My Corner of the World - Light Up Blue Ridge

On Saturday we had the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Blue Ridge. Typically this is a huge event and people come from all over the place to come to it. Last year I think they had something like 8000 people in attendance!!!! This town is SMALL so I'm really not sure where they put all those folks! But, this year it rained all day long so the attendance was pretty poor. We went down there in the morning and then went back for the lighting of the tree.

Here's a crazy story for you. At the event they have bands that play during the day. One of the bands was the Gopher Broke Band. You may remember reading about Bobby Don Bloodworth in THIS post sometime back. It's kind of one of those "small world" type stories.

We were sitting in the coffee shop and the bass player for the band walks in and I have this instant face recognition thing. You know when you see someone and you KNOW that you know them somehow and you just can't place them? Well, that's how I felt about this guy. I told Wayne about it and he said - well, just go up and talk to him. Of course I didn't.

But, it kept on bugging me. He was SO familiar it was weird. Finally, I told Wayne I was going to walk around Blue Ridge and find him and talk to him. So I did. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hey! Do you happen to know a guy named Barry Richman?

Familiar Guy: Yeah I do. You look really familiar to me.

Me: Yeah! You look familiar to me too so I was wondering if you had ever played bass for Barry Richman at Fuzzy's in Atlanta.

Familiar Guy: Yeah I have.

Me: Hmmm.......that must be why you look so familiar to me (but I'm thinking that I KNOW that isn't right and why would he know ME from that).

Me: (Wild Stab) Do you know a guy named John Bogino (my dad) by any chance?

Familiar Guy: Ummm - yeah. YEAH! Hemmingways!!!

Me: HOLY COW - YES!!!!!

Hemmingways is a bar my dad owned in Atlanta a LONG freaking time ago. This guy was the cook there for a couple of years. So, it turns out that's how I knew him. I used to go in there with my dad and hang out in the kitchen with this guy for hours just goofing off since I couldn't really sit at the bar - I was like 10 or 12 or something. So, I hadn't seen this guy for about 25 years! Weird.

So that gives Wayne and I two six degrees of separation connections with this band. Small world. Here he is.

Anyway - I'll have more pictures of Light up Blue Ridge for you next week - including the lit up tree!