The Bottle

My dad has this bottle. I have always remembered him having it. Today he told me he found it in '71, the year I was born. He used to put it on the top of his dresser to display it, and I remember my mom would always put it back in his dresser cabinet when she dusted. Several years back my mom and dad went to the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala and found the exact bottle in one of the little museums. Today we took it there to compare. Come to find out, there was a real-life archaeologist on-site giving a tour! The lady in the gift shop said we had come on just the right day, so we had it examined. It is a handmade whiskey flask that is probably at least 100 yrs old. It could have been made anytime between 1870 and 1918 because they stopped handmaking the flasks when they invented a whiskey flask making machine in the early 1900's. He said it was a quality handmade one. My dad found it in Lytle Creek up some very remote path. I speculated that someone was drinking some whiskey out of a very old reusable bottle, drank way too much, stumbled back home and days later said, "damn, where's my cool bottle!?!" It's funny to me that even this bottle can have a story that is somewhat epic!

Me and my mom at Mission