SNIPPET: At the end of August, 1980, Susan MOON and her sons, Noah and Sandy, sailed from Montreal for London on a Polish passenger liner named for a Polish king of old. The boys were 12 and 9 at the time. They were on their way to live for a year in the south of England. Susan had taken a year off from teaching to work on a book, and she wanted the three of them to have an adventure together. She had rented out their house in Berkeley, CA, and had found a cottage in a little village called Dittisham-on-the-Dart and had arranged to rent it, sight unseen. It was a nine-day crossing, and on about the sixth evening, they had the idea of putting a message in an empty wine bottle and tossing it over the side. Writing on a piece of ship's stationery, Sandy, wrote a message: "Sept. 5 1980, Greetings. We are on a Polish ship, the Stefan Batory, en route from Montreal to London .... If you find this bottle, please write, telling us where and when you found it, to: Sandy de ! Lissovoy, Binham Cottage, The Lane, Dittisham, near Dartmouth, Devon, England." The message was rolled up and poked into the bottle, the cork was pushed in, Susan flipped a coin and the winner, Noah, hurled the bottle as hard as he could. They never heard nor saw it hit the water. In England they settled into village life. Although there weren't any other Americans around, they felt welcome and loved the predictability of village life. Noah played rugby after school, and young Sandy attached chestnuts to strings and played "conker wars" with his friends. Susan played recorder duets with an elderly woman who lived down the lane. On Friday evenings they went down the lane to the Ferry Boat Inn, where local folksingers congregated to hear an old man from the village, "Pop," sing bawdy Devonshire songs and play the squeezebox. One day in October the old postman, Claud, pulled from his leather sack a letter for Sandy from Ireland: "Killelan, Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry, 26/10/80. Dear Sandy, At last I am writing to you after finding the bottle which you sent from the Polish ship. I found your bottle in a place called Beal Tra, it is a small strand where I live near. I got your bottle on the 16th of September and am very sorry for the delay in answering.... My name is Tom O'CONNOR and my house is just next to the strand. I have brought the bottle into my local Pub which is in Cahirciveen and the name of it 'The Central Bar.' I live in Killelan and it is roughly three miles distant from Cahirciveen. Did you ever hear of it? It is on the ring of Kerry. I shall finish now and and will be looking forward to hearing from you. Yours faithfully, Tom O'Connor." Excitedly, the family found Cahirciveen on a map, way in the SW of Ireland. Sandy wrote back and then he pasted the letter into his journal.! That autumn they were watching TV in Binham Cottage when they got the news of John LENNON's assassination in NY. In their English village of 500 people, almost as many sheep, and probably 50 dogs, the violence of life back home seemed like a bad dream. Planning to spend a two-week Easter holiday in Ireland, they wrote to Tom again, c/o the Central Bar. They said they would look for him at the bar on the evening of April 18. Spring was in full bloom when they got to Ireland, and wildflowers were blooming everywhere and the sun shown brightly. After locating the bar they walked through the semi-darkness and the smell of stout. When they asked the landlord for Tom O'CONNOR, without explanation he said they were looking for Tom HAYES. He knew who they were and apologized for having accidentally broken the bottle just the day before. A young named Sean who was twirling on a stool said he was a relative of Tom O'CONNOR's and he would direct them to Tom's place . Bumping their way down a small road out of Cahirciveen, they drove across marshes, the rough pavement turning to dry-earth, past a stone-age fort beside a strand (beach), and on between fields of sheep. Purple vetch grew beside the road, the track became grass, a! nd they stopped beside a stone farmhouse with smoke coming out of the chimney. Tom O'CONNOR stepped out of his house and eagerly shook their hands. He was about 60, small and wiry, with a full head of grey hair but not all his teeth. He had bright blue eyes. His house was one big room with a dirt floor. He told them he lived there with his brother. At one end of the room a peat fire was burning, and a TV glowed at the other. Two sheep dogs slept by the fire, and a young lamb was lying on a blanket. It was the time of the spring lambing, and its mother had died, so Tom was bottle-feeding it. Tom said that theirs was the third bottle he'd found with a message in it, all of them on Beal Tra. (One had floated all the way from Florida, the other message was in Chinese). Tra means beach in Gaelic, and he went there to collect edible periwinkles. After a little while they all squeezed back into the car and went back to the pub. After visiting, Susan and the children went to find a youth hostel on Valentia Island and have supper. A few days later they took an all-day boat ride to visit the ancient beehive cells on Skellig Michael and decided to stop at Tom O'CONNOR's to say good-bye again and take a picture. They found him in a field with his sheep. He was glad to see them and smoothed his hair with his hands. A man came down the road on a bicycle and took a picture of the four of them smiling and standing in a row. Later, in Dartmouth, they sent a copy to Tom, but they never heard from him again. Susan wondered if he was still living. In the picture Tom is holding his head high because he knows it is an important occasion. In the background you can see sheep, and blue water, and a few curls of peat smoke lifting off an Irish mountain. -- Excerpts, May-June 2001 "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine (with photos and copy of letter).