The Things They Buried

In January of last year, we bought a house. We fell in love with the house because it was an old house, and because even though it was built in 1934, we are only the second owner. The house has its original light fixtures and wood flooring. In some places, I’m pretty sure it still has its original paint.

Sometimes, I dislike the house because it is an old house, and because little things keep going wrong with it, like finding a large leak in the roof. A $1,600 leak.

Many young boys want to be firemen or astronauts when they grow up. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an anthropologist. I wanted to find dinosaur bones and use my special brushes to gently expose the ancient fossils. I wanted to travel the world just to dig in the dirt or explore ancient tombs, pyramids, and the like. (It goes without saying that I was heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones series.)

One thing that is great about our old house is that it brings out the archeologist in me. Whenever I find an occasion to dig in the backyard, it takes only moments to find some sort of artifact from the previous owner. In fact, I have a collection of interesting items that I parade out when people come over so that they might help me discover why there was a coffee-can shaped concrete block with a metal 10-inch metal screw buried in my backyard.

Yesterday, I cleared out an old, overgrown garden in the backyard. The size of the plot was six feet by six feet. Here are the items I found buried in the dirt, starting at the top and rotating clockwise:

(For scaling purposes, these items were placed on one of those high-quality outdoor patio tables.)

- A piece of plastic covered wire
- The top to a sardine can
- A piece of crimped copper tubing
- A grey plastic cap
- A piece of black tar paper
- A square terra cotta tile
- A rectangular piece of white metal
- A rusted clamp
- A green metal pole
- Two pieces of old roofing tile
- A four foot metal pipe
- A piece of curved concrete

I was thinking about putting the whole lot on eBay. What do you think the starting bid should be?