Well, the summer flew by, as most of them tend to do. This
year we had an abundance of visitors, and we enjoyed each and every one of
them. In August, I took a trip to Iowa to visit my son and his family, and that
was a 2-for-1 vacation… we took a side trip to St. Louis to see a Red Sox game
in the new Busch Stadium, and camped out in a log cabin for a few days of
sightseeing.
In Searsport the coffee shop opened under new management, and
that is going very well. Tourism was way up, but despite more folks to meet and
talk with, nobody really stood out as someone I’d write an entire blog post
about. Overall, it was a very eclectic group of visitors to Searsport this
summer.
This past week, two gentlemen came in who live in Atlanta.
They were in Maine on a scavenger hunt of sorts. They were antique dealers. One
of them used to work for the American Pickers TV show, and he “scouted’ out
interesting articles for the show. They were fans of the TV show, Downeast Dickerers,
and that’s how they discovered “Uncle Henry’s”.
Uncle Henry’s is a weekly publication in Maine. It’s like a
state-wide printing of classified ads. Anything and everything can be found for
sale, or barter, and these gentlemen had the latest copy in their hot little
hands… scouring it for possible bargains.
They expected to be in Maine for about a month. They rent a
storage “pod”, drive all over Maine buying and dickering for antiques to put
into the pod. When the pod is full they ship it to Georgia and use that merchandise
for their antique store. Interesting way to make a living, huh?
Earlier in the summer. we had two families show up one
morning, and one was sporting a “Clemson” t-shirt. The family at the next table
spook up immediately… “Are you from South Carolina? We are too?”
It’s always interesting to me how you can travel a tad under
1,200 miles and meet someone who lives just 30 minutes of your home. As it
turned out, one family were all graduates of the University of South Carolina,
and the other family was from their arch-rival – Clemson. They needled each
other over the merits (and demerits) of each other’s chosen school, and the
coffee shop was filled with laughter during the entire banter. They did unite over
one thing, however… their mutual revulsion of Florida State.
Then there was the day an older couple came in and the
gentleman was wearing an “Iowa Hawkeye” sweatshirt. Well, my son, Robert, lives
within shouting distance of the Iowa campus, and his family often attends Iowa
sporting events.
Naturally, I asked him if he lived in Iowa, but he did not.
He grew up in Waterloo, IA, and graduated from the University of Iowa, where he
met his wife. After working in several places through the Midwest, he and his
wife retired to Tennessee.
As it turns out, while I was camping with my son, my
granddaughter met a playmate at the campground we were staying at, who lives in
Waterloo, IA… which is just a hop, skip, and a jump north of Cedar Rapids…. so
only a week after coming home to Searsport from that trip, and hearing my
granddaughter and her new friend chatter about how they will be pen pals when
they get back home, I meet someone who grew up in Waterloo, IA. It’s a small
world.
That was my biggest surprise of the summer…. How many people
I met who were connected to me, or connected to someone I knew, by only a “few
degrees of separation”.
Just last week, my former wife’s sister-in-law contacted me
via Facebook to ask if I knew someone who said he used to work with me at Xerox
Corporation, back in the early 1970’s. I did remember him, and she and her
husband had met him on a Viking River Cruise.
That’s what struck me…
This summer, (and most summers, really) I meet so many
different types of people, from all sorts of places, and I frequently connect
in some semi-obscure way to so many of them. Someone told me that everyone on
earth can be connected to someone else on earth in less than “six degrees of
separation”. We are so close to one another, and yet, we don’t realize it.
Hmmm, if we are so close to each other, you’d think we could
treat each other a lot better.
