An East Texas man hunting at Toledo Bend recently discovered a glass bottle containing a handwritten note from 1988.
After posting a photo of the note on Facebook, Waylon Jones said the granddaughter of the man who wrote the note recognized his handwriting.
After making contact, Waylon learned that Terry Hall, of Nacogdoches, wrote the note and tossed it into the Sabine River while at a hunting camp in Panola County in the fall of 1988.
We hand-delivered the note to Hall at his Nacogdoches County home on Monday.
“It’s pretty unique for that to happen after 31 years,” Hall said. “I probably wouldn’t have ever thought of it again.”
Hall said he tossed the bottle in the river on Nov. 27, 1988 near Deadwood. The letter read in part, “If you find this note, call me collect” and included his mom’s old phone number. It went on to say, “Written on 11-27-88. Sent from Carthage, Texas.”
“Being that it’s been that long, it was probably stuck under a log jam for 20 to 25 years,” Hall said.
Hall said his granddaughter was the one who recognized his handwriting in the photo on Facebook. Hall confirmed it was his letter when he recalled his mother’s old telephone number.
“A lot has changed since then,” Hall said. “When I threw it in the river, I had one grandchild. Now I’ve got three grandkids, and two great-grandkids.”
Along with the letter, Jones made Hall an arrowhead out of the glass from the bottle.
