Message In A Bottle Pt 1

I hope that all of you in the United States had a Patriotic and safe 4th of July weekend. For those in other countries, and those on duty serving America, I wish that you could have shared in Catalina’s festivities.

The fireworks spectacular last night was one of the finest, and longest, I have ever seen. Congratulations to the City Fathers for not cancelling such an inspirational event.

The tourists and locals alike salute you.

Thirty-three years ago, 1976, (I can’t believe that it has been that long ago!), we celebrated a major milestone, "Bicentennial" of the United States of America!

Communities all over the country were planning creative ways to make this date, and their individual participation, special. Avalon had yet to come up with our own "unique" form way to honor the celebration.

Pictures of this 4th of July will follow as received.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith or was it Jones, offered a pose in front of their boat called "Fight On" in honor of the USC battle cry. They were here injoying the parade and fireworks, for the 4th of July weekend.

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE In the early 60's, I had come up with the idea of throwing fifty bottles in the water, half way across the channel from the Mainland, with messages in them, to see where they would be found. Amazingly, some were picked up in the United States, and many more in Mexico, but some made their way to the Philippines and even to the South Pacific! With this in mind, and being "unique" as we are, situated on an Island, I thought it would be a Patriotic idea for us to throw bottles into the ocean, with "Bicentennial" greetings, to whomever found them.

We also offered a reward to these lucky "discoverers". The U.S.A.'s specially issued "Bicentennial" two dollar bill, if the bottle was found outside of the United States, and the "Bicentennial" coin set (penny, nickel, dimes, quarter, and half dollar), if found along the shore of the 50 states.

You can imagine the fun I had rummaging through trash cans and going to local liquor stores (as my father was a recovering alcoholic, I am sure that some locals, seeing me frequenting every libation store in Avalon, sometimes the same stores every day for weeks, wondered if I was either supplying my Father, or if I was now "cursed" with the same disease).

For the event I needed Two Hundred and One bottles which would be dated 1776-1976 (one bottle for each year of the Union’s existence). And, they couldn't be just any bottles; they had to be tall wine bottles, and these bottles had to be colored, not clear, so as to keep the sun's rays from penetrating them during the voyage and fading the messages.

Once I got all of the bottles, they had to be emptied (down the drain, not down my gullet)

rinsed out and thoroughly dried.

We advertised in our local newspaper, "THE ISLANDER", to find donors who wanted to "sponsor" a bottle (I believe that it was around $2.50 to $5.00 per bottle).

The sponsors were then given three choices, "first come, first serve", of the Year numbers they wanted to have assigned to their bottles. With the help of our local elementary school children, 201 messages were individually written, in both English and Spanish, giving the "Bicentennial" Greeting, the coin or paper dollar reward offer, their names, the names of the bottle sponsors, and bottle number. What an amazing job the kids did in support of this project.

With the invaluable assistance of Peter Salamunovich, his brother, and a few other enthusiastic local kids (I would still be stuffing bottles NOW if it weren't for their assistance!), we rolled up the messages, inserted them through the narrow bottle neck, crumbled paper towels in the bottom of the bottles, to try to absorb any moisture, and then sealed the corks at the end of neck of the bottles with sealing wax (if you ever accidentally poured sealing wax on your flesh, you know how painful that is, aside from you ladies [and some gents] who voluntarily submit to body waxing, OUCH!).

On July 4, 1976, "Catalina Cruises", took us all out on one of their ships half way between Catalina and San Clemente (about 7 miles South East), free of charge, and one by one, calling out the years, the bottles were ceremoniously thrown off the stern of the ship.

Only about half of the bottles were ever recovered (The Catalina Island Museum has a complete record of the responses), but all who responded were in Mexico and the South Pacific! All of the bottles made it beyond our borders!

It took months before we got any response and I am still hopeful, that in some very remote region of the world, at least one more of these bottles will yet be located (MINE has not yet been found!).

Two "findings" stand out in as important to this story...and they will be told in my next blog.