FROM MY FRONT PORCH I was looking at you while you are looking at me

FROM MY FRONT PORCH

I was looking at you while you are looking at me

SAM HOUSTON

Sam Houston is the publisher of the Hood County News. He is also an actor, author, playwright, performer and entertainment producer/promoter.

This past weekend, I stuck up a conversation with a musician playing at one of the local establishments. He told me he was originally from North Dakota and had moved to Texas to work in the horse business. In a few sentences he mentioned a horse he had started to work with in North Dakota that had gone on to a successful career in the cutting pen. I grinned and told him I was familiar with the horse. He smiled at me and asked me how and I told him that 20 years ago the man who owned the horse had lived just around the corner from me. Once more the adage, “the world is a small place” proved to be true. Amazing how coincidences in life keep happening.

Reminded me of a story my mother told me. When she was 4 or 5 years old, she went with her father to conduct some business with another farmer. She jumped onto the buckboard, which was drawn by an old gray mare, and made a long trip — to what to her was an unknown location. When the two arrived, her father told her to sit in the wagon and to not get off. He then proceeded to go in the farmer’s house and conduct his business.

My mother sat in the wagon for a few moments but could hear the barking of a dog coming from a wooden barn just stone’s throw away. The dog kept barking and my mom’s curiosity got the best of her. Instead of obeying her father, she jumped down and walked to the barn, thinking she could look through one of the knotholes in the wooden siding and see what the dog looked like. Once she got a look, she would get back in the wagon and her dad would never know the difference.

Mom jumped down from the wagon and eased over to the barn. As she got to the wooden side wall, she stretched up on her tip toes to look through one of the openings. Much to her surprise, just as she looked through the hole in the wall, another eye was looking back at her through the same hole! Mom screamed with shock and ran back to the wagon, almost shaking with fear wondering what had looked back at her. Her father came out of the farmers house looking to see what had happened and asked, “why did you scream?” Mom told me she muttered something about thinking she saw a snake, and her dad shrugged his shoulders and went back inside to finish his business.

Years later, Mom attended her 50-year high school reunion. Her high school was in the heart of farm country and her graduating class had only 26 students. Some of the other small schools in the county had closed over the years due to small class sizes, and currently, there was only one consolidated county school. Some of the schools that had been closed held their class reunions at the same time and place as the school Mom had attended, mainly because of the small number of people involved. I think all told, there were perhaps 40 people at her consolidated reunion, including the spouses.

As the night went on the graduates regaled each other with stories of their youth. A person Mom had not gone to school with, and did not know, sat across the table. That woman began telling a story how as a little girl she was in the barn with her dog, when a farmer came to visit her dad. She said she had gone to look through a peephole in the barn’s sidewall to see who had come to visit, but just as she did, another eye was looking at her through the same peephole! Mom started asking where the woman lived, and they both got a big laugh that some 65 years after the incident had happened, the two had found the other. They laughed and talked about how scared they were and questioned what the odds were that two people would look through the same knothole at the same time and then find each other so many years later. What an amazing coincidence.

I bet there have been some amazing coincidences in your life too. Makes a fella think the world is small, and humans all over have similar experiences and memories. It makes me feel like we are all part of the “big picture” and that is a good thing.

Thought for the day: Perhaps coincidence is God’s way of being anonymous.

Until next time.

sam@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 260