It's a small world.

[m_fumich]

This story brings back some fond memories of my grandmother so it could be lengthy.

My grandmother lived way out in the country about 45 miles NE of downtown Memphis. She shared a house with an old man named Walter Allen and his sister Eva Stevens. We called Eva "Aunt E-ver" probably because one of the older kids couldn't pronounce her name right and the rest of us followed suit.

There's a lot of stuff I could tell you about them but that's not part of this story. Anyway, Walter died about 1980. Eva went into a home and died in 1984. The last time I saw my grandmother was in 1988 when she moved to Kansas to live with her oldest daughter. She had already had part of her colon and most of one of her lungs removed due to cancer. She died in 1990.

Here's the "small world" part.

Last year, 20 years after my grandmother died, I was delivering a paper load near Meridian, MS. I got to the receiver late at night and the load wasn't scheduled to deliver until morning. No one was there except the guard. The guard made small talk and asked where I was from. When I told him Memphis, he said he grew up in that area. Turns out, he was the step-son of Walter Allen and he knew my grandmother. His brother is married to my first cousin once removed. When I spoke to my mother the next day, she remembered this guy. I was very close to my grandmother and it was a real treat to meet someone I didn't know that knew my grandmother.

[bgarrett]

I went into an auto parts store after visiting some friends 300 miles away in another state and a guy in the store told me he had seen my truck in the far away town.
I asked, "Who are you?"  and he told me that he lived on the street behind my house.
He had been in the other state on the job.