Backyarchaeology: Pencil This In

Part of our renovation is involving a whole bunch of concrete getting poured into a hole dug out deep from under the center our house onto which will be secured additional posts that will brace up under the first floor beams providing mooooooore than enough additional structural support to hold up the new bathtub we’re putting in on the second floor — thus preventing anything resembling the scene in “The Money Pit” wherein the tub crashes through to the first floor leaving Tom Hanks maniacally laughing through the hole where it once stood.

Personally Hanks’ reaction is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, but I certainly wouldn’t be laughing if a similar situation happened to us.

But as usual, my point isn’t about all that.

My point is that in all that excavating that took place, I’ve been itching to get under the house and play amateur backyarchaelogist and see what I might dig up. And today I did. So far, the only thing I found was this fragment of a Dixon Ticonderoga 1386 No. 3 pencil (click to enlarge):

The cool thing is it wasn’t dropped there, yesterday, last year, or even 20 years ago. Turns out via this page at Brandnamepencils.com that this particular Dixon Ticonderoga 1386 No. 3 pencil is somewhere in the neighborhood of 64-70 years old. My guess it might have been pitched sometime around 1950 when the place was being divided up into apartments, and its relative preservation can be attributed to the pretty much bone-dry conditions of the soil.

Granted, it’s not a 123-year-old bottle of adhesive, or a spent .357 round, but still… it’s worth a post.