While attending Claude Wambold's backyard gathering, and the Kulpsville Regional last year, I met a fellow CD 252 specialist, Bob McElvaney. He and I began discussing a trip to the Brookfield dump in central Jersey, since this transplanted Westerner had never had such an opportunity. Bob has worked the dump over 25 times in the last two decades, as have many others in this region.

The day dawned with a blue sky and breezy and sometimes gusty winds, temperatures in the mid-50's, not bad for an April outing. I met Bob and two other collectors at a diner, and after getting coffees, we proceeded the last few miles. The other guys were Mark Youmans, more of a bottle collector, and Bob Sullivan, a newer insulator collector. The dump is being covered by apartment compounds, so some of the area is already inaccessible. The good news though is that, with the construction, bulldozers have moved and removed a lot of ground!

This meant that there was new ground to dig and scratch into even though others had worked the "same" areas in past years. The ground was loose and there were no bugs or overgrowth yet. We scratched different areas at random using different claw rakes, finding only glass shards and parts of common CDs. Bob McElvaney informed me that both Star and S.F. ponies had been found here, which I had always wondered about, being a pony specialist also.

Leaving the naked ground, we moved into a wooded area near an abandoned storage tank, and found barely concealed piles of insulators in several areas, including 2 concrete lined pits. McElvaney and I scrounged around these some but lost interest. Youmans and Sullivan dived in with gusto however, and had one pit dug down over a foot. They found some common pieces intact, plus spools and interestingly, a signal and CD 101 with embossings on a raised horizontal band. The cool day and breezes helped with the strenuous activity, as did the Budweiser and sandwiches! 

The find of the day was a very near mint CD 110 Brookfield Spiral! It was uncovered by...who else, the bottle collector of course! He had inspected a shard that caught his eye and his rake also snagged this gem that was just under the surface of some freshly bulldozed ground, not more that 20 yards from some new building foundations. All of us had walked over this same spot ourselves more than once that day.

I found no treasures but saved a CD 101 with a very tilted top, a signal with a petticoat longer than the skirt, a spool and some nice big glass slag found over by the destroyed furnaces. I'm grateful to Bob McElvaney for giving me this opportunity to dig in such a historic setting.