It really is a small world … after all

To borrow a phrase/song from Disney, it is a small world after all. It is Friday morning and I’m trying to figure out what to write for a column. 

A man from the Cowley area came in the office. He wanted information from an obit that recently appeared in the paper. After finding it for him, he said “I should know who are.” 

We introduced ourselves. He said he grew up in Basin. As I always do, I mentioned Rev. Floyd Ellison was my grandpa. Mr. Carr’s face lit up. He had gone to the First Baptist Church when Grandpa was the preacher. He asked about Uncles Allen and Floyd and Auntie Lynette.  He also asked about Allen’s wife, Christine. 

He told me a story about being in a coffee shop in Torrance, Calif., decades ago.  He saw a woman across the room and knew her face looked familiar. It took him a moment, but a light bulb went off and he said, “That’s Christine Griffith.”  They spoke for a while, reminiscing about growing up in Basin and Allen.  He went over to their home and had dinner a time or two. 

He continued about it being a small world and the chances that two people from Basin would run into each other in California. 

Then he said, what are the chances he would walk into the paper in Basin and find someone whose family he knew growing up. That is easily answered by one of the verses from the Disney song.

“There is just one moon and one golden sun. And a smile means
friendship to everyone. Though the mountains divide and the oceans are wide. It’s a small world after all.”