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Send them a letter or go see them.

Montana is big country, small world. Go see em, they care.

May have posted this before. Started a new job out here in AZ in 2017. 2018 new guy joins our project, about my age, sits at desk next to mine. He's been out West since he was 10 or so, so sometime in the mid-late sixties. I came out in 2004. We get to talking, turns out he's from Monongahela, PA. I say, that's right down the road from where I grew up, in Bentleyville, PA. He replies, holy schitt, my Dad was from Bentleyville. Turns out I grew up maybe 150 yards from his family's homestead (still in their family), and his Dad and my Mother were literally neighbors from 1934 up until the War when they moved. We may have actually met as kids when his family would visit, we just didn't remember.

I won’t judge if the highlight of your adulthood is watching a grown man touch himself.

I dated a Yupik gal for a couple years, she was Shaman, also had a unique last name. The missionaries had shuffled her out of her village and sent her to Helena for high school.

It was an amazing couple years.

I have a sneaky suspicion you've eaten some Dudley's bread a time or two.

I grew up "down the hill" a ways from the places you mentioned. Recreated there often. Relatives lived in Ramona, my cousins, still do.

Nothing too interesting.

Went to work at a new place once. Couple of guys come over.

"Hey, you name Geno?"

Yes

"Whatta you last name"

I told them

"You family fromma tha Palermo?"

Being from a family only one generation removed from a certain island in the Mediterranean with a reputation for having invented the vendetta, I was hesitant to say. But they recognized the name from the old country. Our family name was not very common in the US of A for many years, there are more of us running around here now, being Catholic and what not. We used to look in the phone books of every town when traveling in the 60's to see if we could find any of us we didn't know.

Interesting.

They have 23 & Me but no indoor plumbing..............


What a world we live in.

I was back in Northern New York visiting my Dad. Etta and I stopped at a small second hand and antique store in the small two where I grew up. I was run by a gentleman who had served on the school board with Dad. He asked about Alaska and asked if I remembered Jeff, a kid from high school whom he said was in Wasilla. I told him Jeff had been two years behind me and graduated with my brother. I remembered him. Our school had 31 people in my graduating class. You knew everybody.

I asked the store owner if he had a number for Jeff. He did not. A few days later I was at an old gun shop I had done business with in the 70's. It was run by the grandson of the old guy I bought guns from. They had a rifle I was interested in and I bought it. I was making arrangements to ship it to an FFL in Wasilla and he asked if I knew Jeff and that he had an FFL and they occasionally shipped guns back and forth. He did have a number for Jeff. When I got back to Alaska I called him. We lived a half a mile apart. We have since become good friends and in fact I performed his marriage ceremony a couple of weeks ago.

Not a s mall weld story, but...

Was delivering to a store in Welch WV, standing by the door waiting on the
manager. A guys is staring at me, then walks over and says,
"You Dan Hatfield's boy?"

"No sir, i aint fron around here!"

Welch is in the part of WV famous for Hatfield's, and McCoys.

Was on the beltway outside DC on a Friday eve sitting still in traffic coming home for the weekend from Norfolk back in 86'. I hear someone yell my name and look over and there's a friend from my home town waving at me.

A few years ago I took my daughter out hunting first day of buck in PA and on our way into the woods to my blind we met an older gentleman at his tree stand he had positioned up on the ridge above us. We spoke a little and wished each other luck. Come spring my buddy sends me a link to a boat I might be interested in being sold by someone right outside of Pittsburgh (1.5 to 2 hours west of me). We go look at the boat and I agree to his price. He tells me he's had the boat at the lake near where I live and told me where he goes there to hunt. I looked at the black Toyota in his drive and it hit me. I said "I met you in November on the first day of buck season under your tree stand!"

Crazy small world.

Yeah, I was cruising the Hi-Line on my way to see a student one sunny summer day. Got about 8 miles from your A/O when I spied a Texan heading your way on a bicycle....which he rode the WHOLE way up to your place. Seems I had met him before....

Three years ago, I sold a rifle, through the classifieds here, to a woman in central PA. I told her that my brothers-in-law and I used to deer hunt in her area in the 1970's. I told her the name of the dairy farmer who we stayed with, and that i'd heard that the farm had since been sold.

She told me that the former farmer is her husband's best friend, and she had him and his family to her house just the previous week for his retirement party! Small world indeed!!!

When I was 20, I moved from the coast of Alabama to downtown Atlanta, 1 block from the original projects. Huge fuggin' place it was.

One morning I was walking to my car and a brutha was approaching from the 'bad' direction. He gets to my car 1st, does a double take, and keeps walking towards me. We past each other and I start to get in my car. He spins around and hollers, "You from Baldwin Co."? I was breakin' nervous at this point, but answered yes anyway since my tag was a dead giveaway. He says "Damn, me too. I used to stay in Foley. Graduated in '91. I hollered back, "Holy schidt, me too. It's a small world. I gotta go"!

I lived there for about 6 more months and never saw the guy again. We had a touch over 300 in our graduating class, maybe 10% black. I looked thru yearbooks and such. Never did figure out which brutha that was.

Nothing great.
Got a Weaver V9 AO.from Service Merch when i was in 6th grade.
The gal I married worked there then, may have sold it to me and my dad.
Didnt cash in my coupon until many yrs later LOL

Pops came over on a boat when he was a kid.
My ol.lady was born overseas in a diff country.

Both sides moved to some chithole here.

Damn the luck.

When I was on the RR up in Alaska (three summers at Fairbanks and Anchorage), each year I randomly ran across at least one friend from Montana, out in the street, with neither having any idea the other was in the North Star Republic. Those were funny.
Another odd one, I was riding my rice rocket on Highway 1 in northern California about 100 miles north of SFO, decided to pull over for a snack and the two people at the overlook/wide spot were HS classmates of mine.
Those are just the small-worlds over 1000 miles from home. Have had a number of others, enough to realize the world is shockingly small.

I'd have probably said,

"Nope, my name's SMITH"

I would not want either of those names in those parts I think.

Guilty as charged on the Dudleys Bread 👍🏻 Lots of family still in the area and a bunch of relatives laid to rest in a little cemetery in Alpine.