SWEET TEA Lost ring still a gem of a story

— Geneva Cobbs heard the "ponk" in the water.

Thought nothing of it.

Until sometime later when, back on land, Geneva lifted a sandwich for a bite and discovered a finger unadorned. Her mother's ring - set with her daughters' birthstones - was gone.

Pam and Joyce were teenagers when they pooled their money and gave the ring to her for Mother's Day, probably, Geneva says, in 1976.

Geneva lost the ring on a cool Saturday in April 1992, when Boy Scouts from her grandson's troop were camping at the Cobbs' weekend place on Greers Ferry Lake.

They were on the party barge when Geneva heard the "ponk."

"One of the boys said he was cold," she says. "I got a towel and pitched it to him."

Later, while the boys played football in the road beside their property, Geneva and a mother made sandwiches and took a walk.

They were standing at the edge of the road where the boys played when she noticed her naked finger.

And remembered the kerplunk.

The adults and the Scouts scoured the place. They even searched the trash can, her husband, Ed, reminded her as she told the tale.

In her heart, though, Geneva knew: "It was at the bottom on the lake."

"I thought about it all the time," she says. "Whenever it was mentioned, I'd tell the story about losing it in the lake when I threw the towel."

Pam and Joyce eventually gave their mother another, and included birthstones for her three grandchildren as well as theirs.

In 1999, the Cobbs moved to the lake full time.

On Tuesday, Geneva was chopping weeds and pulling grass by the road, careful of the broken glass by the rock.

"When I pulled the grass out, [something] was shining," she says. "I thought it was a piece of glass from a broken bottle."

"It was lodged underneath the rock," she says.

The shiny something, you certainly have guessed, was her long-lost ring.

"It was caked with dirt.

It was such a wonderful surprise. I screamed for my husband."

Seventeen years later, except for the dirt, the ring looks as pretty as the day she lost it.

"I've had it on my finger since," said Geneva, who is wearing both rings, the old and the new, on her right hand.

Over the 17 years, Geneva has pulled enough weeds from that spot to thatch her roof and all the time that ring lay within inches of her fingers.

Pam counts the surprise as an early present for her mother, whose birthday is in September.

Part of the surprise in finding it was that she hadn't tossed the ring in the lake after all.

"Now," Geneva said, "I've got to correct my story."

But that raises another question.

If that wasn't her ring that kerplunked into Greers Ferry Lake that afternoon, did she lose something else?

Sweet Tea appears in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Contact Jay Grelen at (501) 378-3858 or at sweettea@arkansasonline.com.

Arkansas, Pages 15 on 08/30/2009

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