On the local news last night — from KFDM Channel 6 in Beaumont, Texas, — came one of the strangest stories I have heard in awhile. As a matter of fact it is strange on a couple of different levels once you think about it.
It seems as if this guy named Joe Richardson who lives up in the East Texas Pineywoods town of Buna lost his technical school ring in 1987 while fishing in Lake Sam Rayburn. A guy called Richardson up on Thanksgiving and told him he had found his ring in — of all places — the mouth of an eight-pound bass the caller had caught.
Apparently Richardson lost the ring in the very same area in which the Good Sam had caught the ring-eating fish on Rayburn. Whether the bass was actually eight pounds, well, I guess we’ll just have to take that nugget on faith.
Now what is equally strange, to me at least, the guy who called Richardson saw the latter man’s name etched on the ring and used his cell phone from there in the boat to search the Internet for Richardson. The Richardson from Buna was the fourth Richardson he called. That was certainly lucky because, being one who has a pretty common name, I would imagine there are a lot of Joe Richardsons out there. As a matter of fact, “Joe Richardson” returns 39,100 hits on Google. The kind-hearted fisherman, who wanted to remain anonymous, would have had one hell of a cell phone bill if it turned out his guy was number 39,099.