MASON COUNTY, W.Va (WSAZ) -- Three adolescent boys did not realize that their fishing trip on the bank of the Kanawha River would turn into a short history lesson, a glimpse of a time decades before they were even born.

Brothers Nazar and Kanaan Abbas, along with their friend Hunter White, were fishing Tuesday near Tu-Endei-Wei Point Pleasant Battle Monument State Park in Mason County when they saw an old bottle and noticed it had a paper inside of it.

The boys took the bottle home where one of their parents helped them pry it open. The letter had gotten wet, so they dried it out with a hair dryer.

Parts of the letter were too damaged to read, but other parts could be read clearly. Among the legible parts were, ''Hi my name is Sandra Hodge. If anyone finds this call me, don’t be shy'' and ''by the way I'm 10 years old and in the 4th grade.''

The letter also had an address and a phone number. Naturally, the boys were curious if the number would give them any answers about the story behind the letter, so they picked up the phone.

A woman answered on the other line, and it was the mother of the little girl who wrote the letter. The letter had stayed in the bottle for 30 years.

The girl who wrote the letter, Sandra Hodge, is now Sandra Dale.

She is 41 years old, married and has children of her own. She lives in Pinch now, which is in Kanawha County.

''I couldn't believe it after 30 years,'' she says, after her mother told her what happened Tuesday. ''I have kids older than I was when I wrote the letter.''

She does not remember writing the letter but says she is not surprised, because she and her brother were adventurous when they were younger.

The Abbas boys' mother, Debbie Vance, was also surprised that after 30 years, the woman who answered the other end of the phone was the author of the letter's mother. She says she has heard of stories of someone tying a note to a balloon and someone else finding it, but never anything like this.

The girl also included her address and a description of her house in the letter.

''That is definitely not something you would do in this day and age,'' Vance joked.

The two parties have not met yet but have talked to each other on the phone.