It's a small world

[Isaac-1]

I was once again reminding of just how small the US is, we are currently on vacation at a campground in the mountains of New Mexico over 800 miles from our home in Louisiana. While setting up camp, I started talking to the couple in the neighboring RV site, who were outside doing some touch up work on their coach, it turns out they are full timers, but have ties to our small town of about 10,000 people in Louisiana, in fact the wife had lived there for a few years at one point, and her son and daughter in law live in our town now. To make the world even smaller, my wife is acquainted with their daughter in law, as my wife is the director of a local government agency and their daughter in law is involved with local charity outreach work, so their paths cross somewhat frequently, to the point that they have spoken to each other and exchanged emails several times this year. In addition to that, the owners of this campground are also from another small town of about 10,000 in Louisiana located about 60 miles from where we live, and if we were to sit down and talk, I strongly suspect we know a few people in common.

Do you have any similar stories you care to share?

 

[Oldgator73]

I was career AF and was stationed in Las Vegas at Nellis AFB (home to the AF Thunderbirds). My wife hated it there and asked me one day what was the quickest way out. I said I could volunteer for instructor duty but it would be at Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, TX. She said crap, that worse than Vegas. The option was to apply For a worldwide remote and a worldwide long tour oversees. She said to do that. About a week later I was home for lunch and she asked me to pull my request for a remote assignment (spouses and children cannot accompany the member on remote tours). When I got back to my shop after lunch I was handed orders to King Salmon, AK. It’s situated on Bristol Bay. Can only get there by plane or barge.
I arrived and was assigned a room and had a roommate. As roommates do we got to talking and asking each other where we were from. I’m from Daytona Beach, Fl and he was from Tampa, Fl. I told him I had a cousin that lived in Tampa. So we talked some more and I happened to mention my cousin in Tampa built swimming pools for a living. My roomy said his wife’s next door neighbor growing up built swimming pools. As the conversation progressed he mentioned they enjoyed going to his wife’s childhood neighbors house on Christmas for a pig roast. I said my cousin roasted a pig for Christmas each year. He asked me if by chance Jack Holloway was my cousin. Yeah, he is. My cousin was his wife’s neighbor until she married my roommate and moved.

 

[phil-t]

I was stationed at Nellis AFB from '70-74. I had been there for about 2 years and cousin from my home area showed up at our apartment! He had been there, at Nellis, for 2 years himself. I was 3 months ahead of him at Lackland in BT and he followed a different career path than I did. It can be a very small US and world.

 

[Rene T]

We were on a cruise ship taking a ten day cruise and was in the elevator going back to out stateroom for the night. Started talking with a Couple in the elevator and found out that they lived in Maine just across the river from NH about 15 miles from my house. I told him where we lived and he had a friend that lives just up the street from us about 1/2 mile away and he goes by our house quite frequently to go see his friend.

 

[Larry N.]

One of my classmates from when I was in tech school for the Air Force at Lowry AFB (Denver), turned up working for AT&T in Denver a number of years later -- I first met him in Denver when I was living in Albuquerque but in a company school in Denver. Later, after I moved to Denver, I worked with him on several projects.

Another Air Force aquaintance, from when I was stationed in Topeka, also showed up in Denver in later years, though he was in a different office and a different technical section (radio/facilities vs switching).

 

[Oldgator73]

Our son joined the AF in 1998. At the time we lived on base at Lackland AFB. Fast forward a few years and our son is on one of his deployments to either Afghanistan or Iraq and he was walking through a secure gate and someone called out to him. He looked around aNF noticed a civilian walking towards him. it was his best friend from HS who was now a journeyman electrician and government contractor.

 

[Memtb]

Travel related, though not RV related......well, we weren’t in an RV!

Back in the mid 90’s, when my wife and I were owner/operator semi drivers, we were traveling thru Washington State on I-90 when a truck pulling a popup camper passed us with Louisiana plates. A few miles down the road we pulled into a rest area and I noticed the popup from La. was parked there. They were standing outside their vehicle. We don’t see a lot of La plates in our region, and being from La., I thought I’d say hello! In our brief conversation we discovered that the husband’s mother and father were my father’s next door neighbors. And my brother and his brother graduated together!

Yes....indeed, it is a small world sometimes! memtb

 

[Mark_K5LXP]

One trip last year in an RV park a couple walked by with their dogs and while my dogs and theirs became acquainted we struck up a conversation and discovered the lady and my wife used to work together a couple decades ago. This year at an RV park in Colorado I was fishing and a guy came by to chat, asked where I was from and turns out he lives a couple blocks from me in ABQ, I walk the dogs by his house every day and have seen his parked RV there. I'm thinking that maybe these kinds of encounters while likely not common could be more probable than one might imagine, because people that are attracted to the RV or camping life are attracted to a certain personality type as friends and a much smaller subset of the population, so the chances of running into people you know are higher.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

 

[Seon]

My son bought a boat in his marina then a year later met his now wife who loved the boat and took a picture of it and placed it on her desk at work. Her co-worker noticed the picture and told her she sold a similar boat a year previous. Turned out to be the co-workers boat.

 

[UTTransplant]

We were sitting around the fire one afternoon at Quartzsite with Larry and Mary Ann a few years back. Found out we all had lived in Albuquerque, on the NE side of town, in the Holiday Park subdivision. They actually had owned the house directly across the street. We never met because we moved in a couple of years after they left, but we knew each other’s houses.

 

[Joezeppy]

Two stories both related to my in-laws who moved full-time to New Port Richey FL about about 10 years ago. We usually fly down there to visit every March.

1. About 4 years ago we met friends of theirs - new residents of the 55+ park who were snowbirds from Maine. Told them we had camped in Bar Harbor and Saco a couple of times and were going back to Saco that summer. They laughed and said "We live in Saco"- about 5 miles from our campground. Had dinner and drinks with them when we went up.

2. Another year we were visiting, we went to Mass on Sunday morning and saw a guy from our church here in NY. Knew he was a snowbird but did not know where he went - same town as my in-laws - lives about a mile away from them!

 

[Larry N.]

We were sitting around the fire one afternoon at Quartzsite with Larry and Mary Ann a few years back. Found out we all had lived in Albuquerque, on the NE side of town, in the Holiday Park subdivision. They actually had owned the house directly across the street. We never met because we moved in a couple of years after they left, but we knew each other’s houses.

Yep-

 

[Roy M]

Six degrees of separation! For those that are not familiar with the term the premise is we are never more than six people away from someone we know or knows someone we know. I have met cousins for the first time at work, one I knew about one I didn't. On one trip from Edmonton, I ran into acquaintances in Red Deer, Calgary, and Golden, my companion asked if we could go anywhere I didn't know somebody.

 

[Oldgator73]

I was sitting in my office at RAF Lakenheath in the UK when the Commandant of the Airman Leadership School came to chat. He noticed my BMT photo on the wall and asked if he could take it down and look at. I said sure. He asked if my TI’s name was spelled with a W. I said yes. He said your TI is my father in law. I went through basic in 1975 so it had been 40 years. He came in the next day and said he called his FIL and mentioned me and he said he remembered me.

 

[Joezeppy]

Gary Brinck and I both grew up in Rome, NY. Recently we found out that my father and a friend of Gary's both served together in the Rome Fire Department for over 20 years.

 

[Great Horned Owl]

In 1959, hen I was starting school at the University of Illinois. My parents drove me there, and were helping me carry my gear into the dorm room. My mother kept staring at my new room mate, and finally asked him if she knew him. It turned out that he was a 2nd cousin, who I had never met.


Many years ago, while we were living outside of Pittsburgh, we drove to the Florida Keys over winter break. I have no recollection of why we needed to go to the post office on Key Largo, but while we were leaving, we met our daughter's (2nd grade) teacher, who was just entering.

Several days later, we ran into one of her classmates, in a gas station someplace in Georgia.

Joel

 

[Rob&Deryl]

I went in to a post office in a town in NH just to mail a package. One clerk overheard the one helping me verify the address and asked if I was from that town. Turns out, 40 years ago she was my moms hairdresser.

 

[PancakeBill]

Two small worlds half a world away, Viet Nam. I was reassigned from Bien Hoa to Da Nang 1/2 way thru my tour. Caching up with friend from base I was at in sates, and his roommate came in. Had a name I knew but he pronounced it differently than the ones I knew, so he asked where I was from, RI. What? Me too. what town, we were just a few miles apart. What HS? Hey, I said, my cousins husband went there, told him the name, he says, Donna is your cousin? My friend from stateside just a there with mouth hanging open.

I'll add the other later, gotta do something

 

[Rene T]

Went to Disney world one year and there were thousands of people on main srteet. We just happened to look down about 100 yards and we saw a very tall man. We kept walking and as we got closer we noticed that the tall guy was actually my DW uncle. He’s from Maine and we’re from NH. We actually live about 20 minutes away from each other.

 

[PJ Stough]

My story comes from Viet-Nam as well. In the early months of 1969 my oldest brother and I worked on an anhydrous ammonia pipeline in Northwest Iowa, where we met two brothers who were from Western Iowa. Fast forward to July 1970 I am in Viet-Nam and am sent to the field to join my unit and the first person I see when I get off the helicopter is the younger of the two brothers who is now the medic in the platoon I am in.