Did you ever travel hundreds of miles, only to run into a high-school friend from home in line at Six Flags? Or find yourself in those pre-GPS years in a city you'd never visited, but heard of as the home of childhood friends who visited their MEEmaw next door to your Mammaw every Summer? One Teenage Summer on our way to Rock City, we found ourselves in the much-storied city of Maryville, TN, home of the two "City Girls" who brought their more stylish clothes and shorter shorts and cooler high-school CHEERS, and their more discriminating taste in books and movies and music to the back fence every Summer. I mentioned them, and my parents decided to stop for a map, for I knew the address from our Pen-Pal days so long ago, and I suppose our small-town manners account for the possible barge-in unannounced.
We pulled into the Fifties' version of a 7-11, and all got out to go in for a cold drink and restroom stop. As Daddy held the door, who should emerge in a snappy shorts set holding a big bag of ice cradled like a baby, but Ruth, the younger of my childhood friends, whose sister came out right behind her, both taller and tanner than I'd ever seen them. Now WHO, in the Time/Space continuum and the geographical layout of that big city, could EVER predict that moment when such a convergence occurred---it was so mythically magical that it's engraved in memory all my life since.
We followed them to their house for a short while, just long enough to say Hello to the parents and baby brother---he of the baggy diaper wardrobe whose efforts to climb up to our tree-house had been thwarted by both Sisters for two Summers. (He DID, however, go on to Nashville for a lovely career with a band-you'd-recognize, until his death WAY too young).
But the logistics of that meeting---How many of those little pitstop stores along the highways and streets, how perfect their need for the ice, for parking RIGHT THERE, for our whim to find a map and restroom just at the moment when . . . We could have walked right in and not seen either of them in the aisles of the store, but for that little flick of TIME---astounding and chill-making in its eerie synchronicity.
Any strange convocations or coincidences in anyone's life that you cannot explain? There are two more that come to mind, and the realness of them still boggles.
That is absolutely amazing. To run into someone like that it just has to be kismet. I have heard some amazing stories, and I know it happens. Love it.
ReplyDeleteThat was me that absolutely amazing one that came out as anonymous. Old Prairie Moonlight, Gayla, Oatmeal and whimsy. Whoever I am – love your blog.
ReplyDeleteHow lovely to hear from you, Gayla!! I've always loved the word Kismet---it was the name of a movie way back in the early days of COLOR movies, with two almost impossibly beautiful stars, remembered for the several Hit Parade songs in our Juke Boxes, I see now that Stranger in Paradise and Baubles, Bangles and Beads (which my quirky silly movie memories had assigned to something like Annie Get your Gun, but remember now that one was Buttons and Bows, in a quite more lively tempo).
ReplyDeleteYes, that was quite a thing to remember---today their mama would be writing to Snarky Letters about our abrupt visit without an invitation, or even a call, for we just drove into their big driveway right behind the girls and there we were. You know, only this moment I remember those two mamas must have been high school friends or at least classmates, for we kids were of the exact ages, and them within steps of Mammaw's back door all those years.
I hope you're well and enjoying a good Prairie Summer---what IS that like, with all that flat wide sky over your land, just like our DELTA spaces?---I envision mine with a 360 circle and any view you can see TREES. Forests near, woods to the lawn, or so far as to be a little skim on the horizon, but always your can see them, far as you can look.
Ou 70s days this sweet July have been a boon, with lots of activity out on the back yard from a great wind back in May---took a front wall of our garage, and they've finished I hope, for the haul-away people to come for the debris. We have a quiet life, here in this little all-pink-but-the-shingles house, but this year has been a lively round of bright circus-colored trucks and vans with a succession of repair folks, since we've been having to have one appliance after the other looked after, countless plumbers, washer guys, the lovely surprise of a whole new sink-faucet-insinkerator gift from Leah at Easter. We had to have the entire house re-wired last August, and that was five weeks of bright, active young lively folks in every inch of the house, with the dust of the Sahara as they carved out a new square for each and every plug-in and switch-on in the house---despite buying THREE air purifiers that run day and night, that fifties sheet rock is still settling a film on every surface in the house.
I hope you're well and enjoying your garden and all those wonderful friends. I still greatly envy your sweet young Amish ladies who come to help you clean. Sweet Summer Days to you, and may your sleep be soothed by the lullaby of a midnight train.
I don't have any big stories, but we do seem to run into people from our small town/area when we are out of town. We checked into a hotel in Kentucky and the clerk had lived in our town for a summer with a relative. We traveled to New York and someone saw our license plate and his family lives in the town next to ours. Things like that. So fun to run into your classmates like that!
ReplyDeleteAwww, Miss Merry!! What a small enormous world we live in! And we always said of my Daddy, "He could parachute out over Borneo and land by the lawnchair of an old friend from hunting, Lodge, Church or High School." Or the kin of some of his carpentry clients, for he was famous for his built-ins, especially dining rooms, with whole walls of cabinetry with all the requisite router-work and scrollwork, (some of those were the Eighties days of little cutout hearts and all those two-candles-hung-from-one-string).
ReplyDeleteI truly hope your vacation/trip turned out to be fabulous, with tickets the only flat note. All of your Fan Club out here are astoundingly glad you're out and enjoying after all the scares and medical moments. And I hope you could SEEEE everything more clearly than ever. Anticipating the details!!
Enjoyed the read(s) Loved the picture of fried double yolk eggs. I used to sell boiled double yolks on a Roach Coach. (LOL) Odd happenings, I have had 'em, but my mind cannot find them.
ReplyDeleteFrom NC sending the best!
Hello, JACK!! What a treat to have you visit! There's a smaller cameo of one of those happenings set for tomorrow---a silly coincidence that made us glad we were Decades in the past, instead of NOW.
ReplyDeleteI see you're a proponent of MANY of my own favorite authors---I had trouble with all the technical jargon of CLANCY, but my four-years Navy, later 22-years Army husband in the next chair with his own book would oblige with a long explanation, and if we had one of an item, he'd just go get it, sometimes break it down, and show me.
All that to say Lee Child. His REACHER was our absolute favorite character for all the rest of his life, and still mine now. I write with too many adjectives stirred into loopy, long sentences, and I was slightly jarred by the terse five-word up to maybe ten-word sentences and conversations of the first page---then CAPTIVATED by that almost-unreal character with dimensions of The Rock, and the valiant, hero heart of a true knight. DO start from #1, KILLING FLOOR for Reacher travels on, at the last moment of every book, catching buses and hitch-hiking with only a toothbrush in his shirt pocket. Lovely to have you drop in!!
I call it serendipity! Great story. BTW my son, Andrew, lives in Maryville, Tennessee, with his little family. Charming town. xoxo 🏴☠️
ReplyDeleteOH, JENNY! There's a bit of serendipity right there. If there are ever any McDades in his milieu, those are my folks. The girls are still on FB---fabulous women with full, rich lives and such vivid personalities. Thank you for the sweet comment.
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