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Tue 30 May, 2006 09:20 pm
Woman Claims Ring Recovered From Catfish
AMMON, Idaho (AP) - A woman says she's recovered a stolen class ring that was purportedly spit up from a Kentucky catfish. Lisa Peterson, an Ammon resident who moved from Ohio to Idaho several years ago, says her "Class of '84" ring from Franklin Heights High School in Columbus was stolen in 1991.
She'd given up on ever finding it - until several weeks ago, when she received a phone call from a Columbus television station that said the ring had been found by a fisherman angling for catfish in a murky pond in Augusta, Ky.
At first, she was skeptical, Peterson said.
"I thought, this is just an incredible fish story," she told the Post Register, about the initial phone call. "But they knew so much that I couldn't disbelieve it."
Wayne Nickerson, the fisherman, was collecting bait during a fishing excursion in northcentral Kentucky when he discovered the ring in the bottom of his live bait trap. The fishing area, called Long Stretch, is known for illicit dumping - in recent years, Nickerson says he's caught a sleeping bag in the fishing hole.
Nickerson, who now believes a catfish scavenging on the pond bottom spit the ring into his bait trap, says at first he was worried about finding the ring engraved "Lisa Marie Certain, Class of '84." He figured he might be dealing with a murder.
"I thought there may be a body," he said.
He called the local Augusta police chief, Col. Greg Cummins, to investigate. Cummins found Lisa Certain's picture at a Franklin Heights alumni Web site - along with the ominous description "missing in action." Classmates who were contacted said they hadn't heard from Lisa Certain in years.
Like Nickerson, Cummins feared the worst.
"I thought, the worst-case scenario is that there is a body with that ring," he said.
After the initial search turned up few leads, Cummins contacted television station WKRC in Cincinnati to broadcast Certain's photo. Finally, Columbus station WBNS-TV tracked down Certain to Ammon, where she's living under her married name, Peterson.
"The first person I heard from was the Channel 10 reporter from Columbus," Peterson said.
After the initial contact, she spoke with Cummins at the Augusta Police Department on May 2, and the ring was mailed to her the following day.
Cummins is relieved Peterson is safe - he was dreading the prospect of dragging the pond for a body. The only mystery left: How did the ring end up miles from Columbus, in a pond, 15 years after it was stolen?
"It could have been there for days, maybe years," Cummins said.
I know how it happened. The perfect plot for a muder mystery. The ring was stolen by a cat burgular. The cat burgular was apprehended by the mob and thrown overboard "with the fishes". One of the fishes ate his finger which contained the prize ring. Years later the fish was caught by an unsuspecting fisherman. How intriguing!
I have to admit, this story has me hooked!
Odd, Nick and Reyn. I was thinking of this old Dutch legend of the Zuider Zee:
http://www.aaronshep.com/stories/017.html
Letty, I'm shocked that you haven't been able to find a song that's appropriate here!
:wink:
Well, Reyn. Your lack of participation on our radio has left me high and dry. You just wait. I will find a fish and ring song.
Letty wrote:Your lack of participation on our radio has left me high and dry.
hehe, You'd be waiting an awfully long time for me to come up with anything. I'm just not that musically inclined, I'm afraid.
okay, here's the song:
The ring fell in to a burning fish on fire,
It went down, down, down,
And the flames burned higher,
And it lay there dead, that ring of fire,
That ring of fire.
I knew you could do it. Nothing stumps our Letty here....
Mmmm. I can smell the catfish cookin now.
Hey, Nick. This just popped into my head. Maybe you can identify it:
Hot catfish and corn dogers,
Hot catfish a nickel and a dime today.
The first part of the song is done in a minor key, but resolves to major, then back to minor at the end. Can you read piano notes?
Letty, I think that's a tune by Frank Loesser way back in the 50's. I can read music pretty well. He was also well-known for penning "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" which was one of my dad's favorites.
Wow! I just tried to pick out the melody line on the piano and it is HARD!
Where in the world would I have heard that, I wonder?
I'll get back to you later.
It was a pretty popular ditty back in the early 50's. Personally, I wouldn't even try to bang that out on a keyboard. I'm just not that good!
Obviously, neither am I, Nick. I'll contact my sister. She'll know and that's probably where I heard it to start with.
Just heard from my sister, and she vaguely remembers the song as having been done by a black man, (maybe Paul Robeson) singing his wares in the street as a woman, in contrapuntal fashion, touts her song, "Blackberries; get your sweet blackberries." Wow! Sorry, Reyn, to go from rings to fish to berries. <smile>