He lived in a second story apartment, so that was not an ideal situation either. Nor did they share our passion for insulators. During the early 1970's a few local bottle diggers organized a collector's club and met on a regular basis. There were still some really good bottles to be dug in local dumps then. If you are old enough to remember, almost every old house and town had a dump usually out back somewhere.
Digging dumps is another story, another time.
However, you could sometimes dig some good threadless and threaded insulators in those dumps. Back in 1970 there was a connection between the old dumps, bottle collectors and insulators, at least in Northern New England. Most of the bottle collectors ran across some good insulators in their travels. Almost every town along the coast of Maine had their flea markets. The money we made from the sales financed our habit.