Any small world stories?

[Blldawg87]

I work in the Eagle Ford Shale, south of San Antonio and today I walked into a guys office, just by chance, with a company which I have never done business and the guy says, "Are you from Mississippi?" I said, "Sure am, my family is from Vicksburg." (I had on an MSU hat) The guy then says, "I'm from Vicksburg also but I moved to Texas in 1981."

I said, "Do you remember anyone with my last name?" He said, "Yea, I remember this guy", and says my dads name!....I said well I think he is the only person with that name from there at his age.

As it turned out the guy did knows my dad from middle school and maybe just a year or so of high school. He also played youth sports with him and was coached by my grandfather and had even been to there property. This guy remembered all this with great detail from pre 1981.

Thought it would make an interesting thread...I'm sure some of you world travelers may have a good story or two.

 

[Blldawg87]

Have another one from South Texas. After moving to San Antonio, my wife went to work for a vet. Her dad is a vet in Indiana (Purdue grad) and has grown up around veterinary medicine, plus the clinic is right down the road from or house, so it was a good fit.

A few months after she started there, a guy walks in with a Purdue shirt on and she ask the guy if he was from Indiana and the guy says something along the lines of, "No, but I used to live in this city"....which is the same town we lived in. She told the guy her dad is a vet in that town and the guy ask what her father's name was. She told the customer her dad's name and he said, "He was our vet in Indiana"....in fact, this customer was at the vet clinic getting medication for his donkeys.....the exact same two donkeys her dad dealt with several year before in Indiana.

 

[was21]

By any chance, was the vet who dealt with the donkeys named Dick

 

[The Usual Suspect]

In the mid '80s I was in Washington D.C. for a couple of weeks in high school. I had to wear a suit and tie, etc everyday. So I am in line at a hot dog stand on the Mall and a guy asks me a question about something (I can't remember). Anyway, I answered with a southern "Yes Sir." He says where are you from, not many people say that here. I tell him, and it ends up he is from MS, visiting Stennis' office for something. We found out we knew several of the same people around Noxubee County, and he bought me lunch.

 

[Blldawg87]

Nope...neither vet

 

[starkvegasdawg]

Back when I was around 9 we took a family vacation out to Yellowstone. We were leaving in the parking lot someone called out to us. It was some good friends of the family that lived in Indianola when we did. We had moved 5 years before the vacation. So a family we hadn't seen in five years we bump into in a parking lot of Yellowstone national park.

 

[natchezdawg]

I spent a summer working on a golf course in Virginia after my freshman year at State. I was getting gas one afternoon and had a State shirt on. A guy saw it and struck up a conversation. We ended up being from the same town, and apparently my Dad and uncle used to bully the **** out of this guy. He was still very bitter about it. I finished pumping gas and split before he went postal.

 

[SoCalDawg.sixpack]

Recently, I was visiting an entertainment attorney I work with periodically here in L.A. There was a new intern from Berkley and after talking briefly and the "where ya form's" she told me her boyfriend grew up in Starkville and went to MSU. She called him and he came for lunch with us that day and turns out hi last year at State as a student and my first year as an employee overlapped and we both knew and were still in contact with many of the same people.

 

[HD6]

I was at the Halfway House this past fall watching the Thursday night Saints-Falcons game. Guy comes in, sits next to me at the bar, I don't know him from Adam. He hands the bartender his credit card, and she comments on his last name. He says something about being Lebanese. I hear all this, look at him, and ask where's he from and who his dad is. He tells me, and it turns out we're second cousins, my grandfather and his grandmother were brother and sister.

 

[jumpdawg]

I was skiing at Steamboat and heard a guy in the rental line with a similar accent. Struck up a conversation and he was the son of a co-worker (and good friend of the time) at the first company I worked for out of college.

But the strangest was a rafting trip on the Gauley River in WV. Throughout the day of conversation, a friend that was living in Cincinatti and the guide in our raft found out they were both from Chattanooga. A little later they start discussing parts of Chattanooga and eventually determined that they lived in the same neighborhood, then same street, then same house, all the way down to the same bedroom.

The guide's parents had sold the house to my friend's parents.

 

[uptowndawg]

From a past coworker, but a good one.

Let's call him Tim. Tim lives in New Orleans and went to vacation in Orange Beach with his family. His family meets another family from New Orleans who setup nearby at the beach. They talk and become friends. The other family is in the same condo unit and invites Tim's family over for dinner later. Tim accepts. They get over there and start eating... Something with peppers on it, can't remember. Tim comments that he grows peppers like that in his yard and has so many in his garden that he started letting his neighbor pick them. Other dude asks who his neighbor is and turns out its a mutual friend they didn't know they had and had given the other guy the peppers for the dish. So Tim got fed peppers from his own garden by a guy that he previously didn't know.

 

[kired]

My uncle was in the Army in Vietnam, and after a few days of fighting they were being picked up by helicopter. The pilot noticed he had a confederate flag patch (I guess on his helmet - I'm not sure where). So the pilot asks him where he's from.

Uncle said "Mississippi"

Pilot says "I'm from MS too - what part?"

"Thaxton" (at the time this was a community of about 500 - about 20 minutes east of Oxford)

Pilot kind of looks at him puzzled "You're not from Thaxton"

"What? Yeah I am"

Pilot is starting to get a little pissed "No you're not - I'm from Thaxton and would know you"

So my uncle tells him his name, and his family (my mom's family) had just moved there about a year earlier. Turns out the pilot was my dad's best friend growing up. So my dad's best friend and his brother-in-law meet for the first time in the jungles of Vietnam. I guess they'd just never met before because they were all in the service.

 

[mcdawg22]

When I was a toddler, I went on Maurey Povich and met this angry man. Turned out he was my father.

 

[PBRME]

On my honeymoon in Cancun July 07. Was eating breakfast when I looked up and saw what appeared to be a couple from our neighborhood. It was them. They were married the same day as my wife and I and were spending their honeymoon at the same resort.

 

[The Peeper]

A friend of mine found out in his teens he was adopted at birth. He was separated from siblings when he was adopted, his new family took him one way, the others were adopted out and went their own way. He had gotten interested (now in his 50's) in finding his biological parents and siblings. He saw an article about a lady that helps people find their families and contacted her, found out some clues from her and some on his own. Long story short when they were building Grand Gulf he and his brother were working for the same company and casually knew each other but had no idea they were brothers. All have been reconnected now but bio mother had died a few months before he found the siblings. They've reconnected and now see each other and stay in contact.

 

[The Peeper]

You don't live in Reunion do you and is there a pineapple involved anywhere in this story, inquiring minds want to know?

 

[FQDawg]

I thought this was a pretty good story...

Made the rounds on the news earlier this year... What are the odds.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/24/living/tulane-sperm-donor-sisters/

 

[PBRME]

Unfortunately no to both. The wife was smoking hot. The only other nude female I saw besides my wife was an older lady. Her friend told her that if she insisted on showing it to everyone at least trim the hair.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

I have a somewhat similar story. After moving to the Jackson area several years ago, socializing and such, I had become friends with quite a few people. While at Hal & Mal's, a server mentioned where she was from and I mentioned if she was related to a certain family there, she said no. However, a couple friends stared at me in shock - turns out I'm second cousins once removed with three other good friends (their mother and me being second cousins as our paternal grandfathers were brothers).

 

[mjh94]

this guy stopped me in my local home depot one day and asked if i was a "last name" and i said yeah. i assumed he knew me from my hometown or knew my dad or something. then, he said "well, adam must be your brother." I asked where is adam from and he was from the town I live in. I told him i don't have family anywhere near me. he showed me a picture of this Adam character... dude could've been my brother. weird we had the same last name and some guy randomly asked me that. and i dont' have a last name like smith or jones.

... and before anyone says he must be an illegitimate brother, i look like my mother, not my father. so the last name thing doesn't work. still weird.

 

[patdog]

Need pics. Of your wife and the smoking hot friend, not the older lady.

 

[BulldogBacker]

This goes back to 1970. A guy close friend and neighbor I grew up with in Biloxi, Eddie Payne, graduated from BHS the year after I. He went to USM where he majored in mathematics. It had been several years since I had seen him. I was assigned to the 57th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron (57AES) at Clark AB, Philippines. Once evening, I was in the Clark AB Rathskellar (cellar club) with a couple of our nurses dancing and having a few drinks. Who comes walking down the stairs of the Rathskellar? Lieutenant Eddie Payne! He was there for Jungle Survival School. He joined us and we had a great time. Later, he made excellent use of the Jungle Survival training, having his F-4 Wild Weasel shot out from under him and having to bail out in Cambodia. The F-4 Wild Weasel was an anti-radar intrusion fighter, leading the way for fighter/bombers penetrating bad guys territory. They would jam radar defenses. We met each other halfway around the world!

 

[DawgInThe256]

I was reading the chapter in Sid Salter's Jack Cristil bio where he mentions that Jack's brother-in-law Sam Esgro was one of the RCA executives that signed Elvis to a record contract. The book said that the Esgros lived in the St. Louis area. Figuring Sam might be a local celebrity, I asked my father-in-law (who lives in St. Louis) if he had ever heard of him. Come to find out they regularly played golf together until Sam's health declined in recent years. The funny thing is that not only did my father-in-law not know about the MSU connection, Sam had never shared the Elvis story with him either.

 

[mcdawg22]

So you knew his last name and that he had a tab at a bar. I bet I know how this story ended.

 

[AFDawg]

Last summer I was white water rafting on the Nile in Uganda, and in my boat were a bunch of Pakistani army guys there with the UN. We got to talking, and I learned that one of them had a brother living in the Mississippi Delta.

Several years before I was on a tour at a museum in Edinburgh. The only other person in the group was an Indian guy. I found out at the end that he was a Mississippi State computer science graduate.

One more. My wife and I, before we ever met, were in Budapest on the same day. We hiked up Gellért Hill just a few hours apart.

 

[Fletch F. Fletch.sixpack]

My dad enlisted in the Navy on December 8, 1941. A friend he had grown up with had become a barber and before he left for boot camp he got a haircut from him. The barber friend told him he was going to join the Navy as well and wished him luck. After going through naval combat at Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, when the war was over Dad's crew left their ship in the Philippines and caught transport ships home. As he was heading up the ramp in early October, 1945, the first person at the top of the ramp he saw on board was his friend from home and, on the journey back to San Diego, he gave my dad his last haircut while in the Navy.

 

[HD6]

IT WASN'T ME.

 

[bbqbully]

In 2002 we were vacationing in the SF Bay Area. We stopped for the night in a little beach town south of SF. Another family was checking in the hotel the same time we were. They were dairy farmers from somewhere in central CA. My son had on an MSU shirt and the guy asked if that was Mississippi State. I said yes and he said his veterinarian went to MSU and played football. Turns out the vet was Jimmy Webb.

Stranger still, my son grew up and married Jimmy Webb's cousin!

 

[Crazy Cotton]

I took my brand new wife to NYC to look at graduate schools. We were at Columbia, and she wanted to take my picture on the steps of the library. So, I go up about half way and she's like "my name, smile!" There's a guy sitting on the steps beside me reading, and he looks up and stares at me. This kind of freaks me out, being NYC and all, so I'm looking down at the guy and he says, "my name? my last name?". It is my cousin from Illinois, we used to hang out when we lived in the same place, but we haven't seen each other in probably 10 years. I had no idea that he was currently a law school student there at Columbia. So, of the 8 million people in NYC i could meet, I run in to my cousin.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

I hiked up that same hill on June 17, 1994. Yep, I was in Budapest when OJ Simpson was in the white Ford Bronco.

 

[THE Bruce Dickinson]

I was in Narita Airport in Tokyo 10 days ago, and felt a hand come from behind and grab me on the shoulder. It was the former Dean of Engineering at State who happens to be a member at my church as well. Very small world.

 

[The Peeper]

Really liking this thread. Anytime I travel its always w/ an MSU hat on (I wear one pretty much every day everywhere) and it never fails somebody will stop me and strike up a conversation no matter where I have worn one, even in foreign countries. It drives my wife crazy especially when we are on vacation that I stop and start talking to these random people.

 

[Blldawg87]

Really liking this thread. Anytime I travel its always w/ an MSU hat on (I wear one pretty much every day everywhere) and it never fails somebody will stop me and strike up a conversation no matter where I have worn one, even in foreign countries. It drives my wife crazy especially when we are on vacation that I stop and start talking to these random people.

I do the same... I consider myself fortunate enough to not have to wear a suit everyday and can wear a hat and/or polo to work. Most of the time I have something with MSU on it. My boss said something one day about wearing all company logos and I told him the $178k, 2 week project we just landed happened because I walked in one day with an MSU polo on. This customer was always unpleasant to deal with and I never had any luck then one day he says something along the line of "are you a Mississippi State grad"...that was the ice breaker. He had a nephew or something at MSU...(probably Ole Miss and he doesn't know the difference) but after that his tone with me completely changed. Boss man never had another problem with my MSU apparel since.

 

[1msudawg]

My parents retired to Idaho and all my dad does is fish, so I went out there not long ago to do some steelhead fishing and he took me to this restaurant in a little town of 100 or so in eastern Washington. While we were there we overheard the waitress ask a group of guys at a table where they were from. They said mississippi. Then this other group of guys pipes up and says so are we. And then so did the last group of guys.

Turns out everyone in this podunk restaurant in pomeroy, Wa. (I think, we could have been in asotin, Wa) was from the MS delta.

 

[trob115]

I was traveling a few years ago with work. I was in Yakima, Washington. One morning after breakfast I headed out to my work truck and noticed their was a large group of motorcycles that had pulled in sometime that previous night. One of the bikers happened to be outside and he noticed I had on a MSU shirt. He asked if I was from Mississippi and I told him I was and that I was originally from Vicksburg. Turns out he was from tupelo and knew a some of the people I had gone to church with growing up.

Btw he said they rode motorcycles for 17 hrs the day before. I couldn't imagine the pain.

 

[drummerdawg]

I've got a few but I'll start with this one since its the most recent.

about a month ago I was at an om graduation in their ipf. We got their kinda early so there were several rows of empty seats. I found a row I liked and saved seats for my family while they were on their way. Well I was just sitting there and this family took the row right behind me and I noticed one guy had on an Alabama belt on. If you don't know anything about the om ipf, it has banners all around the walls with their bowl games and scores on them. The guy who had the bama belt on noticed one of the bowl games score they had displayed on the wall. It was a bowl game in the 60s that bama beat om. He started to talk and kinda chuckle about it with his family. Well being in Oxford and out of place, I decided to talk to him and tell him we were state fans. They told me they lived in Alabama not far from Columbus. Well that was about all we talked before the ceremony. Right before it started my granddad got there kinda late and came to our row in a weird way by going through the row behind us instead of going straight to the end of our row. Well he cuts in between the bama guy and me to get to his seat. The bama guy asks me who the man was that just walked by, I told him it was my granddad. He asked for his name and I told him. Then he asked if he was related to "said name" and I said yea, that's his son and he was my uncle. He said with excitement that he used to work with my uncle in Georgia about 10 to 15 years ago. Crazy because he recognized my granddad who he prolly only met once, my granddad just happened to walk in between us for him to see him, and if we sat anywhere else we would have never known.

the crazier part is that the very next week, my uncle who worked with that guy in Georgia years ago sends me a text. He asked me to guess who he ran in to and told me the story. My uncle lives in NC and was at some kind of event or festival in DC with his wife. He was staying in a hotel and noticed a guy there because his hair stuck out to him. Well while they were at the event his wife wanted to go back to the hotel and my uncle wasn't ready to leave. Well my uncle noticed that guy from the hotel was there, so he decided to ask if it was ok if he hitched a ride with him back to the hotel. The guy said sure. So after the thing was over they headed back to the hotel and during the ride they started taking about music. The guy started telling my uncle about what he does and groups he was with. My uncle noticed a name of a group he mentioned and asked about it. He told my uncle about it and my uncle told him that his nephew played for that group (me). So he asked who is nephew was,he told him and come to find out we traveled and played together. Small *** world. Crazy these events happened in back to back weeks.

 

[HammerOfTheDogs]

Was working for Miss. Dept. of Trans. in the late 1990's....had this crew drilling piers for a radio tower. Saw where they were from Clearfield, Iowa. Asked him how far it was from where my parents grew up (Mt. Ayr). turns out they were friends with some of Dad's first cousins and their kids.

 

[Digging dog]

My dad was working in Australia in 90-91. I flew there during Christmas break. They met me in Sydney. And we caught a bus to Camary (across the bay). This is where dad's employer owned a flat.
It was middle of the afternoon and I was hungry. They suggested an oriental resturant close by that they had been to before. The owner recognized that we weren't from Australia and asked where we were from. Dad said Arkansas. There was one other person in the resturant. The owner pointed out that this man just got back from Arkansas buying cattle. Dad asked who he was buying from. The man named one of dad's friends that lived about 5 miles north of us.

 

[aspendawg]

After college I moved to Aspen to be a ski bum for about 3 years... Within my first week there I'm at a bar enjoying a tasty glass of suds when the bartender picks me out and ask "where are you from". I reply with Senatobia, MS.. and he says not ****! Come to find out he's lived in Aspen for about 15 years but was originally from New Albany, and his step brother was my chiropractor back home... Small small world..

Secondly, when I interviewed for my current job in Alaska the gent who interviewed me was from MS and his daughter went to MSU... Needless to say that probably helped me out a little and put me in his good graces..