Just How Do I Know You?

An acquaintance of mine has a problem. Due to a minor stroke, he has lost the ability to recognize faces. He compensates for it quite well, using other cues to figure out who he might be talking to.

I have sort of the same problem. There have been times when I have had entire conversations with people, wondering who in hell am I talking with… drawing a blank with their names. I will occasionally draw a blank when conversing with members of one of the two small groups I am affiliated with. I work around it, usually coming up with the name of the person I was talking with after the conversation has come to an end.

With some of the people I know on Facebook, the problem can be worse. One fellow has been nagging at me for a while in terms of trying to figure out why I know this person. I finally figured it out the other day. I should be embarrassed that it took so long for me to know why. Once he wrote something about his being associated with a bank, it fell into place.

I thought I knew him in high school. But I didn’t know him in high school. He was a few years younger than me. I would not have run into him while I was in high school. I knew his sister, too. My sisters knew his sister and by osmosis, I knew the sister. But that still did not tell me why I knew this one guy in particular.

Between the time I had (and failed at) my own business, and the birth of my eldest child, I worked for a now-defunct appliance store called Sun TV. Sun wasn’t a bad gig, for the most part. It was well known in the Columbus Ohio market – the saying at the Sun at the time was that any competing appliance store would likely be out of business within a year of opening. Radio Shack tried with a concept called “The Show.” Bombed. Jack Nicklaus tried with his own brand of appliance store. He should have stuck to golf. But until Sun TV overextended itself and went bankrupt, it was the best place to buy appliances in Columbus Ohio.

Sun relied on outside credit providers to help its customers purchase what Sun was selling. And that’s where I met that mystery person. At the time I was working for Sun TV, my friend was working for one of the outside credit suppliers.

He and I got into a conversation one afternoon about his experience with that credit supplier. He started from the ground up, meaning that he had to work collections and repossessions. He told a story about a certain repossession which had me scratching my head, at first, and later became one of several stories I keep in my repertoire of interesting stories.

It seems that he (or it might have been someone else, the details are foggy at the moment) was assigned to repossess a Kirby Vacuum cleaner from a rural address somewhere in one of the local counties. While driving out to the address, something struck him as odd. He wasn’t quite sure what it was until he arrived at the home where the cleaner was kept.

When the owner of the house opened the door, a couple of chickens came racing out. Once inside, he noted two reasons why the cleaner was still in the box in perfect condition. For one, the house had a dirt floor. For the other, the house had no electricity. What struck the person making the repossession on the way out was that there were no overhead electrical wires leading to the house!

Now, one would think that in this day and age (or even in that day and age nearly forty years ago) that even the most remote home would have at least a wooden floor and electricity. I thought the story to be a little on the unbelievable side until an encounter I had about ten years later.

Within city limits.

I was working in the circulation department of the local newspaper, managing routes on the south end of town. One of my carriers was intimidated by one of her customers and wanted me to go see the fellow in her stead. I got to the house, no more than what I would consider to be a tar paper shack, waded past the two or three transmissions on the front porch and wondered what I would be in for.

No chickens, but the owner had dirt floors, and an ashtray overflowing with unfiltered cigarette butts. He had electricity and he had a couple of space heaters going full blast. And he was bragging that this was the best house he’d ever lived in. The others had, for reasons he could not fathom, burned to the ground!

Long story short, he paid his bill in cash, peeled off a wad of money “Jed Clampett” would carry around as “walking money.”

Did I mention that he was barefoot and only had three toes between both of his feet?

Now, that was something.

Anyway, I finally figured out where I knew that fellow on Facebook. Next time I’m up in his direction, I’ll have to look him up and swap stories. Bets he has a bunch of them.

Be Seeing You!