Shootin' snuff bottles............

[Bob Wright]

Don't know how many here might remember those brown snuff bottles from Garrett Snuff. (Garret Sweet and Garrett Mild.) Women used to dip snuff, more lady like than chewin', you know. And the discarded bottles made great targets. These bottles were brown glass, held maybe a pint, were squared with an open end about an inch in diameter. I had several aunts who kept us (cousins and me) supplied with bottles.

We placed sticks in the ground and placed the mouth of the bottle over that. Prevented shooting under the bottle and breaking it. We'd back off some distance and break these bottles with our .22 rifles. The shooting was done where the trash was burned so the fire melted the broken glass eliminating any sharp shards of glass.

And, one other use was to place the open end toward you and shoot through the open neck and break out the bottom. Sometimes it was hard to prove your shot as the whole bottle shattered!

Bob Wright

 

[cpt-t]

BOB: I never shot any Snuff Bottles. But every little town it seemed in Kan, Ok,and Tx when I was young had a City Dump. And I spent many enjoyable hours prowling around in them with my 22 Rifle and a pocket full of shells when I was Young shooting Rat`s, Bottles, and Cans. I sure like Your Stories, for they sure bring back the memories for me. We must be about the same age, for I identify with most of the stories You tell. I turned 73 last Oct the 20th. So You keep telling Your Stories and I darn sure with keep on reading and enjoying them. Oh BTW I had a Great Aunt that Dipped Snuff and took 2 large spoons full of Had-A-Call every night just befor She went to bed. So She would get Her Proper Rest.
TAKE CARE MY FRIEND:
ken

 

[exavid]

Yep, my grandmother used Copenhagen. Her cook stove was a big wood fired range, she kept a roll on the warming shelf above the stove and when she thought no one was looking she'd lift one of the lids on the stove and spit tobacco into to. Mostly she did it when she had to stick another chunk of drift bark into the stove.

 

[pruger45]

I never had any aunts who dipped snuff!

 

[blume357]

A little different... last weekend my friends and I were shooting the newer smokeless tobacco cans filled with a special blend of binary explosives. Seems there are folks out there that have figured out how to 'tweak' the mix of Tannerite and make it even more volatile and easier to set off.. best one was when we blew up a mascot of a consultant to our industry... this was a stuffed toy: ground hog named Chucky.

Here's a picture of the moment of Chucky's demise:

 

[Colonialgirl]

Yep, my grandmother used Copenhagen. Her cook stove was a big wood fired range, she kept a roll on the warming shelf above the stove and when she thought no one was looking she'd lift one of the lids on the stove and spit tobacco into to. Mostly she did it when she had to stick another chunk of drift bark into the stove.

Had an uncle with a house at the foot of a mountain in PA; Thanks to a mining accident he also had an artificial lower right leg (which he named "ARCHIBALD"). He was in the habit of getting up in the morning, putting the teapot on the wood fired stove and then step out the door and urinate off the back porch. My Aunt caught him at it one morning and raised "Billie Hell"; So, he stepped off the porch, turned around urinated ON the porch; She never complained about it again. The other story is when she was complaining about something while he had the leg off sitting in his rocking chair, for some reason the leg fell over onto her toes with no help from him. He declared it was just protecting him.

 

[Diamondtreo]

I didn't have the opportunity to collect snuff bottles, but I did have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of 3X3 glass Magic Lantern plates for targets. They consisted of two plates of glass sealed at the edges with some sort of tape with emulsion film sandwiched between the plates. I'm pretty sure today's technology could restore the film, but in those days all I could see were faded or no images in the emulsion. Who knows what they might be worth today.

 

[BearBio]

While I was in Cali, I visited a SuperFund site (Hazard Materials site). Seems that numerous small boom towns (oil) had simply dug trenches, poured sludge over the trash and lit it. Then they would bulldozz the dirt over. Seems that burning the sludge put contaminated heavy metals (cadmium, arsenic, cobalt, mercury, etc) onto the trash that didn't burn. The ashes were also well contaminated. All the buildings, schools, telephone poles, etc had to be excavated down 6-8 feet and the soil removed and replaced (due to a horrendously high rate of cancer among the children in these towns).

Well, these areas are VERY economically depressed and very isolated, so the locals would bulldozz up the trash heaps and collect the bottles, etc. These would be shipped back East and sold in antiques stores. Of course, the "antique bootleggers" were dying of lead, mercury poisoning, as were many shopkeepers. BLM was trying to stop these guys but they would operate at night and the area was just too large.

 

[BucolicBuffalo]

Yep, my grandmother used Copenhagen. Her cook stove was a big wood fired range, she kept a roll on the warming shelf above the stove and when she thought no one was looking she'd lift one of the lids on the stove and spit tobacco into to. Mostly she did it when she had to stick another chunk of drift bark into the stove.

Had an uncle with a house at the foot of a mountain in PA; Thanks to a mining accident he also had an artificial lower right leg (which he named "ARCHIBALD"). He was in the habit of getting up in the morning, putting the teapot on the wood fired stove and then step out the door and urinate off the back porch. My Aunt caught him at it one morning and raised "Billie Hell"; So, he stepped off the porch, turned around urinated ON the porch; She never complained about it again. The other story is when she was complaining about something while he had the leg off sitting in his rocking chair, for some reason the leg fell over onto her toes with no help from him. He declared it was just protecting him.

:lol: :lol: :lol: That was so funny!

 

[CGDustDevil]

When we kids were growing up, we used to go to the dump to shoot rats and bottles. We did a lot of the same kinds of shooting that Bob's OP talks about. I sure recall lots of brown bottles of various shapes & sizes, but I have no recollection of 'snuff' bottles specifically.

We used to wander through the woods at hunting time up in Maine, and we'd frequently come by an old apple orchard which of course was a great place to find birds and deer... My dad taught us to go find where the house once stood, and then find and explore the dump! We found tons and tons of very old bottles. Shot hell out of 'em. :/ Wouldn't I love to have a few cartons full of those old bottles today!

Best regards, Pete

 

[#1rugerman]

Down the road from where I lived as a kid was a saw mill with a workers village. They had a large pit where they put trash, the food scraps went to the hogs, the paper and burn able stuff to the burn barrel including the cans and then it got dumped in the pit. They had a policy that all cans had to have both the top and bottom cut out and flattened to make the pit last longer, and to cut down on holding of water to lessen mosquitos breeding. The guy that ran the places son was a friend of mine. He would invite me over and we would take our bb guns or 22 rifles and go down to the pit and shoot the bottles in the pit. There were lots of old glass bottles with the old wire lever type closures (mason jars, condiment jars, etc) we had a ball. Years later I saw those same bottles at a flea market on sale for a good amount of money. Wonder how much money we shot up as kids?

 

[blume357]

When I was about 12 the power company took the lines down on a power line running across my families property... but left the poles with those glass insulators on them... this is back in the late sixties and I had seen that they often sold at a shop for 50 or 60 cents each... friend and I borrowed a ladder and collected abut 135 of them... we realized we were so rich that we needed to hide these glass insulators and so we buried them.... to this day I really wish I could remember where.....