Art Major Digs Up Old Bottles in Hope They Will Pour Out Local History

Ralf Windham, who often digs for old bottles at former home sites in Fullerton to trace local history and maybe make some money, says the best “treasures” are usually found where outhouses once stood.

“They usually have a lot of old whiskey bottles buried there,” said Windham, whose one-time collection of 2,000 old bottles has dwindled to about 400, the result of his moving to Fullerton from Mississippi.

Windham said he sold or gave the bottles away because of the difficulty and cost of moving them to Fullerton.

“The best I’ve gotten is $200 for an old soda pop bottle,” he said.

But he pointed out that his real goal is learning about Fullerton history from the bottles he salvages.

In fact, he mainly saves bottles that have “Fullerton” imprinted on them.

“The bottles tell you a lot about the time and the people who lived here, by what they drank and (the) medicine they took,” said Windham, 38, an art major at Cal State Fullerton.

Windham will continue to probe the ground with his 4- and 5-foot-long steel rods to find bottles and other artifacts.

“Old diggers never die,” he said. “I know people in their 80s who are still digging.”

His collection is used to decorate his living room or stored in cardboard boxes.

“Digging for bottles also serves as exercise and a way to relax,” he said, noting that his wife, Nita, an insurance company office manager, collects jugs, including one he found for her at one of his digs.

He was a member of the Middle Mississippi Bottle Club but said he doesn’t know of a similar bottle club in Orange County.

He would like to charter one: “There should be a club because there are a lot of people out there collecting bottles.”

In fact, collectors have to be wary about telling others of a good site. “I once told this fellow I was having a good dig, and it wasn’t long before a whole bunch of them showed up,” he said.

Windham often spends an entire day digging for bottles, usually at redevelopment sites in Fullerton and Anaheim. “I once dug out 300 bottles from a dig in downtown Anaheim,” he boasted.

“I read of a bottle that brought $55,000 in Virginia,” he said. “I don’t have any worth that much, but maybe someday . . .”

Windham, incidentally, plans to become a Christian minister: “I got a tug from the Lord in 1982, and I know the direction.

“A lot of ministers look at it as a profession. To me it’s a calling.”

Andrew March, 26, of Villa Park, an industrial design student interning in Austria, has created a portable TV that attaches to a person’s knee so he can monitor athletic events while sitting in a stadium.

Well, the Sony Corp. was impressed and awarded him a $2,000 scholarship as well as a Sony TV. That was for second place in the company’s national design contest.

He cleverly named the invention SO KNEE.

Composer Larry Shay--a former member of the Oasis Senior Citizen Center in Corona del Mar and writer of such upbeat songs as “When You’re Smiling (the Whole World Smiles With You)”--was recently honored at the center by Jack Toon and his ukulele strummers, who devoted a session to playing and singing the songs that Shay made famous. The group’s hula dancers also swayed to Shay’s “Stars Above Hawaii” hula song.

It was a memorial sing and dance.

Shay died recently at age 90.

Mary Moy, 63, of San Clemente spent her career as a registered nurse. She is also the mother of nine children, seven of whom are girls.

“I guess girls follow their mother,” said Moy, who recently retired to spend her time with her husband of 40 years, Kenneth Moy, 63.

All seven daughters--Marie, Patti, Rosemary, Colleen, Susan, Margie and Maureen--are nurses. The mother said nursing is great training.

But, like a mother, she added that her two sons help people too.

Patrick, a landscaper, was a missionary, and Timothy is a sheriff’s deputy for the county.

“All of them are good children,” she said.