In 1995, four little friends, all ten years old, wrote together a message on a piece of paper and decided to put it in one Bottle and throw it into the sea. It happened 27 years ago in La Marque, Texas, near Galveston Bay. In their imaginations, the four thought it would be nice if the message “landed on the other side of the world, or at least somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico,” one of them said. Brian Standefer. “If you find this message please call,” they wrote on the card, leaving two phone numbers, “if we’re not home leave a message on the answering machine with the number.”
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The history
“We were just a bunch of kids joking around looking for something funny,” recalls Standefer, now 38. He and the other three friends Drew Plasek, Travis Kasler and Lance Kasler, stayed in touch over the years and got back together a year and a half ago when Casler died of a heart attack. “We were devastated,” said Standefer.
“Message in a Bottle!”, which in this case isn’t the famous 1979 police song, but the phrase a volunteer cleaner at Mac McGaffey Highland Bayou Park must have shouted out when he spotted the bottle with the message last month partially buried in mud just two miles from where it was thrown 27 years ago. The volunteers reported the find to a local TV station, which posted a photo of the news on the website Keep La Marque Beautiful Commission Facebook page. Several local residents recognized Standefer’s name. “Seeing my handwriting and my friends’ names — he underscored — was a surreal and exciting thing, especially since we lost Travis.”