I've got a buddy that grew up in Detroit and moved to Oklahoma in the late 70s. Although he's been an Okie for 40 years now, he still likes his Detroit Lions. He related a pretty wild story to me the other day..it goes something like this:
He likes to throw darts at his local watering hole. He stopped by there the other night to play darts and was wearing a Lions t-shirt. There was a guy at the bar that asked him if he was a fan, just because there are not a lot of Detroit fans in Oklahoma. My buddy explained he had grown up in Detroit.
This guy was a compressor salesman, about the same age as my buddy, and was on the road and just happened to stop by this bar. He had grown up in Detroit also. So over the course of a few dart competitions they reminisced about their childhoods in Detroit. They actually had grown up in a fairly close proximity to each other. When my buddy told him the name of the street where he had grown up, the other guy said he use to date a girl on that same street.
Then they got to talking about cars. The traveling salesman said his best ride when he was young was his 1969 orange Dodge Super Bee. He ran open exhaust on it sometimes and got lots of tickets. My buddy started thinking.....and then he asked the guy if the girl's name he use to date that lived on his street was Bridget. Surprised, the guy told him yes, that was her name. Then my buddy asked him if Bridget's older brother had ever come out of the house late one night and whipped his butt for revving his loud pipes.
My buddy said they stared at each other for a good long time...Apparently this guy dated my buddy's little sister back in the day and they had locked horns in the front yard over his loud pipes.
The two men were amazed that after all the years and all the travels they would meet up in some obscure corner beer joint in Oklahoma. What were the odds? I can't think of a more bizarre chance encounter I have ever heard about.
It's called synchronicity and it's happened to me more times than I can count, some good, some bad and several incredibly great, none of which will be recounted at this time. 🙂 I can usually tell at a parting of the ways if I'll be seeing that person again.
Patrick Yglesias, post: 325467, member: 337 wrote: It's called synchronicity and it's happened to me more times than I can count, some good, some bad and several incredibly great, none of which will be recounted at this time. 🙂 I can usually tell at a parting of the ways if I'll be seeing that person again.
The plum pudding incident in your link gave me the willies....
Back in about 1984 when I was stationed in Germany, I was walking through Saxenhausen in Frankfurt with a high school friend that I had came to visit for the weekend. Suddenly someone yelled out his name and he stopped. Initially I was thinking that it might be someone he had met while in the Army. And then the stranger yelled out my name.... We didn't recognize the person at first, but it turned out to be someone from our hometown that was a year younger than us. It was hard to recognize him at first due to his short Army style haircut but we knew him well. One quarter of the way around the globe and we ran into Raul. It really is a small world.
Beer Legs, post: 325471, member: 33 wrote: Saxenhausen
There's a place that few know unless they were stationed in the Frankfurt area. Camp Eschborn for me 90-91.
I adore these kinds of stories. We all have a few after decades of living. Many times it comes down to two extroverts meeting for the first time and beginning some sort of general conversation. The next thing you know some connection is discovered between the two.
Roughly 35 years ago I was entertaining a group of consulting engineers from Oklahoma City who were assisting us with a rather complex energy study. One day I told one of them that I would be gone on Friday so to get certain requests for our data to me no later than noon on Thursday. He asked me where I was going. When I told him he began to tell me stories of the many times he had passed through that town when he was a child living with his parents as they traveled to visit relatives 100 miles further to the east. That led me to ask for his hometown. I told him I had never been to that place but that a distant relative had once invited me to go there to attend a large family reunion that was held there every August. He then said that his family also had a large family reunion held there every year in August. I mentioned my distant relative's name and he admitted that he knew her and that she attended his family reunions. He told me that on his next trip home he would pick up a massive genealogy book that some relative of his had assembled and we could look at it together to see if we recognized any common names.
Long story short.....my great (times six) grandfather was his great (times six) grandfather.
Yep. Saxenhausen or more correctly, Sachsenhausen was always a fun time.....
A year ago I met a friend from Vermont that I've known here in the VI for a few years for a few beers on a Friday after work. He said "meet my friend from Vermont XXX".
I knew the name from my youth, but I couldn't quite place it.
I turned to him and asked "did you grow up in New York State?" "yeah"
"Rockland County" ".....yeah"
by now I remembered.
"Skyview Acres" "What!!!"
You went to U of Cincinatti, right.
I said "I'm Larry Best. We were next door neighbors. The last time we saw each other was the summer of 1967 (47 years ago). You were home from your first year at college and I had been accepted at the same school. You told me how terrible it was there, so I kept working as a surveyor and blew off engineering school."
And that's when the trouble started.
I was working at the Oklahoma highway department in '93 and was fixing to take a well-deserved vacation. I ran into an engineer in the elevator on my way out of the building and she asked me where I was going for vacation. I told her a small town in Colorado where I use to live that nobody ever heard of, Jumpsteady. She blinked in amazement and said she use to live there in the early sixties as a child. In a short time we determined our fathers both worked on the Homestake Water Line project from Taylor Reservoir to South Park and we had even played together as kids at a July 4th. company picnic.
A small world, indeed.
I was hitchhiking down Chatham, Cape Cod MA way one afternoon back in about 1973/74 and a woman stopped to pick me up. As we got to talking it turned out that she was from Minot ND, and knew my parents from Minot AFB. We had moved from there in 1968. She knew the details of my fathers crash in Oct. 1968. It was a bit creepy to me at the time.
I can beat that, with ease.
In 2008, my cousin tells me he's getting married and that he'd like me in the wedding. Okay. She's a local girl from an adjoining county who is an aspiring country singer. Fast forward to the wedding and as my wife and I are standing in the receiving area, a lady comes walking up and it's my ex-girlfriend from high school. In fact the last girl I dated before marrying my wife and at one time, they had a small beef.
So, there she is and I'm polite and so is my wife and the ex offers this information that she "Was married to a cousin of the bride" (she lives in another state and met that guy there) to which my wife starts laughing out loud (she's tiny but a small voice so it was loud) "That's funny because the groom is Kris' cousin and that means you two will be related by marriage!".
Thankfully, I'm no longer related to her by marriage because my cousin divorced the girl after 5 years.
Prior to that, I was on a cruise in Alaska in 2003 and riding an elevator and the guy asked where I was from and I told him East Texas, and he asked where, and I said near Nacogdoches, and he asked if I knew Ken Dotson (a guy went to high school with and routinely drank and played cards with) and I laughed and wanted to know how in the hell he knew him. It was fun.
Prior to that, my wife was in a public bathroom at a mall, the day before our wedding, and ran into a nice lady who was in town for a wedding the next day and they talked for 15 minutes in the bathroom until they figured out they were talking about the same wedding. It was my Aunt from Georgia. 🙂
I've had enough incidents where hundreds and even thousands of miles away from home my wife and I have encountered a complete stranger in a shop or just out and about, to be recognised as a non local and asked where we came from.
Then comes a dialogue that their whoever lives at such and such and knows what's his name that could be very embarrassing if you weren't legitimately Mr and Mrs away on a holiday, rather two lovers on an escape from their other half.
Too small a world to expect those sort of coincidences not to turn up.
Wife and I often smile and wonder how many 'secret' escapades are anything but.
A married co-worker of mine also had a girlfriend that nobody knew about, until a local news crew rolled into a seedy little bar to film and interview folks about the road project going on in front of the place. Him and his honey were splashed on the local news with microphones jammed in their face. He became a divorced co-worker not long after that.
Mind your binness, gents...
A real coincidence I'll never forget was from a sale of a special box, or boxes.
A couple went into a gallery I sold my work at and silently each decided their other half should have one of my boxes as a gift.
So separately they each bought a box. They weren't cheap.
I found out about it some time later when they presented each other with their much treasured present.
They decided they didn't really want 2 boxes and asked the gallery who in turn asked me if they could return one for a refund.
It was a very touching story for me.
I was more than happy to oblige.
I have been working on a local history/boundary recovery project in and around both Ellicott City and Oella, Maryland. A couple months back, I was thinking to look up the pastor of an A.M.E. church in Oella, to see if they could help me out with some evidence, etc.
My bride and I are taking the monsters out for a walk, as I was asking her to remind me to look up Pastor Mosby. My pocket phone rings, you guessed it, Pastor Mosby is calling me to ask for a retracement, description and location drawings. I nearly fell over hearing this.
Rod Serling, where are you?
When I was 20, I took a trip with a friend from the East coast to the West coast in a ‘64 VW bug.
It was kind of the “this land is your land” tour. No particular destination or itinerary… Great lakes, Rockies, Yellowstone, Tetons, Oregon Coast, Redwood forests etc. Ended up in S.F. and spent a few days and then we decided that we were going to check out a cabin for rent a few hours away. So we were headed out of town and decided at the last minute to stop across the bay to checkout University of Cal in Berkeley. It was early evening when I was driving up one of the main streets and suddenly I turned my head to the left to see someone walking on the sidewalk. It was one of my best friends. He had just arrived after hitching across the country with no itinerary.
Here's mine, although it isn't as good as some of these.
Back in May I went to Metropolis, Illinois to a registered Boer goat sale. I ended up buying a doe from a breeder in northeast Arkansas.
It turns out his farm is for sale. Why? Because they are moving. They bought a farm from my cousin outside Savannah, TN.
paden cash, post: 325466, member: 20 wrote: I've got a buddy that grew up in Detroit and moved to Oklahoma in the late 70s. Although he's been an Okie for 40 years now, he still likes his Detroit Lions. He related a pretty wild story to me the other day..it goes something like this:
He likes to throw darts at his local watering hole. He stopped by there the other night to play darts and was wearing a Lions t-shirt. There was a guy at the bar that asked him if he was a fan, just because there are not a lot of Detroit fans in Oklahoma. My buddy explained he had grown up in Detroit.
This guy was a compressor salesman, about the same age as my buddy, and was on the road and just happened to stop by this bar. He had grown up in Detroit also. So over the course of a few dart competitions they reminisced about their childhoods in Detroit. They actually had grown up in a fairly close proximity to each other. When my buddy told him the name of the street where he had grown up, the other guy said he use to date a girl on that same street.
Then they got to talking about cars. The traveling salesman said his best ride when he was young was his 1969 orange Dodge Super Bee. He ran open exhaust on it sometimes and got lots of tickets. My buddy started thinking.....and then he asked the guy if the girl's name he use to date that lived on his street was Bridget. Surprised, the guy told him yes, that was her name. Then my buddy asked him if Bridget's older brother had ever come out of the house late one night and whipped his butt for revving his loud pipes.
My buddy said they stared at each other for a good long time...Apparently this guy dated my buddy's little sister back in the day and they had locked horns in the front yard over his loud pipes.
The two men were amazed that after all the years and all the travels they would meet up in some obscure corner beer joint in Oklahoma. What were the odds? I can't think of a more bizarre chance encounter I have ever heard about.
An Architect works on a project for two brothers for several years. By the time the job is complete both parties are sick of each other. The Architect is worn out from the project and decides to take the wife to some tiny, isolated island near Tahiti to unwind. They are lying on the beach one day when they see two people (the first people they have seen) walking down the beach towards them...
Yep - it's the two brothers!
Twenty years ago I get a call one evening for a new little boundary job out in the country about 50 miles away. Get precise directions on how to get there. Part of the directions are to get to the intersection on Hwy 75 with the county road where there is an old stone school on the northeast corner, then turn west about one-half mile.
Thirty minutes later I get a call for a new little boundary job out in the country about 50 miles away. Get precise .............................., then turn east about one-quarter mile.
The clients did not know one another as one was an absentee owner. Each was referred to me by someone who did not know the person making the reference to the other client. No connection of any kind. Totally different reasons for their surveys. Less than a mile apart. Pure coinkydink.
Turns out me and one of my model railroader buddies know the same Navy ship all too well.
He posted a pic and it looked mighty dam familiar but the hull number didn't ring any bell, so I looked it up.
Turns out DD-7 went through a major refit-overhaul of all it's firing control and weapons systems back in early-mid 70s when he was on it and was re-designated as DDG-38 which I know VERY well and still have the hat patch on the wall in front of me right now.
I mentioned something about having been in the combat and firing control centers up in the super-structure. Then he tells he was one of firing control operators in fire-control room. I said something about those 3 computers (each about the size of really large refrigerators) that had the names Curly, Moe and Larry above each so they could which one was which.
Turns out it was he and his original crewmates were the ones that named them after the re-fit and re-designation 10 years earlier.
