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The Radio Kerry key-ring which was found buried six inches deep under the soil outside an Iowa farmhouse. Photo by Gavin O’Connor.
A FARMER in Iowa is trying to solve a mystery as to how a Radio Kerry keyring came to be buried on his farm in the middle of nowhere.
Some weeks ago, Radio Kerry received an envelope containing a rusty old keyring dating back to when the station was first launched over 25 years ago.
The envelope came addressed from Southeast Iowa in the United States, it also contained a note from a man called Jeff Henningfield who explained how he found the Radio Kerry keyring buried six inches under soil on the grounds of his Iowa farm, which he describes himself as in “the middle of nowhere”.
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Deirdre Walsh of the ‘Talkabout’ show on Radio Kerry contacted Jeff and inquired more about his unusual discovery.
“I was out behind my barn, raking up some dirt to fill in a hole,” said Jeff on the show today from his farm in the Mid-West state, about 40 miles from the Mississippi river.
“Something caught my eye and it was unusual because it was out of place. I bent down and picked it up, put it in my pocket and didn’t think about it until later on. When I was in the house I pulled back out of my pocket, cleaned off the dirt and low and behold it was a Radio Kerry keyring!” he told Deirdre.
“So I dried it off a bit and got a good look at it and I actually didn’t think too much of it and I just put it up on a shelf. In about a week later I went back and revisited the artifact and thought well perhaps I should look into finding out where this came from? The internet being what it is it took about 30 seconds to find out it came from your station.”
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Instead of letting the key-ring gather more dust in the American Mid-West, Jeff decided to send it back to Radio Kerry with a little note attached explaining how it came into his possession.
“How a key-ring from Ireland got buried under one of my outbuildings is a mystery we’re not going to solve,” said Jeff.
Having made certain there was no Irish community in the area that could have brought the key-ring on his property, the well spoken farmer did leave one possible clue which might explain how a item from Kerry made it’s way deep into the middle of America.
Before Jeff bought the farm 11 years ago the previous owner had a number of cars on the property. One of those cars may have been bought in Boston, Chicago or New York and may have been owned by a Kerry person or carried one across one of America’s states.
“I just don’t know how it got there, the story is now, it’s back where it belongs,” said Jeff.
If any readers out there know anyone who spent time in Iowa or surrounding states back in the early 90s and lost a keyring, maybe they can shed some light on the mystery!
