Deviled Ham
This is how conversations wander.
Last Sunday I sat outside at the Clinton Elks Lodge at a music fest. My friend Bill and his wife Missy, our friends Thom and Mike, and me.
We talked about music, bands we liked, and concerts we attended.
And since this is New Jersey, naturally we talk about processed meat.
Pork Roll or Taylor Ham.
Bologna.
Knockwurst.
Liverwurst.
We also discussed the horrible smell liver has when cooked. My mother made it once (just once) when I was a kid, and it stunk up the whole house.
Then my friend Bill stated, “I like deviled ham.”
I never tried it, but I remember there were a lot of commercials about that product when I was younger.
“What was the name of the company that put out those cans of deviled ham?” I asked Bill.
Bill thought for a second, then said, “Underwood.”
That one word sent our conversation off in a very different direction.
When I was young, my Aunt Gloria and Uncle Ellsworth lived in Livingston, New Jersey. My cousins (in no particular order) Pam, Andrea, David, Cynthia, and Allison grew up there.
There is a lot I remember about their house and my time with my cousins. The only name I remember from outside the family was a neighbor’s last name:
Underwood.
I casually mentioned that my family who lived in Livingston had a neighbor named Underwood.
Mike said, “I knew a family in Livingston with that name. The father had a very unusual first name.”
So, I texted my cousin Pam and gave her a quick rundown of what happened. Then I asked her for the father’s name.
She replied. It was an unusual name (that I will not reveal here) that I relayed to Mike.
“That’s it,” he said.
Then he asked what my cousin’s last name was.
I told him, “Shafto.”
Mike’s head shot up, and without hesitation he asked, “Pam?”
What the hell?
How did Mike know my cousin Pam?
I gave Pam Mike’s full name.
She replied that it didn’t sound familiar.
But a minute or two later she texted me Mike’s high school yearbook photo.
Mike was a few years older. Pam had her yearbook, and the picture jarred her memory.
She remembered him.
A few more texts about Mike. What was he doing now?
Retired.
What did he do before?
Worked with kids with special needs.
“Nice,” Pam texted then, “small world.”
We were dumbfounded that Mike knew my cousin.
Mike shook his head. “I haven’t heard or thought of her name in fifty years.”
I know conversations sometimes tend to wander. But to go from processed meats to a shared connection decades in the making, that is a hell of a wander.
Small world indeed.
