[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by PMD1969

In college my then girlfriend and I went on a (cheap) cruise for a week during spring break. While stopped at St. Thomas we went into town looking for something to do and get something to eat. We saw a Hard Rock Cafe and decided to get some lunch. Walked in and while talking with the greeter person I looked to my left and saw a group at a table.

In that group was a girl that I knew very well in HS and had not seen in years. Her name was Renee Henderson and my sister nad her had roomed together in College. Of all of the places to run into someone on that day, in port off of a cruise in that particular restaurant at that exact time.

LOL We laughed and shared a beer. Never saw or heard from her again.

Originally Posted by Sidponcho

While in the Delta club in the Tokyo airport 2 weeks ago, I ran into I guy that I know from Ohio. And I live in New England. And the odds are????????

I had a similar experience - right after college (so roughly 30 years ago) my wife and I took a trip to Germany to visit her family. We flew into Luxembourg and as we were walking through the airport I see this guy that looks like one of my buddies from college. I said "hey, that looks like Bill so-and-so".

It was. We visited briefly and I don't think I've seen him since then.

As we say around here "I come by it honest" - meaning my dad was the same way. We were always meeting someone he worked with or went through the apprentice shop with - at a rest area in Arizona, or at Disney World, etc.

K

[Keith Seymore]

So - here's my most recent weird one -

I'm up for a promotion so I applied for a new job that was posted.

Later that day I get a voicemail from a guy I went to High School with - who I haven't talked to in 35 years. He wanted to apply for the same job I just put in for and wanted me to write a letter of recommendation.

The only thing I remember about this guy is (a) he was a really good draftsman and (b) he had a crush on my then girlfriend, now wife of 30 years.

I graciously told him that since I had applied for the same job that probably removed me from the pool of available recommendation letter writers...

K

[Kennybill]

Here's one of mine. 2/13/1970 (Friday and a snowstorm) my first time on an airplane plus leaving for basic training in the Army. Today, 2/13/2013, my first Social Security check was deposited. Not Friday, no snowstorm, no airplane but I'll remember both of those dates. Ken

[jhann42]

Last fall my son asked me if he could take my 64 GTO to a car show in Centerville, Va, that was sponsored by a friend of his for a Vet's fund. I told him to come by and we'd dig it out and clean it up. We ended up at the show. I was sitting in a chair by the car and a gentleman told me that he bought the first post 64 GTO in No. Va.

I asked him where he grew up. It happens to be 3 blocks from where I did in Arlington, Va. I asked his name and I had gone to grade school with he and many of his 8 siblings.
As we we're talking, his wife came by and her maiden name was Altizer. Her brother Irvin and I were pretty close. Also, do you remember Gene Altizer (Anglia) world class drag racer. By the way I'm 71 and those were good times. Small world. Jon

[Keith Seymore]

This one was pretty fun, too (Pontiac related):

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Wendy's story -


I had something funny happen a few weeks ago, back in the November timeframe, that I haven't shared with you guys yet.

I had some errands to run in support of getting ready to go to Chicago (to the Muscle Car Nationals) so I decided to grab some lunch and take the afternoon off. I almost never go out for lunch and I never EVER stop at the Wendy's closest to my house - but - a bacon cheeseburger sounded pretty good so I stopped in. I pulled into the parking lot and parked way in the back, away from everybody else, as is my custom now that I am driving my restored '87 pickup.



I should mention, as shown, my little truck is a red Chevy regular cab 2wd shortbox. Because of that it was only natural I noticed, as I pulled in, a guy followed me in a newer (GMT800 style) pickup, also a red Chevy regular cab 2wd shortbox. He parked back kind of where I was, next to me but leaving a respectful distance between his truck and mine.

After I finished my burger (...which was excellent, by the way...) I walked back out and I noticed his truck was still sitting there. I didn't see him come or go so I looked around a bit as I was walking and right then he came out of the restaurant. He caught up to me and spoke first, saying "...hey, that's a sweet little truck!" or something like that.

I confided that I had noticed his truck , too, so we spent several minutes talking about (red) Chevy pickups, then onto working for GM and living in the area. I told him (gradually) about restoring the truck through the summer, giving him short snippets of info and then responding in more detail as he asked more follow up questions.

I haven't mentioned this yet but, because I was heading to the Muscle Car Nats that weekend, and because I wanted the author Darwin Holmstrom to sign my book, I had my big GTO book laying in the front seat of the truck.



As the pickup truck conversation died down a bit, he said "....I see you've got the new GTO book. Have you had a chance to look at it much?".

I didn't tell him that I'd had it since May but did indicate that I had flipped through it a time or two.

At that point he said, matter of factly: "My car is in it". Surprised, I said "really, which one!?!".

His car is the red '61 Catalina, shown early in the book on pages 40 - 45. He got pretty good coverage spanning over several pages.





So now the conversation was off and running again, this time talking about Pontiacs, and how he got the car painted a year ago, and how the motor is out now (spun a cam bearing) and going back together. I told him my car was on page 99 and that we did the photo shoot in November of '07 pretty much across the street from where we were currently standing. We marveled at the fact that we lived only a few miles apart and never had met before, and how unusual it was for us to meet under these circumstances.

My car:





I bet we stood in that Wendy's parking lot for almost an hour before we finally decided we'd better get going, parting ways but vowing to stay in touch.

That was one of the most bizarre chance encounters (and one of the most enjoyable) in recent memory....

K

[sdbob]

I had just received my SD in 3-74. I hung out at one the dealer mechanics houses-Jim Miller. Jim had alot of Pontiac happenings around his house. Phil had his SD in 11-73.Jeff 's SD 9-73.We hung out together.Couple yrs later Jeff parted out his car and the block-heads went to a roundy round car(Jim's-specialty).They blew the engine and I got the short block.I tried twice to unite the block and car but the new owner didn't want to sell the car.I placed all 3 cars on the SD registry.Sept-2011 I get a call froma guy who claimed I had his vin no. on my SD on the registry-huh! We talk I give him my vin and he says that's not the vin.His vin for his SD is on mine soooo.(he thought the worst someone trying to defraud the hobby) We talk some more he beguns to explain about his red 4spd car-being Jeff ...... and I finish the story.He says do you know him? sure, I been looking for the block for his car.I said 'I have it in the basement-WHAT he said Yep I do I get the no. yep it sthe block-which I knew. I call you back he said. I didn't try to get mega bucks-I did end up with another SD block in trade plus a SD TA body!!

[69 DAYTONA]

...my best car related coincidence was probably about 4 years ago...I was talking to a friend of mine about a GTO from the old days (1969) and I had been trying to track down the owner for a long time to see if the car still existed and if it was for sale

...we talked about the car over breakfast for several days that week, what we knew, remembered etc...breakfast Thursday, 3 older ladies came in and sat down in the booth behind us and one lady asked me if the pictures of the cars on the wall of my restaurant were my cars, I said yes, most of the cars were mine...she then asked me what a 69 GTO Judge was worth, one lady owner, 4-spd...I just about crapped my drawers, it was the same lady I had been looking for...long story short, a few days later the Judge was in my garage...it had been parked in her garage for 37 years 6 blocks from my house

[GTOnly70]

The Staar Pontiac dealership I would pass on the way to Macungie located in Palm think it was route 100 or route 29? Buildingis still there but dealership closed years ago.


All memories...

[email protected][/QUOTE]

Spaar and Star were two separate Pontiac dealerships.

[John V.]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

...Roughly 19 minutes....

K

Great "coincidence/car" stories. None of mine are that good.

Keith, gotta question this one.

I first thought 19 minutes too, but then realized;

1. This is the Baltimore Plant, not the Pontiac only Pontiac Plant.

2. He says Body Sequence No., not VIN sequence.


Not sure what Div cars Baltimore was building in '67, but probably mostly Chevys and maybe Buicks and Olds too.

Assuming Baltimore built them like Fremont, there was no telling how many Chevys, Buicks, and Olds between any 2 Pontiacs.

Even if Baltimore final assembled them in the same order Fisher Body put the Body Assemblies together (Fremont did not and neither did Pontiac, but Baltimore reportedly did), and assuming the Body Nos. were assigned specific to the Model Series (42 GTO in in this case) and Body Style (17 Hardtop Coupe in this case), there likely were a dozen or more cars of all kinds built between two GTO hardtops with consecutive Body Nos.

With Body Nos. 19 apart, there may have been a few hundred builds down the Final Line between them.

You could approximate using the VIN (assuming Baltimore built Pontiacs in VIN sequence order, as they probably did).

As a wild and rough guess, I would think Pontiacs represented about 20% of Baltimore production in '67 (I don't have any '67 production nos. to confirm this estimate so better nos. can be sought).

I would also guess that maybe 10% of Pontiac builds were 6 cyl.

So suppose the two GTO VINs were 90 units apart.

In that interval, there were maybe 10 OHC6 Tempest builds (separate VIN sequence set was used for the Pontiac 6 cyl cars in '67). So now they are separated by 100 builds.

In the span of 100 Pontiacs, Baltimore built 400 non-Pontiacs (assuming 80% were non-Pontiacs). That puts them 500 builds apart.

Not sure what total Baltimore production was for a Model Year or production day.

If I had to guess, 500 builds apart could still be same day, but different shifts, perhaps 8-9 hrs apart coming off the end of the line.

I do these silly nos. exercises to keep my mind sharp! My wife would say it isn't working. 400 4 spd., I hope I haven't spoiled it for you! As fast as GM was building cars back then, finding two built even this close together is still a fun coincidence.

[Mattman]

This one is a dbl header. As you know from my earlier post, my Mom passed away in a 1996 car wreck.

Well one summer day in 2003 my Wife thought she might be pregnant with our first child and as she took the little home prego test in the bathroom I heard her say Oh My God.....Im pregnant.
As i heard that I walked out onto my front porch numb (in a good way) and elated.

At that moment my Moms very best friend rolled up along side my home to see how I was doing. I had not really seen this woman since my Mom died.
I told her that just moments ago, I found out that I was going to be a Father and she got out and hugged me telling me that my Mother would be so happy!

Well, this a repeat performance. November 2006 my Wife is in the bathroom doing the test thing and she yells that she is prego with our second child and all of a sudden a car horn is honking in front my home and it is my late Moms best friends stopping by to see how we are doing.............keep in mind that I have not seen her since the last episode in 2003.

I don't know what to tell you about these episodes but I just feel that it was my Mom in some way congratulating me and or sharing in my joy at those moments.

Thats all I got to say about that.

[arcitech]

The only 2 times I've ever been arrested were right after I had been driving in a car...coincidence??

[Mattman]

Another, when I was in first grade I was at a friends house playing and they had a large (Duh) St. Bernard and my friend was in the pool and as I was approaching the pool the dog attacked my......badly.

I was bleeding to death but I was in the right place because my friends parents were a trauma surgeon and the wife a nurse.


Well may parents were about 2 miles away with my siblings and other people that they could pack into the AMC Gremlin and all of a sudden my Mom told my Dad go back home something happened to Matthew.

Well when they all walked back into the house, the phone rang and the people told them that I had been mauled by the dog.

I ended up needing 650 stitches and 2 mote operations to remove scar tissue on my neck.

Talk about Mothers intuition.

[dennis kirban]

Originally Posted by GTOnly70

The Staar Pontiac dealership I would pass on the way to Macungie located in Palm think it was route 100 or route 29? Buildingis still there but dealership closed years ago.


All memories...

[email protected]

Spaar and Star were two separate Pontiac dealerships.[/QUOTE]

My goof again Spaar was in Palm...Star which is in existance today has at least 3 dealerships in and around the area I think Easton Bethlemhem and recently bought out dealership in Quakertown.

[email protected]

[dennis kirban]

More great stories love reading them more proof its a small world afterall.

Hate to throw in a sad story but here is another one from my past:

Years ago I had a Uncle I was quite close to as he would hustle cars on the side and me being into cars we shared a common bond. He was a heavy smoker at one point and quit. As the years passed I would sometimes call him up around 11 at nite and he would meet me for soup or a donut in Warminster which was the half way point for him and me. We would meet at Warminster West which was open 24 hours a day.

I loved taking my car out late at nite. More years passed and his health started to get bad where he virtually needed a oxygen tank. At that point I would UPS him once a week fresh fruit and of course the national inquirier newspaper which he loved to read.

As things continued to get worse he went into the hospital. We got a call one morning from his daughters saying that his time was short and if we wanted to say goodbye we better get down to the hospital soon.

My wife and I immediately got in our car and started to drive to the hospital (Holy Redeemer)
Around the intersection of County Line Road and Davisville Road a cold chill came over me and I looked at my watch it was like 4 minutes to noon. I looked over to my wife and said " I think we are too late". Once we reached the hospital it was indeed too late and my Uncles time of death was 4 minutes to noon.....

true story.....

I promise the next one will be more uplifting...

My uncle was buried in a huge cemetary close to the main road and I think they even put his car keys in his pocket.

I put the names of the streets as some of you reside in this area and would recognize the land marks.

[400 4spd.]

Thanks for the replies, Keith and John V. Regardless of it being minutes or hours difference, they are still very close. I told Greg a few years ago, it would be neat to meet up with them half-way in Kansas one day.

[fiedlerh]

Tales from the beyond:
My wife lost her wonderful mom last month. Her last dinner out was with my wife, granddaughter and their kids. The day after she passed away my wife and the granddaughter got a Groupon for the same restaurant they were at. In the Groupon was a photo of the same booth they all sat in.

Since then a few family members have smelled whiffs of her perfume at random times.

My wife has a Waterford clock she got from her mom years ago. It's had a dead battery for several of years. A few days ago it started working again on its own and has been keeping time flawlessly since.

20 years ago my M-I-L's husband passed away. Right after the funeral a relative said something mildly unkind about him and was immediately attacked by several monarch butterflies. They are not known to be aggressive as far as I know.

Strange meetings:
My wife and I met at work and eventually married. We worked at a company of about 300 people, and probably knew half of them. Whenever we were out, no matter where we went, we would run into someone from work. This went on for years in the Chicago metropolitan area. It could be 2 miles from work or 50 miles. It could be at the mall, the movies, a restaurant, or a concert. It got to be a joke whenever we went out; "Who are we going to run into from work?"

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

Originally Posted by 400 4spd.

Thanks for the replies, Keith and John V. Regardless of it being minutes or hours difference, they are still very close.

Are they dated the same day on the Billing Cards ?

[charles bledsoe]

Mine is with 2 of my cars. The first Pontiac I bought after I retired from the Army (FT. hood TX) was special ordered from a Pontiac dealership in Huntsville AL, which has not existed for decades. I took a job as a support contractor at Redstone which is an Army acquisition base for aviation in Huntsville AL. About a year after we moved from TX to AL I saw a 69 GTO on eBay and noticed it was a local car. I called the seller up to come see the vehicle. When I saw it I asked him what he wanted to stop the auction and sell it to me. The car was a one owner car and was special ordered from this Huntsville dealership Smith Pontiac. The GTO was built in Atlanta and delivered to Huntsville.

About 2 years later I found out about a lady who had a 72 Ram Air Formula 455 HO that had been in her garage up on blocks for 28 years and that she might be willing to sell it. She agreed to sell the car to me after about a month. A lot of paper work came with the car as did my GTO. The woman had bought the car from the original owner who as I came to find out, had special ordered the car from the same Smith Pontiac in Huntsville AL that the GTO had been ordered from. I have the protector plate from both cars as well as other original paper work.

[Keith Vrabec]

Here's a really neat Pontiac double coincidence... Our 69 Firebird sprint 3 sp convert..Still have the car, my brother's car in high school.

I was a sophmore in spring 1979 running track practice. We were assigned a free run, allowed to go anywhere for the practice shooting for a few miles. My friend Dave told me about the car in the local Chev dealer, he worked on it the night before in his young mechanics group sponsored by the dealer. Knowing I was all about Pontiac, we ran right to the Hawkins Chevrolet to see the car. I immediately fell in love with it and remarked that if my Dad saw it he would buy it. I planned to call him as soon as I got home tohave him stop by and see it after work. I no sooner said this to Dave, Doug Hawkins walked out and said he just sold the car. I was pissed and immedately blurted out "Who bought that car?" as if it was some 15 year old kid's business to know....Doug said some older guy with a 68 Olds with dark blue stripe running down the side....Me and Dave looked at each other...HE laughed and said "you lucky sh*t!!!" Dad just bought the car when he saw it at lunch time, he had to run an errand and skipped luch to do it. Oh we were stoked.

My brother Jeff used the car a lot. He worked as a life guard and at the local donut shop, in addition to track and swimming. That summer he met a girl from the next town and started dating....Turns out it was her ex boyfriend's car...

Go figure.

[69 DAYTONA]

...about 20 years ago a friend of mine in town had a lime 70 T/A Challenger...I tried to buy it several times and later found an identical one which I purchased...we were parked side by side at a car show one night and realized our cars were not only identical, but they had sequential Vin numbers...I sold mine a few months later, he still has his and has owned it for 39 years