I left WMM sitting in the lobby of a Waikiki hotel while I went to check the menu or something. By the time I got back, she had struck up a conversation with another lady. She says, "Guess where she's from." and I guessed Tennessee. Yep, not only that, but she was from Murfreesboro, where I went to college and met my wife of 44 years. It seems this lady was with a group of high school band students from Murfreesboro's Oakland High School. While we were discussing the old home town her friend walked up and she got to do the "Guess where these folks are from" thing.
Her friend guessed right, and we all talked about places and things that we liked in Murfreesboro.
I mentioned that WMM and I had met while working for the Daily News Journal and the second lady commented that her grandfather worked there a long time ago. We asked his name, but by then we already had a clue. Both of these ladies were black and when we worked at the DNJ, only one of the fifty employees was black. So as soon as she said her grandfather was Willie Smith, we both said "Shorty!" in unison. Nobody at the DNJ ever called him anything but Shorty. He wasn't really very short, but he had wide sholders and strong arms that made him look shorter than he really was. He was about twice my age back then and he and I became very good friends. He worked in the casting room, casting type-metal plates from molten metal and pouring pigs for the Linotype machines. Shorty was the one who taught me to pour pigs. He was also a great story-teller and you know how I like stories.
Shorty is gone now. He didn't live to be an old man, but I still think of him often. I couldn't believe that after all these years, I was sitting in a hotel in Hawaii, talking to his granddaughter. I would have been amazed to meet her in Tennessee after so many years, ...but in Hawaii! What are the odds on that? It made a great trip even better. I'd like to think Shorty was Up There somewhere watching.
Howard