My daughter Annie is 21 years old, which makes it easy for me to remember how long ago I dug this flask. I dug it 3 days after she was born. It was the first time I left the house since we brought Annie home from the hospital. I told my wife Cristina, spontaneously, that I was “going to go dig Annie a bottle”. There was a site I had found right up the street a couple of weeks earlier, but the top of the ground had frozen over, and I couldn’t penetrate it with my digger. It was 1/4 mile up the road, right along side the shoulder of the pavement, where I could see two old buckets, half buried. I had passed it a hundred times, and assumed there would be nothing there, since it was visible from the road.
I pulled up one of the buckets and started to dig, and it loosened up underneath, opening up some rust patches, and some aqua glass…a good sign. I made a small hole with my digger, then reached down to clear away with my glove, and felt what felt like a whole bottle. I looked down into the hole, after brushing away the dirt, and was shocked to see the word STODDARD staring right back at me! I pulled it out, and it was mint. I ran back to my van, and sped down the road, back up my driveway. I had been gone for only about ten minutes, so when I peeled into the driveway honking my horn, my wife met me at the door thinking something was very wrong.
I stood on the front porch holding the bottle, ‘Stoddard” side facing her. She said “You didn’t dig that, who gave it to you?”
So that was Annie’s bottle. We followed her with another daughter and a son, Chloe and Quincy. I did my best to replicate my feat when they were born, which I did. But I have to admit, a lettered Stoddard flask was impossible to top!
The Downeast Digger 