This cache is available 24/7. It may take a little ingenuity if you haven't encountered this sort of cache before. No real "tools" are required. Please return everything as you found it. Also, please do not leave any swag - this cache should only contain the container and the log. We love Favorite Points!
For nearly 20 years, this little pub has graced this corner of College St. and Lacey Blvd. Prior to that it was a 7-11 convenience store and the cooler doors are original from that era. Many stop here to "wet their whstle".
Wet your whistle is not the only saying that comes from the bygone pub era. In the early 1800's, at the local ale house, the innkeeper kept a record of each man's drinking on a slate with a piece of chalk - one mark for a pint and two marks for a quart. Unscrupulous innkeepers sometimes added extra marks so customers had to "mind their P's and Q's". When you paid up, the innkeeper "wiped the slate clean".
Every table was furnished with a "black jack" of ale: a sleeve dipped in black tar or pitch, hence the word "pitcher". for waterproofing. There was a nasty side effect to the pitch treatment on the black jack. The tar contained lead that would leach into the ale, creating a toxic drink that routinely lead to unconsciousness, or in more extreme cases, coma. The victim was often dragged to a corner and left until the slate floor had rendered him "stone cold sober".
Since toxic coma could easily be mistaken for death, the body was normally placed in front of the kitchen hearth and a noisy celebration was held in order to "wake" the victim. If the person had not resumed consciousness after a "three day wake", he was presumed dead and was buried. With mortality soaring due to the black plague, church graveyards filled so rapidly that old coffins had to be dug up and the bones stored in urns in the church so the burial space could be reused. It was found that one out of 25 exhumed coffins had scratch marks on the inside of the lid, indicating the person had been buried alive.
The church was mortified by that revelation and sent a directive that a rope be tied to the wrist of each corpse and an end attached to a bell on the gravestone. If the person should regain consciousness and begin to struggle, the bell would ring. Men were hired to sit in the graveyard and listen for the bell. With superstition rampant, few were eager for the nightly "graveyard shift". It is said that hundreds of lives were "saved by the bell". Townspeople were often disconcerted to meet someone on the street that looked identical to a person they had buried only a few days earlier. They would say they must surely be a "dead ringer".