Message In A Bottle

“Walked out this morning, don’t believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I’m not alone at being alone
A hundred billion castaways, looking for a home…”

–The Police

—

When I was a kid, my Uncle Billy and Aunt Therese used to rent a cabin in Monmouth, Maine and hold family vacations up there. During my early teens, my father would pack our family into an old school bus he had (somewhat) renovated and take us up to the camp for the occasional weekend. My Uncle Billy’s family would stay inside the cabin and we’d stay inside the bus, parked at the very end of the long dirt road that led to the site. It was one of the few traditions we had that forced us to act like a real family and, eventually, those camping trips ended when my parents succumbed to their respective problems. But, for a while there, the place kept the bipolar disorder and alcoholism at bay. I always thought Monomouth, like all of Maine, held a certain healing quality. It was magical.

on July 8th, 1974, Sharon, the youngest of Uncle Billy’s three daughters was eight years old. She, along with one of her sisters, two young family friends, and my Uncle Billy, went down to the campsite dock with four green-glass Coke bottles in hand. Inside the bottles were simple messages with names, addresses, and pleas for a response from whomever found the bottles. It was a childhood game, but my Uncle indulged the children like he always does. He took all four bottles and threw them out into the lake as far as he could. Within a year, three of the four bottles were found. My cousin Sharon’s bottle went undiscovered.

Over the years, Sharon herself would look for the bottle whenever she went up to Monmouth, but there was no sign of it. I vaguely remember Uncle Billy talking about the bottle around the time we went up, but for us kids, looking for an old bottle wasn’t a top priority. There was fishing and swimming to be done and Smores to be made. Who had time to look for a stupid bottle? Eventually, the owner of the camp passed away sometime in the late 1980s and the place was sold. It had been offered to my Uncle but, at the time, they thought the price was too high. They now realize what a mistake they made. To this day, they still tell stories about the camp. We all do. Like I said, the place was magical.

A few months ago, Taylor Milliken, 13, and Noah Milliken, 10, of Winthrop, ME were out walking at the opposite side of the lake and stumbled across Sharon’s bottle. Evidently, everything washes up there–dead deer, canoes, trash, you name it. They saw the bottle had a note, so they opened it. But when they saw the message was dated 1974, the brothers thought it was a joke because it was “from a really long time ago”. Their parents knew better, though. Mrs. Milliken immediately went to work on the Internet and found my Aunt and Uncle easily. Their phone number has never changed since I was a young kid and they’ve never moved from their house on Tremont Ave. It’s where I stay whenever I go back to Amesbury. With one phone call, the bottle had finally made its connection–34 years later.

Eventually, the Millikens were put in touch with Sharon who now lives in North Carolina with her own family. She’s now 42 (she graduated Amesbury High School the year before I did), but she evidently cried like a little girl when she got the news. Letters were exchanged, phone calls made, and Taylor even sent a message of his own into the lake. The story is now big news up and down the New England Coast. There is even video of the find. The story reached me via a Google news alert for anything pertaining to the high school. And so the bottle, and its message, continue to inspire and offer hope, like ripples in a pond.

This whole thing has made me think a lot about communication and how the antiquated actual correspondence seems to feel these days. Technology has certainly made things faster and has enabled us to communicate on a global level. But is that necessarily better than an old Coke bottle and a piece of college ruled notebook paper. Do our e-mails and text messages have the ability to last thirty-four years into the future? Will they have the same impact as my cousin’s note if found? I’d like to think so, but I remain skeptical. I guess I’m still old fashioned to a certain degree. My my little desk here in Indianapolis doesn’t have the same magic as the camp in Monmouth. It’s functional, nothing more. It doesn’t invite childhood flights of fancy. Which is why I’m going to turn my attention to a new hobby that will marry old-time correspondence with modern technology. I’m calling it “Floppy Disc Tied To A Balloon”. Hopefully it won’t take 34 years to let you know how the experiment went…