In my October 1997 column, I shared with you the discovery of an interesting insulator (well, MOST of the insulator) by Darin Cochran of Indianapolis, Indiana. The cable top looked like a No.3 Cable (CD 254), but the base looked more like a Hemingray-23 or -24 (CD's 241 and CD 241.2 respectively) or possibly a CD 232 with drip points. At that writing, the piece was a new style, and I am pleased to have Bob Stahr of St. John, Indiana share the story of its discovery and subsequent CD assignment by N.R. Woodward of Houston, Texas.

CD 254 and New CD 271

Read on . . . for the full story. . .

It's no secret that Darin Cochran, Roger Lucas, and I have been having great fun digging at Hemingray's original factory site in Muncie, IN. On a sunny day in early December 1996, our fun turned into genuine excitement. I chose a spot I remembered as having good potential, Darin chose another spot and Roger chose his. As we were digging, I heard Darin yell over to me "Hey Bob, what insulator is this?" Imagine Darin on one side of a cyclone fence and Roger and I on another. Roger and I approached Darin as he displayed a broken power piece.

Darin digs the deepest! (and always finds something interesting)
In this photo of Darin Cochran, notice the insulators in the foreground.
Included in this are CD 282 Hemingray No 2 Provo, assorted 
misshapen solid pours of Hemingray 42's ... 
and the new CD 271.

Being very familiar with Hemingray, the next words out of my mouth were "A new CD!" First wanting to jump over the fence and look for more, Roger and I quickly gained our composure and stood there in amazement at Darin's new discovery. At this time we also discovered how much Darin liked using a shovel. He found this piece about 4 feet down. After some discussion, including instructions to Darin to "find the other part of the embossing", Roger and I went back to our "spots". 

After about five minutes I yelled out "YES!". This time, I brought my piece over towards Darin, and Roger came towards us. They both said what is it and I exclaimed "an unembossed CD 100.6!".

Now Roger was in a predicament. Should I dig near Darin or Bob? Roger later decided to come over by me, and after watching me pull out a few more pieces of CD 100.6's and a couple whole ones, he almost gave up digging. Roger was only three feet away from me and wasn't finding any CD 100.6 E-1's. I convinced Roger to continue digging anyway and he did end up finding a few CD 128 Hemingray E-1's in an unreported ice blue color. 

In short, dump digging at Hemingray has its pitfalls. Items seem to be strewn about very sporadically, and are usually broken. It is very unpredictable to locate a specific spot that contains anything of real rarity. We all felt extremely lucky that day and we prayed that there might be more days like this in the future. Upon leaving for the day, we all hoped that the piece Darin dug would be assigned a new CD. Much to our hopes the new piece has recently been assigned CD 271. Only Hemingray enthusiasts can guess the rest of the embossing on this piece. I have a few, what are yours?

The new CD 271 in Hemi Blue.  Front skirt embossing would have read:  HEMINGRAY -#.  Rear skirt would have read: MADE IN U.S.A.  Unfortunately not enough embossing was found to determine its style number.

Shadow profile drawing by Bob Stahr.