It's a small world after all

During three years in the U.S. Army rubbing shoulders with thousands of other young men from across the country, at state-side bases, twice across the Atlantic on troop ships, riding jeeps, trucks, trains and planes over most of Europe, and living with hundreds of soldiers at Frankfurt ETO Headquarters, I only met one other guy from Montana.

The one I actually met was during a bar fight which suddenly erupted among American GIs coming in from Bremerhaven. This was at a German "Bier Garten" in the British occupied zone at Marburg. The war was long over so I guess those boys had to fight each other. They were mostly infantry and I wasn't, so I took the wisest option available. I crawled under a large wooden table that was against a wall.

There was another soldier already under there. Within a few minutes British military police had stopped the battle and my companion and I introduced each other. He was connected to the family that ran the Great Falls Tribune.

That is my favorite "small world" story. I still can hardly believe the odds against such an occurrence. My under the table acquaintance and I did cross paths again in later years via telephone calls.

Here's another: While our son Shannon was riding a train in Switzerland on army leave in about 1978 he met three German girls and noticed a couple of them had on Whitefish High School T-shirts. Conversation brought out the fact they had been exchange students and knew Shannon's Wilhelm cousins from there.

Another: My Smokejumper crew went to a fire on upper Helen Creek in the South Fork Wilderness in summer of 1953. We had delayed our jump one day because of high winds. I went out first to locate an acceptable landing area near the fire. On the ridge I ran into a young man on a log fiddling with one of the chainsaws we had dropped from the plane. He wondered how come it took us hotshot jumpers so long to get to the fire.

I hadn't seen my brother Ritchey for a couple of years because he was serving in the Navy Air Corps during the Korean War. Unknown to me, he had received his discharge and arriving home took a change on getting work fighting one of the many blazes in the South Fork. He borrowed a plane and flew into the remote Black Bear fire camp with a friend, Johnny Robischon, then hiked up Helen Creek.

Another: Returning to the United States from a Jamaican trip with Iris' "Sewing Club", we were going through customs at Miami International Airport. Suddenly a man ran into the room and spoke to the agent who was clearing our group. He pointed to me and told the agent, "I'd really check over that one guy closely," then he was gone. The informant was a Kalispell lawyer, the son of my high school classmate, Mike Nardi.

Another: The super small world incident happened to Iris and me at Interlaken, Switzerland, in 1979. There is a beautiful casino near the train station, completely encircled by exquisite flower gardens. No one could resist taking pictures.

Iris suggested, "We should get a shot with both of us by the casino."

Luckily a group of four or five tourists was walking by and I asked if one of them could take a picture of "my wife and I." One of the men said, "Sure! Glad to do it." I told him we were from Montana and asked where they were from. In unison they replied, "So are we."

Although they were connected to the people who owned the Great Falls Tribune, it never occurred to me to tell them about their cautious associate who hid under the table during a bar fight at Marburg, Germany, in 1949.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.