A Lottery moment..........

Talk about a small world... Had to call the JC Penney service line in order to clear up an order. Got a real nice southern sounding lady (rare enough in itself) That straightened things out. When she realized I'm over here, she started talking about how she wanted to come see the Black Forest and a couple other places and get a cuckoo clock since her son never brought her one. Asked where her son was and it turned out that he is a soldier I worked with a few years ago..... Gonna go get that lottery ticket now........

Dave

When I was in the Marine Corps, it always amazed me how small the world really is.

Like, in conversation across the table in the mess hall with someone I'd never seen before and finding out we'd played high school football against each other.

I could relate quite a number of similar experiences.

This ol' world can be pretty small. Mebbe twenty years ago, they had a bunch of masons in town throwin' firebrick inside the stock for a new boiler at the mill. I had some friends down for the weekend from New Brunswick. Weather came off cruddy, kinda restrictin' us and we wound up down at the local dive, quaffin' beers and waitin' our turn at the pool table.

One of my friends chats up one of the brickmasons and learns he's from Ohio. Buddy recalls that I was born in Ohio, finds this remarkable and so introduces us. Nothin' to talk about but Ohio so we do.

I allowed as I moved from there when I was three, but was born in Athens.

"Athens? he asks.
"Yep. Shelterin' Arms Hospital," sez I.

That brought him right out of his sneakers as he had been born there, too, and the hospital had been closed for some years by then. We got comparin' notes and discovered that he was born the day before I was, which means we had to have been kept in the same nursery for a couple of days, the way they did things back then.

A thousand miles away and thirty-five years later . . .

A few years ago I was working with this younger engineer. I kept kidding him that he was my replacement for when I retired. One day we got to talking and he said "so what were you doing back in June 1979?" I told him I was getting ready to report to work my first day here. Then he asked what day, and I told him June 26th. He said "Uh, I hate to ask this, but what time?". I told him I seem to recall I reported in at 7:30. Turns out he was born 15 minutes after I first reported to work here. I still call him "my replacement". Really ticks him off.

I'm from Athens, Ohio............ Athens County anyway, about 15 or so miles outside of Athens itself. That's something...

Dave

My presence there was a bit of a fluke. My folks got married (they were from Fairfield County) right out of high school, and went off to college at OU. I always figured things musta got a little exuberant under the Christmas tree, cause little Scotty showed up just in time to interrupt the third week of Mom's junior year. Had an (I forget how many greats go in front of it) uncle, Ottie Sherwood, preached in Nelsonville for a lotta years.

I wouldn't worry about those fifteen minutes any. Prolly took ya that long anyway to find your desk, just about the time the doctor smacked his bottom to get his attention.

I spent that 15 minutes sittin' in the guardshack at the gate waiting for someone to come and get me.

lived from 94-98 in Sharpsburg, Ohio. Worked at OU on new/rehab construction for the first two years then down to Charleston, WV etc for work.
Met Scotty on this board, later at the Taler Gathering. Turns out I knew his grandfather from when I worked at Winchester Milling Co in High School. Grew up about 10 miles from his family
Ron

Yep small world indeed...I am from North Carolina and joined the military right out of high school. While stationed in Texas I took a part time job bartending. My associate bartender was also from North Carolina....turns out my Dad dated his Mom in high school.

Zenn City eh, i grew up a couple miles west of there, also went to OU, from 90 to 94. Big K and the Ranch still there? Had my wedding reception at the church hall there.

THose were some long odds that we'd ever meet up weren't they? And Winchester Milling and the Hockmans, boy, that wakes up some memories.

Like a lot of the old mills, the polish the polish they had on the floors from just sweeping up the dust. I especially remember bustin' my tailbone when my heels shot out from under me takin' one of their plowhandle dollies full of hog feed down the concrete ramp there on the street side to the dock to put on the truck. Still, coulda been worse if the dolly hadn't had legs and it had come down on me instead of just drivin' me down.

I remember a real lanky guy (I thought he was old -- he mighta been forty at the time) showin' me how to throw a miller's knot onto a burlap sack. Once I learned that, Grandpa would stay down at the office and let me stand at the bottom of that big mixer and sack out his feed while he visited.

And it was always a tossup when we were bringin' in grain to sell or deposit, when we'd pull that old Chevy in, whether we used the lift on the truck, or they'd lift the front wheels with that rig they had, with the three or five hinged boards lifted by an upside down Y of chains on either end. I suppose it mighta been common it its day, but I've never seen anything like that rig before or since.

And out front, I still recall bein' real impresssed with that big wide-bed typewriter they used to type up their ledger sheets, and the lady that did that. Nice lady, can't think of her name. That and Grandpa always gettin' irritated when Bill would call him CheXter. (For those of you listening in, it was a Purina brands mill.)

We're close enough in age, I'd still say that for the years I was in and out of there and the number of times, it wouldn't surprise me to learn we crossed paths back then. Maybe we'll each have to drag a high school yearbook along next time we know we're going to get together, and see if we can match the faces up.

dave, when you said black forest area, are you in germany????? my mil spent part of her youth in germany and was in the black forest area also. i have to ask her what the town name she was near. they grew up on a farm there, shes 79 now, she did field work with teams of horses prior to ww2.

While in the Navy I was stationed in Iwakuni Japan in the 60's, at a Marine air base. I met a girl who had sister I had gone out with. She was married to a marine stationed there also. Stan

Did that seem inappropriate at the time?

There was not a ocean involved but had something like that happen to me this weekend on a smaller scale. There was an auction about 4 miles from my house and it was all back roads too it. I knew the farm and know the auctioneer and I knew parking was going to be real bad. I could get there two hours early, walk a mile, or take the fourwheeler and make a parking place at the front gate. As I was leave'n the house 20 min before start time a good friend of my wife showed up at the house to go shopping with her. They left the same time I did. I got about a mile from the auction site and there were already cars on the side of the road. Seen this man in his sixties walking with a bad limp. Asked him if he was brave enough to ride with me. He hopped on happy as could be and I took him to with in 100 feet of the drive way of the auction site. Sunday my wife's buddy was at her parents house and her dad told her he had fun at he auction and some nice guy gave him a ride on a four wheeler that kept him from walking a mile. She called me and asked if I had picked up a hitch hiker. Kinda one of them small world things that don't happen too often but I think you got mine beat.

Dave

Nope. There was (best I can recall) 5 of us, all reporting to the same manager, starting that day. When we got there and asked the guard for directions to the building, he asked if it was our first day. If so, Mr Nikulla would be out to show us all in together. I guess it kept us from wandering off and getting lost. The Fabrication Division plant was the biggest industrial site I'd seen at that time.

BTW, it probably bothered one of the other guys a lot more. He had just gotten out of prison about a year earlier, where he had been serving time for manslaughter. Nice enough fellow, though, never tried to kill me...

Well, bless his little pea-pickin' heart!

Got 2 similar stories.

I was working in the Mailroom at Anthem BC&BS in Cincinnati.
We contracted with a courier service to transport internal mail
between the Cincinnati and Indianapolis offices. Talking to the
courier one day (a retired guy), I found out he was originally
from Switzerland County. It turned out that he had known my
uncle who graduated from Vevay High School, and that my
Grandfather (the Rev. H. Vincent Wright) performed a wedding
service in the Manse for his brother. He even remembered that
Granddad had a Studebaker back then. My Mom confirmed that
the Studebaker story was correct.

My Dad's family is from Pennsylvania and my Mom's family is
from Kansas. We ended up in Indiana because Granddad was
preaching in Indiana when Dad's job in Texas ended and my
parents moved close to him. My sisters have been doing
geneological research, and in their research found that a distant
relative by marriage is buried in a small cemetery in Dearborn
County. On my younger brothers' property.

He's got a Ferguson. Required tractor mention.

(quoted from post at 16:50:58 10/06/09) dave, when you said black forest area, are you in germany????? my mil spent part of her youth in germany and was in the black forest area also. i have to ask her what the town name she was near. they grew up on a farm there, shes 79 now, she did field work with teams of horses prior to ww2.

Click to expand...

I'm a hundred or so miles North of the Black Forest. She'll probably know Schweinfurt and Wurzburg, they both caught heck back then. Schweinfurt is where I live, it was pretty much leveled I guess.

Dave

I went to a funeral for my wife's great uncle a few years back. Pretty big crowd at the gravesite service, we were on the edge of the crowd. I looked at the headstone behind us and just about fell over. It had my last name on it!! Not a common name around here. I read the rest of the epitath, and realized it was MY great uncle, who I had worked for when I was younger. He had died a couple weeks before. I called my folks when I got home, my dad found out that the old guy had died after a couple of years in a nursing home. His daughter, the only survivor, didn't give a reason for not telling anybody. Families can be strange.

I once read that if you talk long enough to any stranger in the U. S., one out of four will have a mutual aquaintance.

When I was in the Air Force back in the 80s, I was stationed in
South Korea. We were in downtown Seoul one day and talking with
some guys from the Army...turns out one of them went to high
school with my brother.