Gary Rickers

GARY RICKERS

I thought I knew all of the hard-core Utah diggers and then I see face book posts from Gary and I was immediatly interested. Here is his story:

My brother found a Heinz bottle in the farm he worked on as a kid. I liked that bottle. If I had known where to look and how I would have started sooner. I've been digging coming up on 40 years now. I dug a dump for a couple years and thought I had some good stuff, but no I had hardly anything of value. One day I was out checking a spot and Steve Scholz (former Utah digger now in California) came up to me. I wondered “who is this and why is he bothering me”, but after talking to him he took me back to his house. When I saw all his stuff I was blown away. So, I asked him to take me digging. It was fate. Within 5 min out my first time. I probed into a killer hole. We started a test hole and pulled out some Drugstores. I was excited but Steve was unimpressed.

Later, he came flying out of the hole. He had one of Utah's best sodas, J Day. I took it to the car and when I get back, he has a San Francisco Glass Works green soda. I took it to the car. It was my turn when I got back. The hole was full of ash. I wiped the bank with my glove and had 3 more soda bottles exposed. We got 4 J Day & CO sodas and 3 San Francisco Glass Works. That's like unheard of for someone's first time out. I was and have been addicted ever since. I have been fortunate to find some early holes and have had some great digging experiences.

On this dig, I thought it was wine. As I carefully got the dirt off it was clearly more…an IXL! As I stuck my light behind, it wasn’t aqua. It was green and crude, full of seed bubbles and whittled. It is one of my favorite finds.