Message in a bottle
It was found by Clint Buffington, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah but was vacationing in the Turks and Caicos when he came across the bottle. Buffington, a writing teacher and a musician, found it sticking out of sand on a remote beach on one of the islands a few years ago.
“(I saw) this coke bottle half-buried in the sand (that) looked like it had been there since the beginning of time,” Buffington told WMUR-TV. “On the paper, there was something written in pencil — like handwriting — and it said ‘Look inside.”
That’s naturally what he did. What did the note say? Well, nothing too interesting, simply: ‘Return to 419 Ocean Blvd. and receive a reward of $150 from Tina, owner of the Beachcomber.’
Trip to New Hampshire
Over time Buffington tracked down the Beachcomber and discovered it in Hampton, New Hampshire and found the Pierce family owned it at the time (they only sold it a few years ago). He flew there recently and did as the note suggested — returned it and the bottle. Paula Pierce was thrilled, recognizing her late-father Paul’s handwriting.
“It just hit me,” she said. “It was my father’s writing. And I was shocked. It’s incredible. He wrote this. His hands were on this. He’s been gone 26 years and he put this in a bottle and it survived.”
She believes he threw it in the Atlantic not long after buying the Beachcomber in 1960. Pierce insisted Buffington take the $150, which of course didn’t pay for his trip or time spent. But he did it for adventure and to complete the circle of the message in a bottle.
Indeed, he told Pierce there was a reason that he waited until he was able to return it in person. “It doesn’t say ‘mail it to 419 Ocean Boulevard,'” he noted. “It says ‘return it’, and that’s what I’m doing.”
Paula Pierce was plenty grateful. “The significance of the message in the bottle was not lost on him,” she pointed out. “It took him to find it, and it took him to come across the country and bring it to me.”
Would you have?