Rick Holt - My Bottle Room

A hair restorer!!  I couldn't believe it!  I gently wrapped it up and thought life couldn't get much better.  This started me on the path to bottle obsession that has never really diminished over time. 
From there the family started to do more research on old ghost towns and I started to be aware of the possibilities of old city dumping grounds still out there.   When other teenagers were partying and hanging out on the weekends, I was looking for signs of old garbage..rust and ashes in fields and gopher holes.
It all started when my brother brought back a purple bottle from across Redwood Road in Salt Lake.  We wondered what made it that way and started to  do some research and ask some questions.  I was 15 years old. 
My mother did some typing for a friend of my grandmother who wrote articles for Relic Magazines.  Who knew he was a collector.   He rewarded her efforts with a Duffy Malt Whiskey.
WOW!  It looked so old!  It had that strange cork top and the embossing!  The whole bottle had writing on it with that amazing logo.   I was hooked. 
I spent hours meeting with him and he became my bottle mentor.  Don Kraack showed me what he had found and talked to me about how it all worked.  He shared his digging spot with me and one evening I met him there and he let me go into the hole for about 20 minutes before dark.  I came up with a Worlds Hair Restorer!
My friends got involved and pretty soon we had found a few locations we could dig by ourselves and we made many expeditions to mining locations in search of old glass.  We were late to the hobby in the 1970's.  But we still managed to put together a pretty good collection. 
Because it was an off beat activity for guys of our age, it did create some local interest and we got in the newspaper.  "Yes we go digging in old garbage dumps".   Buried Treasure.  The thrill remains.
We became buyers and traders and continued to dig and also expand our collections through bottle shows here in Salt Lake and Las Vegas.
I never could specialize or sell any of it off.  I kept some of everything.  But since I was a starving student, I couldn't afford the expensive bottles.  My interest went to the patent medicines.  What a wonderful history and the wonders of Old West marketing.  They would cure everything, healinman and beast.   They were inexpensive and wildly interesting. By then I had a family and a large shed full of bottles.  I couldn't keep my collection in boxes. It had to be displayed.  I was finally able to build my bottle room in my first house.   I've have had to move it 3 times. 
Most of the back wall below are patent medicines.