Random note in peach basket led to friendship across miles

Once upon a time, there was this romantic notion about writing a note, sticking it inside a bottle and tossing it into the ocean.

It carried the belief that hope floats. The tide would take the bottle out to sea, and the waves would wash it up on a faraway shore.

Some lucky soul walking on the beach would discover it, open it and write back.

Perhaps this is what Hilda Waldron McGee had in mind almost a century ago. A young woman in her early 20s, Hilda had a summer job at a peach packing shed near Byron. She was 200 miles from the ocean, so she skipped the part about the bottle and slipped a note with her name and address inside a small basket of peaches.

She had her fingers crossed, wondering if she might find a pen pal … a “peach pen pal.”

A few weeks later, a letter arrived from a woman named Ethel Unger. She said she was delighted to have found the random note. She lived in Greenville, Ohio, the birthplace of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, of “Annie Get Your Gun’’ fame. (Hilda apparently had good aim.)

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

For almost a half century, the two women exchanged birthday cards and letters, sent Christmas gifts and shared family photographs.

They were about the same age, about the same size and struck enough of a resemblance to pass for sisters.

Those were the days when penmanship counted and relationships mattered. Folks licked postage stamps and filled the margins of post cards with their words.

Roselle McGee Ach has been reminiscing about her mother’s pen pal story lately, especially with peach season drawing to a close and the approaching 50th anniversary of her mother’s death on August 4, 1970.

“As far as I know, that’s the only note she ever put in a peach basket,’’ Roselle said. “She did it on a lark. She wanted to see what would happen. I’m sure she was surprised when she heard back.’’

Hilda was born in 1903, the same year the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane at Kitty Hawk. She was 11 years old when her mother died in childbirth after delivering twin boys. (The infants did not survive.) Her mother’s death left her father with five daughters to raise.

She married J.D. McGee on Christmas Eve in 1933. She was a widow 16 months later. Her husband drowned in a boating accident at a grist mill lake near the intersection of Boy Scout Road and Lower Hartley Bridge Road in south Bibb County.

Hilda was five months pregnant with Roselle. She never remarried. She and her young daughter went to live with her father.

There was no electricity or telephone at her dad’s house on Fulton Mill Road, so letters and telegrams were about the only means of communication with the outside world.

In the early days of television, there was a national radio and TV show called “Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club.” It was broadcast from Chicago. Ethel wrote her Georgia pen pal to let her know she was going to be on the show.

“My mother was working at Robins Air Force Base. She took off part of the day and went to a cousin’s house where they had a TV and watched the show in black-and-white,’’ Roselle said. “The host went from table to table, where the ladies sat for breakfast and (during) the show. Each group walked around their table with the cameras rolling. Ethel had told her what she would be wearing so she would recognize her. That was her first sight of her ‘peach pen pal.’ ’’

The only time they met in person was when Hilda and several co-workers in the supply division at RAFB were sent on TDY (temporary duty) to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. She sent a letter to Ethel to let her know she would be “in the neighborhood.” Greenville is about 40 miles north of Dayton.

Ethel’s husband ran a service station in Greenville, and Ethel sold snacks there. She invited Hilda to spend the first weekend with her and her family. Hilda had a wonderful visit but missed her daughter back home in Georgia.

“My mother had never been away from me, and she couldn’t stand it,’’ Roselle said. “I was either 13 or 14 years old. My aunt put me on a train in Macon. I changed trains in Atlanta and rode all night to Dayton by myself.’’

The next weekend, Ethel and her daughter-in-law traveled to Dayton and spent the day with Hilda and Roselle.

“There was never a photo of them together,’’ Roselle said. “I guess they didn’t have a camera.’’

All they had were handwritten letters and heartfelt memories.

“I’m not sure what year their friendship began, but I know it lasted until 1970,’’ Roselle said. “My mother had cancer and passed away on August 4. In fact, she was in the Macon Hospital during the Byron music festival on that Fourth of July weekend. All weekend long, out her room window, we saw ambulances coming and going, bringing the druggies to the hospital.’’

At the time, Roselle had a 4-year-old daughter, Allison, and was pregnant with her daughter, Meredith. She notified Ethel when her mom died and later received a nice letter and gift when Meredith was born in January. After that, they lost contact with one another.

Still, it’s a lovely thought about how a serendipitous note and small basket of sweet Georgia peaches could lead to a special friendship across the miles.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.