Forty years ago, a relative helped a 3-year-old boy named David write a message in a bottle.
They rolled up the handwritten note, which was signed by David in his child’s scrawl, tucked it inside an old Grolsch bottle with a rubber stopper, then tossed it into the Pearl River in Mississippi. Life went on, and the bottle bobbed and floated in the river for the next four decades, until Jeremy Weir came along.
Jeremy is a retired high school principal and amateur treasure hunter. He loves to spend time fishing on the Pearl River, and while he’s in the water he keeps his eyes open for any objects that would fit into his collection. Over the years, he’s brought home special pieces of polished rock and driftwood, and sometimes an old bottle or two.
“If I see an interesting bottle out on the Pearl, I’ll pick them up, check them out and occasionally bring them home,” he said.
When Jeremy got home he examined the bottle. Once he washed away the mud and silt, he noticed a slip of paper wrapped in plastic inside the bottle.
“I looked at it initially, and I thought it was trash. I noticed there was a little plastic baggy; it looked like maybe a calendar out of somebody’s planner, and it was dated 1983,” he said.
Jeremy carefully removed the note and opened it up. It was dated June 4th 1983, and it says:
“To the finder of mystery bottle, my name is David and I live in Jackson, Mississippi. I am 3 years old. If you find my bottle please call me at ###-###-#### – call collect. Good Luck and Happy Hunting.”
Intrigued, the former educator contacted his daughter, who is an attorney, and she helped track David down! Jeremy called him on the phone, and it’s a conversation neither man will soon forget.
“I said, ‘Is this David?’ He said, ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘I have something that belongs to you.’ I said, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I found a bottle in the Pearl River today that has your name and phone number, and that you live in Jackson, Mississippi.’ He’s like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m going to put you on the speakerphone; I want my wife to hear this. Would you mind repeating?’ I repeated and read the letter to him, and they were just blown away.”
Jeremy and David have plans to meet up soon so that David can get his note back. It really is a small world, isn’t it?
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