, you know,
I was watching watching his reelic Rescue us a YouTube channel,
and I think we we touched on it. It's not

(01:35:57):
only just metal teching and bottle digging, but the history,
cool the homes that he does, tours of the stories
that he tells. I mean, he takes you on, uh,
the adventures of the books that he's watten. He says, hey,
this is chapter one. It takes place on this side
of Saint John's River right here, on this spot right here,
and he really draws you in. And I tell you

(01:36:19):
I actually I have Amazon pulled up right now. I've
got all three books on my cart I'm going to
be playing all three of them. Yeah, because you know,
he brings up, you know, the the game Warden side
of it, you know, the law enforcement, the excitement that
all that. I can't wait to read them. It's going
to be incredible. What a guy. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
We can talk about the game ward newt all night.
It'd be a whole show. Yeah, a couple of shows.
He's got a lot to share there. And yeah, we
talked a lot tonight about bottles and that always fascinates me.
We've had a few bottle diggers on here, but it's
always fascinating to see how each person approaches it, uh huh.
But they all share that passing where they're like, you

(01:36:58):
know that cardinal.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
Bots, like oh my god, like fifed, I pulled it
up real quick again, I learned something about it. I
didn't I've never heard of that, but I pulled it
up and all of a sudden, now I've got knowledge.
I've got you know, I'm looking at different colors and
I'll like, now I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole
because he found that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:13):
So we do it all the time, right. I found
that cat from the eighteen seventy six, you know, that
edition in Philly, and I just I never knew about
that ever until I found that stupid cap, you know.
And now I've learned how many people were there, what
that cap was, who made it, you know what, other
kinds of things like first time we saw bananas was
at that expo. R have bananas in the United States

(01:37:34):
until then, and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
So I love it. Yeah, ye, I want to say
congrats the Metal Sharks for winning the book. Yeah, and
Bob autograph that could it sent over to you. We
appreciate the support and having Bob on tonight too.

Speaker 1 (01:37:49):
Yeah, make sure you reach out to me there, J
Man and U K at Adventures in Dirt dot Com.
Well we'll get that right out to you. So Man,
good show, awesome show. Show.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
All right, what do you got going on? Anything?

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
No, I'm slacking on are You Smarter Than a Rella Hunter?
It's just because we're doing all this renovation in the
house and it's taken up weekends like crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:38:13):
So yeah, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Get back to it for sure. I've actually I've had
I've planned for two shows, so I have two shows
worth of questions. I just haven't put the pen to
paper and got online with it yet. So we'll come
back here in a couple of weeks probably, and I
want you guys to join me Sunday nights on fifty
to eighty Adventures for are You Smarter Than a Rella

(01:38:35):
Hunter and see if you guys can beat you know,
the questions. So that's about all I got, man.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
Okay, uh excellent. Yeah, Well let's get down to Bob
and everyone take care of have yourself a great week.
If you get out there and dig and go find
the good stuff, make sure you tell us all about
it right here at Relics Radio, and get a hold
of Tony over at fifty two eight Adventures. You can
get hold of me over at Adventures in Dirt. But
good luck to you, stay safe and we'll see you

(01:39:03):
next week. Thank you so much for listening to Relix Radio.

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
We will see you back here next week for another
exciting guest.

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
Until then, get out and dig it all.

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S8 E10 - Bones in Water - Bob Lee of Relic Rescue USA Joins Relics Radio

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S8 E10 - Bones in Water - Bob Lee of Relic Rescue USA Joins Relics Radio