After learning about a message recently found in a bottle at the Calcasieu River, this writer immediately thought of Jim Croce’s memorable lyrics from “Time in a Bottle” – dealing with mortality and the wish to have more time.
On Sunday, September 5, 12-year-old Gabe David, a Basile High sixth grader, was enjoying a family camping trip off the Calcasieu River at the Kinder Pump. He and his friend Eli Lebouf set off for the river’s dam to check some hoop nets and traps that had been set the day before. The boys had been fishing off the rocks at the dam for several days and even came up with a soft shell turtle that Gabe accidently sat on in the water.
While checking his lines, Gabe spotted an old bottle containing a piece of paper. It was the proverbial “message in a bottle” sitting amongst the rocks. Taking the bottle back to camp, he unsuccessfully attempted to open it. Eventually, he decided to break the bottle in order to get to the note inside.
Although the paper was ragged and torn in several places, it was still readable.
The note said, “I am Angela Rose Ware and I am 11 years old. I go to school at Elizabeth. I am studying Tides in school. Address is Elizabeth High, Box 580, Elizabeth, La 70638 and write a letter to me if you find the bottle with a letter to me.”
Gabe’s mother, Mamie, took a close up photo of the letter and a picture of her son with the letter and broken bottle and posted them on Facebook, explaining how Gabe had found the bottle and its message and was trying to find the Angela Ware identified.
It did not take very long before friends of Angela were messaging the David family and forwarding Mamie’s post to Ware.
Mamie and Angela then made contact via messenger.
The writer of the message, who is now 48 years old and living in Oakdale, explained that she placed the message inside the bottle in 1984 as part of a class project when she was in the fourth grade. All of the members of the class gave their bottled letters to Mrs. Brenda Hughes, their teacher, who placed all of the bottles in various streams, creeks, and rivers in the area.
Angela said that if any of the other bottles with messages created by her classmates were ever found, she is unaware.
Mrs. Hughes and several class members were made aware of the bottle’s discovery, leading to more shared memories.
The finding of the message in the bottle allowed the teacher and her students to relive a moment from their days together at Elizabeth High all those years ago. The time (37 years ago) was saved in a bottle, and the message has become a treasured relic of a “hands on” lesson about tides being taught in a creative way.
As the tides rise and fall, they mark the passage of time, and although time can not be saved in a bottle as Croce wished for in his song, the memory of a moment can be brought back to life in the finding of such a message in a bottle.
Gabe is the son of Kelly and Mamie David and the grandson of Butch and Leola Granger and Willie and Wilda David, all of Duralde. The entire family was very excited about the young boy’s discovery and said he has an adventurous spirit.
