I have written previous “Pub Chats” about coincidental or serendipitous moments and events that have made me go “Huh?”
They happen to me fairly regularly — in fact, so regularly that I even keep a list of them in my home office, where I spend enough time and where it’s easily accessible so that when the next something incredible happens I can scribble it down while it’s still fresh.
Things like being buddies with a guy for 10 years before we learned we were cousins … and being served by a bartender in Albany who was the brother of my sister’s best friend’s husband … and meeting a man from Rochester at an Auburn restaurant whose grandparents were from the same small town in Sicily that one of my wife’s grandfathers was from.
Things like that.
What in the world I will ever do with that list — which continues to grow, by the way — I don’t have the slightest idea, but I do like to rank the items in the order of how stunning or unusual they were. And the latest one may just wind up toward the top of those rankings.
As many of you know, I have organized a number of group trips to Italy — 11, actually, in 22 years. The latest one this past fall took us up into the northeast of the country, and we were enjoying a day........