Two Recent "It's A Small World" Stories

I have always loved those 'small world' stories especially when they happen to me. When I lived in the big city (Dim Wah, Dez Moinz, Dee Moyne), as often as I could when meeting someone I would ask if they were a native of the city. If not, "Where did you grow up"? Or, "What was your maiden name?" One time when I went to lunch with the people conducting our annual audit where I worked, I asked one of the young women if she was originally from Des Moines. "No," she replied, "I'm from some small town you've probably never heard of: Lovilia." "I've heard of Lovilia", I told her, "one of my high school classmates lives there now." She asked who that was and I said Shirley....not being able to remember Shirley's married name for a minute, so I said, Shirley Scott. She said, "She's my mom." Small, small, small world.

Back to my recent stories. Last weekend my daughter Kari was on her way to a friend's house when she passed by a garage sale. She spotted the above figurines and exclaimed, "Oh, Isabel Bloom!" The man said, "You know about Isabel Bloom? You must be from the Midwest." Kari told him yes, from Iowa originally and he asked what part. She said Des Moines, but that her Mom's family were from Corning and that I now live in Creston. He said, "I'm originally from Atlantic." (Another town in SW Iowa.) This small world exchange took place in Portland, Oregon where Kari now lives.

One of my high school class mates who now lives in Bakersfield, CA is working on scanning family pictures now that he's retired and has time to do so. Last week he posted old pictures of his family home and the Methodist Church at Guss on face book. That started a brief dialog about remembering Guss. He mentioned my Uncle Alvin's black smith shop among other places. I asked him if by chance he had a picture of it from back then as I was thinking about writing a blog about it. Unfortunately, he did not.

So, Tuesday, I decided to google "Guss, Iowa Blacksmith Shop" hoping somewhere out there, there might be a picture. Which is what led me to Donna's "JUST ME" blog spot and her blog "When I was a little girl" of March 23, 2011, remembering her time living in Guss. And there was this picture (above) of her Mom, taking a picture of the old black smith shop as it was about fifteen years ago.

In that blog she also showed a picture of herself standing in front of the 'switch board' house where she lived with her parents who ran the Guss telephone switchboard. The funny thing was in all my thinking about and remembering Guss from the '40's and 50's, I had been trying to remember the names of the people who manned the telephone switchboard 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So I e-mailed her and asked. Even though her family moved to Missouri in the early 50's, we are sharing some fun memories; some of which she has already published on her blog at http://donna-justme.blogspot.com

Here is a picture of my cousins, Lloyd (left) and Gary taken at Grandpa Ridnour's around 1945 - possibly the way Donna remembers them. I still want to blog about the black smith shop and still hope to find a picture of it as it was in the 40's. Aunt Lois's pictures were all destroyed when their farm home burned in the mid-'80's. And Gary lost any pictures he had when fire destroyed Grandpa & Grandma Ridnour's house where he was living in the '90's.

I'll keep looking for an old picture of Uncle Alvin's black smith shop in Guss, Iowa. And I'll keep savoring these small world experiences made even easier now through the magic of the internet.

(Thanks to Donna for permission to use her picture.)