{"id":5818,"date":"2012-08-13T14:34:42","date_gmt":"2012-08-13T18:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=5818"},"modified":"2012-08-13T14:47:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T18:47:03","slug":"the-big-dig-of-2008-or-the-craziest-place-i-ever-turned-up-a-vintage-skittles-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=5818","title":{"rendered":"The Big Dig of 2008! Or, The Craziest Place I Ever Turned up a Vintage Skittles Pack."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Back on August 12th and 13th of 2008 (four years ago this week), I set about to try to find an unintentional time-capsule I’d buried in my grandmother’s backyard, some 25 years earlier.\u00a0 It was a fun two-day adventure that I chronicled on the pages of my Flickr, and though the focus was not candy (there would be some involved), I thought it would be fun to re-post the tale here – on the anniversary of the dig.<\/p>\n

I’ll step in to edit when needed, but for the most part, I’m leaving the texts of my original posts intact.\u00a0 It was far fresher in my mind then.\u00a0\u00a0 Here we go:<\/p>\n

Breaking Ground<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – A quest for buried treasures… – Breaking Ground — Columbus Nebraska – August 12, 2008 – Pictured from left are Jeff Liebig, Jason Liebig, and Jim Uden.<\/p><\/div>\n

As kids, my brother and my friends and I would play in my grandmother’s backyard.\u00a0 And we would inevitably dig holes.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of this happened in the mid-to-late 1970’s.\u00a0 But we found ourselves out there a bit in the very early 80’s too.<\/p>\n

Over the years, we built forts, put firecrackers into formerly prized toys, and became amateur archaeologists, trying to understand the few artifacts we would uncover in our digs.\u00a0 We also buried a time capsule or two.<\/p>\n

The reason for the “Big Dig” this year (in 2008) was the memory of my last big childhood dig.\u00a0 Back in the early 1980’s, I dug quite a deep hole, the last I would dig in my youth — “just to dig it.”<\/p>\n

I dug it for a week, and it was deeper than I had ever dug before — about eight foot deep.<\/p>\n

As it happened, when my grandmother found out about it and saw how deep it was, and before I had returned home from school that day – she had one of my other friends fill the hole up for her.\u00a0 By the time I got there, the ground was being packed down on the top.<\/p>\n

I was heartbroken — my masterpiece of hole-digging was destroyed.<\/p>\n

Most annoyingly, I found that, to save time, they threw bags of trash into the bottom of the hole — sort of a mini-landfill.\u00a0 And that’s what brings us to today.<\/p>\n

It was the memory of that “mini-landfill” that got me thinking.\u00a0 During my visit home that summer, we should see if we can find the spot where the hole was again, and see if any of our childhood trash survived.<\/p>\n

After all, maybe some goodies managed to survive over the years — probably not, but why not take a look, and have some fun in the process.\u00a0 There was one item in particular that, as a package collector, I had hoped might be in there.\u00a0 The odds were against it, but still, it was the dream.<\/p>\n

Day One – A Forgotten Time Capsule<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – Day One – A Forgotten Time Capsule – August 12, 2008<\/p><\/div>\n

Only a few feet down into this new hole, we had already begun to uncover a few things, still no sign of the “trash fill” but we were uncovering old cans from the 70’s and 80’s, and even a nearly intact 2-liter plastic Mountain Dew bottle.\u00a0 More on that later.<\/p>\n

Even though we weren’t looking for it, we knew roughly where our “big” time capsule had been buried back around 1978 or 79 — mainly because in 1992, we made a point to dig it up, open it, and re-bury the thing with a new time capsule buried on top of it.\u00a0\u00a0 But we KNEW that was at least five feet west of the point we were digging now.<\/p>\n

So imagine our surprise when we found THIS — a smaller time capsule that was apparently buried in 1980.\u00a0 Even after opening it, both my brother and I could not for the life of us remember this – but the evidence was clear — this was our stuff:<\/p>\n

A Kenner Star Wars promotional flyer, a Hot Wheels patch, newspaper cutouts for local theater showings of Mad Max and Up the Academy.\u00a0 There were also a few Fleer Real Cloth Patches, and a couple near-corroded pages from a TV Guide.<\/p>\n

Even though the coffee can was covered in plastic wrap, and double bagged in trash bags, some moisture must have remained inside, as there was a dark sludge in there, and it had affected much of the contents.\u00a0 It was not pretty.\u00a0 The Hot Wheels patch appeared to have been half-eaten by some kind of mold.\u00a0 Yuck.<\/p>\n

So with this fascinating treasure in hand, we continued digging until early evening.\u00a0 Finding more odd bits here and there, we were encouraged.\u00a0 But still no large bags of trash…\u00a0 Maybe we were in the wrong spot?<\/p>\n

The Wrong Spot?<\/h2>\n

At the end of day one, after digging in fits and starts, we had found much, but still no full bags of trash.\u00a0 Perhaps we were in the wrong spot?\u00a0 Maybe the trash we were hunting for had all decomposed?\u00a0 Or maybe we just weren’t deep enough?\u00a0 That’s what I figured.<\/p>\n

At the end of day one, we must have been down about five or six feet when I found a stone tablet of sorts.\u00a0 It was probably the top bowl from an old bird bath that used to sit in my grandmother’s yard.\u00a0 Maybe it was a marker?\u00a0 It all felt very Indiana Jones, and it gave me hope as we ended day one.<\/p>\n

Later that night, a large rain storm hit our home town.\u00a0 I worried that the rains would erode much of the progress we had made, and worse yet, whatever goodies that had been protected from moisture for the past 25 years would now get drenched.<\/p>\n

Day Two<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – Day Two – Buried Trash, er… Treasure bags found. – August 13, 2008<\/p><\/div>\n

Day two began well, as the rains didn’t seem to do much damage.\u00a0 My brother suspected we might have been in the wrong area, but that slab of stone gave me confidence.<\/p>\n

About a foot-and-a-half deeper down, and we began to hit a vein of soda bottles.\u00a0 Soda bottle after soda bottle, some glass and most plastic.\u00a0 And then I found what appeared to be a trash bag…and it was.<\/p>\n

At this point, I was eight feet down, in a tight space.\u00a0 It was slow work but I began to pull out the contents of the trash bag that had been there for 25 years.<\/p>\n

Inside were more of the kinds of soda bottles we’d been finding, and other remnants of mostly-decomposed items.\u00a0 Oh, and about a dozen LIDS and STRAWS from 7-Eleven Big Gulps.\u00a0 Yeah, the lids and straws survived as if they had been buried yesterday — the cups themselves?\u00a0 Not a trace — those were biodegradable, it would seem, and had gone back to the earth.<\/p>\n

Unbelievable Success!<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – Day Two – This is what I was hoping for.<\/p><\/div>\n

Well into our second day of digging, we had found the trash bags we were looking for.\u00a0 At first, the contents were not too exciting.\u00a0\u00a0 Most everything we pulled from them had seemed pretty beaten up, and partially decomposed.\u00a0 The two-and-a-half decades under eight feet of earth, it seemed, had taken their toll.<\/p>\n

Then, something amazing happened.\u00a0 As I went down again to slowly work through the dirt and muck inside the partially-buried bags, I felt a different kind of plastic.\u00a0 As I carefully fished it out from within that dark mess, I was bowled over!\u00a0 It appeared to be part of a chip bag – a bag of Guy’s Tasty Mix!\u00a0 Yes, a vintage package of this snack food I had consumed so much of in my youth, and that I identified with those years so keenly, was now within my grasp.<\/p>\n

As it came out of the muck, not only was it the package I never thought I’d see again, but it appeared to be completely intact.\u00a0 And it was.<\/p>\n

The “Big Dig” went from a fanciful bit of summer fun to a real treasure hunt.\u00a0\u00a0 I had found my Holy Grail of chip bags!<\/p>\n

A Decades-Old Chip Bag was my Holy Grail.<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – My Holy Grail of Chip Bags – Guy’s Tasty Mix Bag – Clean-up Photos<\/p><\/div>\n

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I associated this snack food with so many fun times, hanging out with my friends (typically playing the Dungeons and Dragons).<\/p>\n

Collecting packaging, whether it be cereal boxes, candy wrappers or whatever – is sometimes about reconnecting with a piece of our past and our youth.\u00a0\u00a0 In this case, I was literally digging up my personal past.<\/p>\n

This Guy’s Tasty Mix was a bag that I consumed and threw in the trash decades before I would care about such things.\u00a0 It was only through a bizarre series of circumstances that it ended up in a deep hole in my family’s backyard.<\/p>\n

Though it was certainly an odd endeavor to take on during two-days home with family, we made it an adventure, which the whole family ended up taking part in.\u00a0 Our “Big Dig” was going to be fun, no matter what we found.<\/p>\n

But we found the “Holy Grail” chip bag for my collection (and more).<\/p>\n

As you can see from the photo above, the clean-up on this went very well.\u00a0 I carefully wiped this down under running water, and the dirt and years of muck kept coming off.\u00a0 Under the stream of warm water, the heat seals that kept the bag together also came loose, but that just allowed for easier cleaning.\u00a0 Eventually, I ended up with the great example you see in the bottom part of the image. Pretty neat — huh?<\/p>\n

Skittles!<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – Skittles Fruit Candies pack – this give me a year – 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the big dig — it’s the Skittles bags in the early 80’s were made VERY well.\u00a0 After a short big of cleaning, this bag looked like it had been opened a day earlier, not 25 YEARS before.<\/p>\n

This package is also how I was able to discern the exact year that all the trash went into the hole – it had a “best by” date of February, 1984.<\/p>\n

While the Tasty Mix bag had a month and date, it didn’t have a year.\u00a0 The freshness date on these put things clearly in 1983 as the year the trash went in.\u00a0 A cool twenty-five years underground.<\/p>\n

The Other Things We Found Along The Way<\/h2>\n
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The Big Dig – Lots and lots of Dr Pepper!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Coming from the year 1983, this was when soda companies were transitioning from glass to plastic bottles. How do I know? Well, the Pepsi bottles were all glass, but many of the DP bottles have a call out on them that says “New Plastic Bottle!”. This all came from the Big Dig hole…<\/p>\n

Sadly, most of this stuff couldn’t be saved, but we took many photos for posterity. These were just too far gone.<\/p>\n

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The Big Dig – Some other odds and ends.<\/p><\/div>\n

Love the blue Sugar Free Dr Pepper cans, and there’s the remains of a Squeeze Parkay bottle in there, too.\u00a0 I remember those so well.<\/p>\n

Also, there are bits and pieces of our old Mattel Space 1999: Eagle ship toy.\u00a0 Boy, we destroyed some great toys in our back yard.<\/p>\n

And drank a lot of soda, too!\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry, Mom!<\/p>\n

Epilogue<\/h2>\n

At the end of that trip home, we re-buried the newly dug-up hole.\u00a0 Much of what we uncovered was thrown in the trash, but that Skittles pack became a part of my permanent collection.<\/p>\n

The Guy’s Tasty Mix snack bag was framed and four years later, resides just above my desk, next to my framed 1974 Marathon bar wrapper (a pair of my all-time favorites).<\/p>\n

So yes, we did re-bury that hole.\u00a0 But we didn’t just fill it with dirt.\u00a0 We put three separate new time capsules at the bottom of it.\u00a0 One was assembled by my two nieces, then 13 and 10 – the other two were filled with goodies by my brother, myself, and our good friend Jim (with input from my mother and other friends).<\/p>\n

We threw all kinds of things in these new time capsules:\u00a0 Full bottles of soda, Twinkies, packs of bubble gum – and even a full pack of 2008 Guy’s Tasty Mix.\u00a0 The kinds of things we thought would be fun to find, years later.\u00a0 We also put a couple dozen photos of the dig itself, and of all of us.\u00a0 A physical document of the adventure we created in our backyard.<\/p>\n

Maybe we’ll dig that one up again in 2033…<\/p>\n

And that’s all for my re-telling of my Big Dig of 2008.<\/p>\n

See you next time!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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