At this point, this definitely isn’t dull - although I’m probably dull since I keep digging… What I thought was the bottom slab of my supposed antique poor man’s cooler sounds hollow and has stone sides that extend below it.

This is a follow-up on this post. I kept digging because I wondered why the brickwork extended so far down for no obvious reason.

Today was a warm day, and the now-exposed frozen ground had thawed enough that I could finally dislodge the rest of the bricks. I found a whole lot more bricks, and some properly ancient wood shoring slats - black and almost completely decomposed, unlike the slats I found above them on Sunday. Half of the bricks and the black wood slats were completely surrounded by thick tree roots, so they’ve been in the ground at least long enough for that former birch tree to grow 6 inches in diameter.

This is what I dug out today:

More bricks and old wood

I think I got all the bricks out - either whole or as shards I dug out of the tree roots. And so I tried to lift the slab, and… I couldn’t because there are solid walls all around below it. This is the top of a stone box. And it sounds hollow when I hit it with a steel bar.

At this point, I’m well below the level of the lake. The water starts pooling at the bottom of the hole when I dig around the box:

Lake water filling the hole

I’d say whatever hollow space exists under the slab is probably no more then 4 or 5" above the lake water, which is probably what I’ll find when I lift it. Like I said in the other post, the lake used to be lower. But now whatever this mystery space is has probably been underwater for at least 15 years.

I’m gonna have to call a friend or two to deal with this further: whatever is there isn’t budging, and I can’t dig this far down: I have a disability and I don’t have enough balance to stand down there and dig this low down.

So, stay tuned to find out what’s hiding in the mystery stone box 🙂

    • ExtremeDullard@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      23·
      8 days ago

      Unlikely: it was built when this whole area was a marsh. It was already there when the first owner of this land built his first house.

      • eta@feddit.orgEnglish
        6·
        8 days ago

        Did people dig holes into the ground to keep ice around for longer?

        • bluGill@fedia.io
          12·
          8 days ago

          That was common back in the day. At least where I grew up - winters get cold and lakes are everywhere so it is easy to go out on the lake in january and get a bunch of ice. Since it is winter the rest of the farm has nothing growing so this is one of the few things you could do in 1870.

        • YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          8 days ago

          Probably means like the old ice cream hole we had in our backyard when I was a kid. Every Sunday Mom would let us dig up the ice cream hole to see what kinds of flavors we could scoop out.

        • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
          4·
          8 days ago

          Before fridges you had to go to Canada for ice, and they’d cut big blocks, ship it around packed in saw dust. You’d have an ice hole in your back yard or basement and yeah, pack enough grass and shit and the ice would stick around.

  • toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish
    47·
    8 days ago

    Well before I was born, my parents bought their house and had a chunk of partially buried quartz on the property. They tried to remove it but, for whatever reason, were unable, even with the use of heavy machinery.

    Back then they used to smoke, but my eldest brother was asthmatic, so they tried to avoid doing it near him. As a result, they developed a habit of sitting on the rock to smoke, since it was pretty far from the house.

    This reminds me of … All of that.

      • toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish
        17·
        8 days ago

        When I first developed a back injury, I expressed to my eldest brother that I was worried my kid would need me and that I would be unable to get to them due to pain.

        He subsequently told me about a time shortly after the story I told above in which the rock I mentioned fell on his foot during an attempt at removal.

        According to him, my dad was able to lift the rock - which, again, power equipment had previously been unable to move significantly - long enough for my brother to escape.

        Apparently adrenaline is a powerful thing. Hopefully that contributes to your enjoyment of the day!

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          10·
          8 days ago

          Sadly much less dull, but it had a good beat and you could dance to it, so - Approved. *thump*

          • toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish
            9·
            8 days ago

            Thank you for the validation! I’ve no more stories about the rock, which I hope is the dullest anecdote of them all.

        • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
          21·
          8 days ago

          We normally only use a fraction of our full muscle strength. It’s like a subconscious limit to prevent you from tearing your muscles and ligaments. Adrenaline completely overrides that limit.

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            7 days ago

            Well, I’m tired, bored, and this is one of those subjects that rarely gets expanded on, so I’m jumping in

            Us using only a fraction of our potential strength is a thing. And, indeed, adrenaline can override those limits, up to a point. It isn’t a complete override, nor would a complete override tear things up to the degree that the shorter version of this information makes it seem.

            See, a big chunk of the limitation we have in using our strength comes down to biomechanics. If a given muscle could move 100 pounds in isolation when lined up perfectly, a big reason the same muscle on the body can’t move the same weight is that each muscle has to work with the connection points to bones, around joints. So there’s not really a way to use 100% of the potential.

            But there is still a limiter beyond that! It’s called the golgi reflex organ. It’s basically some nerves that live where tendons and muscles join up. It’s entire purpose is to detect how much tension is on that junction, and kick in a limitation when the tension goes too high.

            That limitation isn’t so much about tearing things up, though that is a factor. It’s about keeping the body stable and effective. It’s potayto potahto for the most part, but the underlying function isn’t to keep us dumb monkeys from ripping ourselves up, it’s the other factors and the injury reduction is a side benefit.

            That’s mostly because a typical person can’t tear themselves up very much. That kind of injury you see with the batshit crazy weight lifters having their muscles totally pull off the bone isn’t going to happen to someone average even with adrenaline. What you’d get is strains, pulled muscles and the like. Painful, annoying, and definitely not anything to sneeze at, but no different in scale than what you’d get without adrenaline by pushing too hard or experiencing atypical situations.

            We also have energy limits. You can only fire off so much muscle at once because there’s not enough go juice to make it happen.

            Which all comes back to is only using a fraction of our full strength being less about injury and more about it being wasteful. Doesn’t take all our strength to pick up an empty box, and it might if the box was full of lead. So our brains and those golgi organs conspire to not go hard unless there’s a reason to. There’s just an override for emergencies that gets us much closer to balls out than normal.

  • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip
    21·
    8 days ago

    Maybe it’s a cover to an old well or something? Like they moved the well, or no longer needed it and just capped the top off?

    • aramis87@fedia.io
      9·
      8 days ago

      In which case, OP and his friend(s) should be careful removing the cap - someone could slip in the mud and fall in.

      And I agree, this is looking like an old well to me also.

  • bitteroldcoot@piefed.socialEnglish
    17·
    8 days ago

    old well. probably got capped off so nobody falls into it.

    A lot of time people would dig a well, near a lake but not close to the shore. especially if there is a drought, the water that fills it up isn’t spring water, but it’s more potable than if you just dipped it out of the lake. You could use it to water a garden or lawn.

    • ExtremeDullard@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      7·
      8 days ago

      That would indeed make sense. But what doesn’t is why somebody built this in what was uninhabited marshland at the time, and why they built a seemingly totally-unrelated cool storage box on top of it.

      • bitteroldcoot@piefed.socialEnglish
        7·
        8 days ago

        Oh, there was a cold storage box on top? Google “spring house”.

        Also marsh or lake, the well idea would still work, depending on how you construct it. If the water is going up and down so much it might have been a spring at one point. You can have a spring in the middle of a marsh. There is one down the road from where I live.

        Edit: I should have said “spring box” not spring house. It’s to small for a spring house. The point is to get a clean flow once the house or box is finished and isolate the spring water from contamination.

        • ExtremeDullard@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          Google “spring house”.

          Interesting… I didn’t know about spring houses. One learns something new every day. Thanks!

          But if what I dug up was a spring house, it was one for smurfs 🙂 Also, there’s no spring there. But maybe letting lake water pooling under the cold storage chamber above served the same purpose. Makes sense actually…

          I’ll know for sure when I lift the slab. I have a couple friends coming over tomorrow to help me.

    • Headofthebored @lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      “Judging by these markings, and the obvious age of the relic, I’d say IT’S GARBAGE! FROM KING GARBAGE, OF THE GARBAGE DYNASTY!”

      - Eustace Bagge

      My personal favorite line of his.