When I went biking in Europe for the first time, after getting out of college in the early 80’s, family funds didn’t materialize as planned and I ended up leaving with $300 instead of $600, to ride around as long as I could. I had to sleep in the airport with a hundred other desperate souls to get a chance at a People’s Express standby ticket. In the early morning I went to get a bite to eat and noticed an older, distinguished-looking gentleman having tea and I ended up saying Hi, maybe he had the only empty chair next to him. Maybe everyone else in our motley crew seemed undistinguished. I was probably curious about a fancy lad sleeping on the couch in suit and bowler. Anyway, it turns out he was British and we had a nice chat. Then I finally got onto a plane and over to the UK, where the customs guy almost didn’t let me off the plane. He was shocked that I only had $300. Well, after graduating highschool I had biked around Michigan for almost 2 months on $150, so $300 seemed like enough for at least some touring, to me. He let me go. I ended up riding around NW Europe for over a month then I rode (and ferried) back to the UK and waited standby for another PE flight home. And there I ran into the same guy again, also heading back to the U.S. We had tea again. That was weird.
Once back in NY, I realized I only had $40 for a train ticket home and that the next train was a full day away and that I had no money for anything in the meantime. And they’d stopped allowing sleepovers in the terminal. I was in a pickle. Right then I bumped into our neighborhood family friends: a couple who was going abroad themselves for the first time. We had a hilarious and warm reunion. They were under some stress themselves as to air travel management. I helped them get oriented. Then they gave me enough money for a room and some food. That was good timing.
A few years later, I was living in L.A. on my old wood sailboat, and selling a calendar I published out of a large office building downtown that a friend had loaned to me, when I went to mail a letter at a mailbox right by L.A. City Hall. I sensed an old guy with a cane near me at the box, so I moved aside and held open the flap for him to mail his letter. He popped his in, I mailed mine, then I looked up. It was the old British gent from the two coincidental airport chats. A third crazy encounter 2,000 more miles and 3 years away!
We laughed our heads off and we agreed our meeting was most astonishing so we went to…have tea! We did a little catching up. He told me his health was failing quite quickly and that he owned two small freighters with a partner, one in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific. (I’d never met anyone in shipping. It was neat what they were doing. They had added rooms to the one in the Caribbean and were trying to sell tourist berths to college students for Spring Break—a far cheaper way to travel the islands than on a cruise ship. The rest of the ship had been divided into smaller-than-usual cargo areas. Their specialty was shipping small lots of things between islands, car parts and the like, for far cheaper than a full-size container would cost. He said that both ships were like busses, always on the moving stopping along the way. They needed an outgoing young person to do their marketing to the college crowd. I was busy but it sure was an interesting project and job idea!) Anyway, quite a coincidence yet again!
Fast forward another 5 years or so and change the subject entirely. We’re driving backroads south to visit friends and relatives in Florida. I’m going to drop off some boxes of a new book project (Potluck) to a Florida author (Rudloe). I’m reading some of my hero Jack Saunders on the drive down. We’re in backwoods Georgia. I’m reading about the good old days and how the wild country rocker David Alan Coe (and original Rhinestone Cowboy) drives more and plays more venues than anyone else, and how he got into an argument with a fellow musician and how they raced their busses in a muddy honky-tonk parking lot. We drive by a rural intersection with a sprawling honky-tonk and a sign that says “David Alan Coe here this Saturday nite!”
A few days later, we’re on the Gulf Coast and I’m trying to sell “Potluck” to my first bookstore: the fancy “Sun Dog Books” in Seaside. It’s about 200 miles west of where the author lives. I’m talking to the store owner and a young man is standing near us. The owner cheerfully buys some inventory. I’m psyched after the sale and for some reason I say Hi to the young man and tell him I just got my first sale. “I know Jack Rudloe,” he says. Amazing! Then we chat and I mention about how the coast has such unique talent and how Rudloe has a neighbor who I’m also trying to publish, Slim McElderry. “I know Slim, too!” he says. “We’re longtime friends. He stayed with my family up in Connecticut some years back.” Now, Slim is 70. This kid is 20. And he’s from Pensacola, another 100 miles further west. And he’s just that day coming back from being gone a year and was on his way home. So somehow we bump into each other and make a connection that spans 300 miles. Very weird.
Now go to last summer. We were going up north one weekend for our first family visit to our new trailer-lot on the gorgeous river, in the very rural area near Baldwin. At the same time, we’re looking into what bluegrass music might be playing in the state that summer, so I was searching the web. One of our favorite bands is an Alabama-based group that has Jack Saunder’s son Owen as its fiddler. He’s got low-key style in spades. And the group offers wonderful harmonies. We saw them in Michigan a couple winters ago, so we were wondering what they were up to. I found their website and…they were playing in Baldwin that weekend! So we went and saw them and had a great time. But that was crazy.
Martha says we have more coincidences that are better (she’s competitive) but she can’t remember them right now.
