I was out on a walk with the dog yesterday evening on a country road north of Duluth, the same road I’ve walked literally hundreds of times the past few years.

Sometimes I wing rocks into the woods. When they hit ground it sounds like a small animal moving – and the dog rushes into the brush to see what’s there (should I feel guilty about misleading my dog?). I threw some rocks last night, and from the road I watched the path the dog took into the woods.

About 10 feet in, I saw what looked like a glass ring, and immediately thought it looked like the top of an old milk bottle. “It couldn’t be,” I thought – it was at the edge of a swamp, well away from any house, past or present. But I walked in, dug into the dirt and – sure enough – a mostly intact pint milk bottle emerged. Broken in half, but salvageable and with all the embossing intact (and no, my rocks didn’t break it – the split was well underground).

It reads “D.M.D.A. DULUTH, MINN.  – TO BE FILLED ONLY BY MEMBERS OF D.M.D.A.”

From Google searches, I found reference to a “Duluth Minnesota Dairy Association.” Does anyone know if that’s the correct translation of DMDA? Can anyone provide some more history about that business – dates of operation, in particular?

The bottle will be re-assembled and displayed above my kitchen sink.