Six degrees of separation. We can connect with anyone on the planet by going through six other humans.
You aren’t going to believe this. I don’t blame you. I hardly believe it myself.
It began two weeks ago when Rex answered a
call wanting a quartet to sing Happy Birthday to a 100-year-old lady in Greeley. When all four of us agreed to do it, he
accepted the job.
Today was the day. But Rex’s daughter saw on Facebook this
morning that the party had to be cancelled because the birthday girl, the
centenarian’s daughter, also the arranger for all the party details, and her daughter (centenarian’s granddaughter)
all had COVID. Ouch!
Rex called to confirm the Facebook report,
and alas, it was true. The 100th
birthday party was cancelled. We had
also planned to take our ladies out for supper at Biaggi’s when we returned
from the party. We had reservations for 6
o’clock. No reason to cancel that, so we
all showed up around six.
We were having a good time and bantering
with the waitress. One of our number
mentioned that we were a barbershop quartet.
She lit up and said, “Great! We
have a birthday guest who would appreciate you singing Happy Birthday to him.”
We agreed to do that. Ten or fifteen minutes later, two of the
restaurant officials came to the table to ask if we were still game for the
job. When we answered in the
affirmative, they led us to a back room.
We stepped in and Dick hit the pitch on his pipe and we launched into Happy
Birthday. “Happy Birthday dear Artie,
Happy Birthday to you.”
As we sang, I looked around the room and saw
a guy who looked familiar. I couldn’t
remember his first name, but the last name was Hiltner and I immediately began
looking around the room for anyone else that might confirm my suspicion.
We ended that song and they stated
yelling, “Encore! Sing another!” Rex asked if there happened to be a Mary Lou
in the room. Sure enough, there was a
Mary Lou in the room. So we launched
into the barbershop version of “Hello Mary Lou” made famous by Ricky Nelson.
Again as we sang, I looked around, and
not six feet from me sat Jim Hiltner.
When we finished, I took two steps over and shook hands with Jim. I asked him if he was related to everyone in
the room. He explained his relation to
the birthday boy, Artie, and confirmed his brother Gene was also there. He also said they had moved to Loveland and
lived on the north side.
We didn’t have much time for a
conversation since the host of the party was wanting to make a speech, so I left
and returned to our table. I had not
been seated a minute or two before the hostess who had led us to the birthday
party brought a bottle of wine to our table and said the birthday boy wanted to
thank us for singing to him.
That should have been the end of it. It was surprise enough to run into two guys that
I used to know from Eastern Colorado. But
in a way, it had only begun.
In another ten minutes, the birthday boy himself,
Artie, came to our table to thank us.
And that should have been the end, but no. He then asked me if I was the one from
Genoa. Nobody had mentioned Genoa. I said yes and he said, “I’m from
Flagler. Are you Ottem?”
Okay, he could have got my name from
Jim. But why had he bothered? Why was he interested?
I had to dig my eyelids out of my
forehead and close my mouth a little to say “yes.” When I said yes, he launched into a story
about being in Greece back in the seventies when there was a coup with
tanks roaming the streets, etc. He was hanging
out at the American Express office where many Yankees conglomerated to visit
with their own kind when a girl with the name Ottem struck up a conversation
with him.
I quickly wracked my brain to think who
would have been in Greece in the seventies.
Then it hit me; it was sister-in-law Michelle who was a foreign exchange
student in Greece in the seventies. I
remembered her story of running into a guy from the Limon area and asking if he
knew any Ottems. He thought he did, from
Genoa.
I told him the story as I remembered it. The girl wasn’t named Ottem. It was the girl’s sister who was married
to a guy of that name. Patti and I
remembered the story, the coup, the tanks, and we swapped remembrances for a
minute or two. Everyone was marveling at
the coincidence, the implausibility of it all.
After Artie left us to return to his
birthday party, we shared stories of marvelous coincidences. As in The Music Man, the barbershop
quartet abandoned our ladies to go sing.
First, we sang for the waitstaff near the
bar. We returned to our table, but
before we sat down, the hostess asked us to sing for the kitchen folk. We followed her back to the kitchen and sang
for chefs and their helpers. We returned
to our table and sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to a lady at the table next
to ours. Our ladies suffered their
embarrassment stoically. Finally, we
sang a tag, “Goodbye” to the front desk ladies and we left.
When we were alone, we got to thinking
about all that had just happened. The
cobwebs and rust didn’t disappear entirely, so I called Michelle to see if she
could refresh my memory.
She
thought she and Artie were standing in line together and struck up a
conversation. “Where are you from?” When Michelle learned he grew up near Limon,
she asked if he knew anyone by the name of Ottem. He thought he did.
The rest of the story as we recalled it: Michelle’s mother was visiting Michelle in
Greece when the coup occurred. She got
up that morning, looked out the window, saw the tanks and the soldiers, packed
her bag and headed for the airport—leaving Michelle there to fend for herself. (Not as harsh as it sounds. Michelle was safely ensconced with a Greek
family who knew the ropes.)
In the end, I am surprised Artie knew our
name in the first place. He chalked it
up to sports competition among small town schools. I am even more surprised that he would
remember that name, that incident, and that girl he met briefly fifty years ago
in Greece.
Artie has a good memory, I think. Mine, not so good. I didn’t remember to get his last name or a
phone number. Darn!
Six degrees of separation? I think it must be down to one degree, two at
the most.
