Bottled-up emotions

One of the newspaper clippings that always chokes me up a little is found on page 4 of the Saturday, Dec. 16, 1933 edition of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette:

20-YEAR-OLD NOTE FOUND IN BOTTLE

    While working on the Goose Creek project near Logan, Ray Castell found a bottle containing a note which he turned over to the Logan Republican. This recalled to Fred E. Huls, managing editor, a circumstance which occurred when he was a lad attending the East Grade School.

    On the note were the names of C. H. Huls, A. R. Huls, A. E. Huls, and F. E. Huls, together with the date of January 24, 1913.

    The note was prepared by Charles and Fred Huls twenty years ago and was placed in an extract bottle which they threw into Goose Creek one morning while enroute to school [., sic]

    Castell found the bottle a half mile down stream from the bridge where it had been buried in debris.

 

Talking with my dad helped me figure this out. I knew that grandpa Fred and great-uncle Charley had gone to the "same" school I did in Logan: Central Elementary. However, what my young mind didn't know was that Central was rebuilt many times over the years.

Central was too small and needed to be remodeled*, so grandpa Fred and great-uncle Charley went to East Elementary (according to oldohioschools.com, East Elementary was built in 1910 and demolished in 2011) for awhile. They would pass Goose Creek every day on their way to school. Grandpa even told of leaving their gum or jawbreaker candies under the bridge to retrieve on they way home. Yuck.

I can see the two boys creating the message with both their names and the names of their parents. Grandpa Fred (F.E.) would have been 8-years-old at the time and Charley (C.H.) would have been 10.

They probably thought it would go to the sea, but instead it went about a half mile.

I can only imagine the emotions this 20-year-old bottle brought to the family. I can picture my great-grandmother maybe tearing up a little when she saw the message from the past. I hope it gave them all some pleasure to think about the happier times of Charley's youth.

Grandpa Fred would especially need that comfort. Eight months later both Alpheus Eugene (A.E.) and Anna Rebecca (A.R.)  Huls would be dead.

*Central Elementary possibly had to be rebuilt/remodeled after the Collinwood school fire in Collinwood, Ohio (a Cleveland suburb) on March 4, 1908. Also known as the Lake View School fire, 172 students (including four of my mother's known relatives), 2 teachers and 1 rescuer died in one of the deadliest school disasters in United States history.

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