A Book in a Beauty Salon...

   Thinking for a title of this short piece, it could be:

      Six Degrees of Separation

      It's a Small World After All

   But here is the story, at least to this point in time…

   The other day I took my wife into her beauty shop to get her her washed. (It is hard for her to do this personal chore with only one good hand and arm these days.)

   As I waited for Char to finish up, I picked up a couple of books lying on her desk. I'm always looking for new stories to read aloud to my wife, so I asked the stylist about these two by an author that I did not know.

   I had thumbed through one of them and had not discovered any really bad language, so if the author wrote a good story, they could be good for our reading times.

   So I asked…

   Char, the beautician, told us that one of her male customers had loaned them to her, and she enjoyed them. The stories were entertaining, and the author kept the action flowing. Sounded good to me.

   As I glanced into one book, I noticed, on the inside front cover page, a personal seal. One of those identification markings that owners of books embossed on their private copies. The seal was not unusual, but the name was, and I knew it.

   The last name was Zbinden, first name Ray. He had also initialed the page RZ with the date '04.

   Now I had gone to high school back in Chattanooga with a Louis Zbinden, so I began to try to put all this information together.

   Googling for Ray Z. I found nothing current.

   Googling for Louis, I found a lot. He was in San Antonio, having pastored a Presbyterian Church there for 32 years. On one site I found an email address, so I took a chance and shot an email into cyberspace to see if I had the right McCallie alum and classmate of the class of "54.

   Louis answered that he had a brother, Ray, that was 2 years younger, and that he had passed away about 10 years ago and had lived in Dallas.

   After some further research online, it seems that the gentlemen who had loaned the books to Char, a certain Harry Moffett, was Ray's brother in law, and he lived here on St. Simons only about 5 miles or so from our place.

   So, from a visit to a beauty shop, a pick up of a loaned book, a look inside, the finding of an embossed seal from the book's owner at one time, to a name on the seal, to a search for a classmate of some 63 years in the past, to an answer to an email, all because the man who lived here on our Island had loaned a book, and that man's sister was the wife of the brother of my classmate.

   How neat is all that?

   You just never know…

And a blast from the past..McCallie's Mr. Purdy, physics teacher, and his politically incorrect rating board of his senior class. No. 11 is Binden (Louis) and No. 13 is D'man (blogger)