Posted 9 years ago
SpiritBear
(813 items)
Local Coca-Cola Bottling Co. bottle from 1917; they come in 2 sizes. I have 3. (Had 4, but a guy coming to quote price on new windows knocked one over. One is intact, and one other as in 4 pieces when I found it-- but Rubber Cement saved the day!)
This one I had found in the lake a few years ago after my foot, sliding along the bottom in a searching motion, detected it.
Originally, it was so slime-covered and sediment-filled that I thought it was totally intact. I thought it was gonna be nicer than the other one I found that day in the lake. As it turns out, the other was much nicer. LOL.
When I had finished searching, I cleaned my bottles up in the silt and water before putting them in my pack. I was shocked when this one revealed itself to be so totally damaged.
The crack stretches in two directions around the bottle, reaching around the base and up the neck as well. One part ends about an inch away from another crack, which would have split the bottle.
It all burst forth from a small bullet-hole in the shoulder where a tiny pellet looking like lead still remained.
Our idea is that around the end of WW1, some people in the now rarely swum in part of the lake finished off their (Not Coca-Cola) drinks and floated them on a board or tossed them in the air to use as target practice with some sort of pellet gun. They succeeded in destroying a few, but this one ate lead and lived.
So, this is not a Coke bottle ?
It is unlikely that it held Coca-Cola.
It is possible that it did, but most Coke people will not even give consideration that a bottle held Coca-Cola unless it has Coca-Cola in script. There is much evidence against that, but in this case we also have scripted bottles like this from my town.
Also going against this one is that the Hobble-skirt shape came out before this one, so it was almost certainly another flavor of drink (flavor on cap or long-gone label.)
This is a Coca-Cola Bottling Company bottle, which would likely have bottled things other than Coca-Cola. Coke alone would not save a company here-- especially back in the day when fruit flavours were much more popular.
Oh, as for how I know it's 1917: Date-code. The others are 1916-1919. The 1919 one was from a different location, thus giving me an end of WW1 date for when the bottles went into the lake.