Here is a story written by Roger Williams BCCA # 20171 about our dumping adventure which was published in the Gator Tales Newsletter May of 2003.

So, finally at the ripe old age of 37, I have a dumper story to tell. Every two months, I read the wonderful stories in the BCCA magazine; the ones where other people find rare cans under crazy circumstances. Well, this dump story doesn’t uncover any rarities or provide for much adventure, but it’s mine, so here it goes.

This trip to the “Dump” just happened in April, 2003; but there is some history leading up to it.

At the past Orlando show. Ritchie Dubreuil, Dave Paradine and I were talking about one thing or another, when the subject of dumping came up. I told them that I knew where a huge dump was. I mean this dump is Gigantic! “Ten Thousand cans or more, I swear, full of Tropicals, some Silver Bars, and lots of other Florida stuff,” I told them. I’m sure they thought I was exaggerating, but they wanted to go anyway.

I’ve been to this dump a few times before. The first two times were over twenty years ago. My friends and I were brave kids back in the day, and we all loved dumping, even though we didn’t know it was called that. We just rode our bikes around town to different patches of woods and hunted for cans. We’d fight through banana spider webs, tons of ants and occasionally snakes, just to get beer cans. Ocala was much smaller then, and there were a lot of woods. We’d find all the “cool” pull-top stuff that you’d normally find in the woods; Schlitz Malt, Country Club, Hop’n Gator, “tab-tops” and so on. Well, one day, one of my buddies had located a “new” spot, “way over by the Ford place.” That weekend, a bunch of us got on our bikes and made the long ride to the new woods. We found a nice car path into the woods; half dirt, half weeds.

We weren’t in there long; when we found it. I swear, the sun was shining down on this spot. It was bright, but only on this one spot, and the rest of woods were dark. I remember standing there, just staring at it. Suddenly, something happened to us and we went nuts!!! We started running all over this thing, picking up cans, throwing it back down and picking up another! All of these cans were flat-tops, and we’d never seen these kinds of cans before! We were losing our minds, going full-tilt crazy, when it happened. Somebody held his arm up in the air, with this big can in his hand. A quart Pabst snap cap/cone!!! We went more crazy!!! We all ran over to the spot and started digging, throwing cans all over the place. Once we all had one or two of these cones, we all got on our bikes and rode home as fast as we could.

Afterwards, we all realized that we left an awful lot of cans back there. See, once the cones surfaced, we dropped everything and went for the Papst cans. So, on our second trip to the dump, we relaxed a bit, and brought home the cans we left behind the first time. We rescued a lot of different cans from that place. All three Pabst quarts, Tropical Ale, Silver Bar, Bud, Busch, Pabst, Regal, Falstaff. Ruppert, Bavarian Select, Perfection, Miller, National Bohemian and others I’m sure. (On our last visit we found Blatz, Fishers and Frankemuth).

Flash forward to 2003. Dave Ritchie and I picked a date we could all go to the site. We met at my house, piled into Dave’s truck and drove to the spot. We parked at Burger King, squeezed through a fence at the Ford dealership and hit the woods. We walked about 5 minutes, looked around for a second or two and walked right up to it. At first, we were on the outer part of it, but within a few minutes, made our way to the big pile. Now this dump has been here for fifty years, so the weeds and leaves and growth had changed the look from when I first found it. Still, once we laid eyes on it, there was no doubt we were there.

I think I found the first Tropical Ale of the day, and tossed it to Ritchie. We were smiling pretty big. He and I kinda teamed up and dug around in the big pile. We’d make a hole, rip out dozens of flats, then mover over a few feet and start another. We’d move about thirty Black Label cans, and then find a Tropical. Move more BL’s and find a Regal, and so on. (Somebody in Ocala REALLY loved Black Label!!!) Dave meanwhile, was digging straight down! He had dug a hole several feet around and two or three feet deep. It was quite funny to look over and see Dave’s head sticking out of the dirt, surrounded by rusty old beer cans.

As I had said, there are probably 10,000 flats in these woods. All 1950’s, and many cans were deep. You could dig straight down in some spots and go through 20 cans before you hit bottom, Almost all Florida cans, but there are a few others.

After a few hours, we decided to walk back out for lunch. We hit the Burger King, loaded our cans in Dave’s truck, and went back into the woods for another hour or so. We got smart at the Burger King, and asked the girl there for a few trash bags so we could drag more cans out. Unfortunately, Ritchie and Dave had to make the long drive home, plus we were pretty tired, so we loaded up more rust and made our way out. We got back to my house, and took a few of the cans out for some pictures; they’re pretty cool. The address to Dave’s website is www.angelfire.com/az2/beercandave Click on “Florida Dumping”.

These woods are still here, but close to being cleared. There are “For Sale” signs all around, and the “building up” in Ocala is insane. Every piece of land around here is for sale, being cleared or has something on it already. So, if anyone is interested in digging this beauty, let me know. I’ll be glad to take you, but not until the Fall or Winter; too many banana spiders and way to hot.

See you in Spring Hill – Roger Williams # 20171