But Pregracke doesn’t send bottles with messages, he collects them. And in what has become a side hobby, he reads glimpses of the lives of those who sent them into the unknown.
For 12 years, Pregracke, founder and president of Living Lands & Waters, a non-profit river cleanup organization based in East Moline, Ill., has trawled hundreds of miles of rivers from the Mississippi to the Potomac, picking up trash and piling it onto four barges he operates.
He and his band of brothers – seven employees who are self-described river rats – have found more than 70 bottles containing messages.
Many messages are poignant. One from a mother writing to her dead child: “I went to visit you last night. Did you see me there? Always remember Mommy loves you.” Another from someone professing love: “I once saw your face and it was a safe place … If you ever retreive (sic) this bottle know that this message is for you. I love you.” And this one: A bottle with nails in the bottom and a message that says nine times, “I bind you.”
Some bottles contain bogus treasure maps. Others conceal dollar bills, possibly thrown into the river for good luck.
Pregracke sometimes tries to respond to requests to contact the sender. “I called one guy who was a truck driver and said, ‘I think you threw this off of a bridge in Burlington.’ He was so pumped to hear from me.” He’s tried others, but most of the phone numbers in the messages are disconnected.
Pregracke found his favorite message five or six years ago on the Ohio River near Paducah, Ky. “I opened it and saw it was a song,” he says. On his barge, he pulls out the handwritten sheet of music from one of several plastic bins overflowing with bottles. It’s called Lavender for You and is written for guitar.
He has had it played just to listen to it. “It was cool,” he says. “Someday I’ll retire on this music. It will be my hit song.”
His other favorite: a picture of “Kathy” ripped from a calendar of topless women and labeled “Miss August 2000.”
Each bottle is exciting to open, he says. “I remember the exact place, and where, and when, and who wrote” the message.
Pregracke’s group, dressed in unwashed jeans, baseball caps and ripped T-shirts, would seem an unlikely crew to be captivated by puzzles in bottles. Michael Coyne-Logan, 32, still remembers a message he found near Louisville in March 2008. “I opened it up and was super-excited,” he says.
It contained a photocopy of a picture of a man and his two sisters who had died. Written on it was a request to throw it back if found. In 2000, someone did just that and scribbled a note saying, “I honor your wish.”
Coyne-Logan can’t bring himself to throw it back. It’s still on his dresser.
SOURCE: USA Today
Posted on November 18th, 2009 at 2:14 pm by Lin McNulty
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