Mickey Crimm writes:
<< The historic bridge made famous in the movie The Misfits is coming down. What is interesting is its still being debated whether divorcee's really threw their rings off that bridge. The story around Reno was the late Hans "Tuna" Lund bankrolled an operation to retreive rings from the river. The legend was they filled 2 coffee cans full of rings. True or not I dont but there is an article from the Milwaukee Journal dated 1977 about Darrell Garmann who spent 2 years dredging the river around the bridge. He found 300 rings the most expensive being appraised at $1200 at the time. He also found coins with a face value totalling $1200 and the rarest of them appraised at $800 at the time.
Google Reno River Yields Divorce Rings. This should put an end to whether it was a myth or not. >>
It's true about Tuna, though no one should imagine it was any kind of big business operation. Just a couple of unemployable guys wading around in the muck with a metal detector. This was some years after the dredge operation that the news article told about. They used to come around the local poker rooms, and show off what they'd found. It all sort of fit, because Tuna's parents were in the scrap business in Mound House.
I used to play a lot of poker with Tuna circa 1980. We didn't think he was nothing back then. But he always held over me. I remember one time we were playing short handed at the Cal Neva. It was a small spread limit hold'em game, like the Cal Neva always had at the time. Tuna and I got into before the flop, and raised each other back and forth about nine times each. By that time I knew what he had, he knew what I had, I knew he knew, etc., etc. I had the aces, and he had the kings. I finally got tired of it, and just called. Of course, you know who won.