Every now and then, I look for a couple of college fraternity brothers via the Internet. As so often happens, we’d fallen out of touch years ago, when we all went our separate ways. And for as easy as Facebook makes it to connect with old friends, it’s still not perfect.
My first target was Randy Weber, who was one of my best friends at the TEP house. We were last in touch about twenty years ago. I knew that he’d moved to the Erie, PA area, and that he’d started a chimneysweep business back then, but that was about it. So despite my sporadic efforts, I could not track him down. He did not have any visibility on the ‘net.
Around Christmas, the obvious solution finally smacked me in the head. Randy was from a small town in northwest PA. I figured that if I did a white pages search for his home town, I’d find someone he was related to, and I’d be able to connect that way.
The white pages search gave me 5 people with the same last name. I’d stayed at his home back when we were in school, and one of the street names sounded vaguely familiar, so I called. And the person who answered the phone was Randy’s mother. Trusting soul, she gave me Randy’s home phone number in Lake City, PA.
I called him right away, and his wife answered the phone. Randy couldn’t talk just then, she explained, because he was out skinning a deer. That flashed me back to Randy and his roommate trying to tan a deer hide in their bathroom. Didn’t work so well.
It took a couple of weeks of phone tag, but we finally connected. And he did confirm that he rarely uses email, since he does not have a desk job. Now we’re just going to have to find an excuse to meet up back in State College.
My first target was Randy Weber, who was one of my best friends at the TEP house. We were last in touch about twenty years ago. I knew that he’d moved to the Erie, PA area, and that he’d started a chimneysweep business back then, but that was about it. So despite my sporadic efforts, I could not track him down. He did not have any visibility on the ‘net.
Around Christmas, the obvious solution finally smacked me in the head. Randy was from a small town in northwest PA. I figured that if I did a white pages search for his home town, I’d find someone he was related to, and I’d be able to connect that way.
The white pages search gave me 5 people with the same last name. I’d stayed at his home back when we were in school, and one of the street names sounded vaguely familiar, so I called. And the person who answered the phone was Randy’s mother. Trusting soul, she gave me Randy’s home phone number in Lake City, PA.
I called him right away, and his wife answered the phone. Randy couldn’t talk just then, she explained, because he was out skinning a deer. That flashed me back to Randy and his roommate trying to tan a deer hide in their bathroom. Didn’t work so well.
It took a couple of weeks of phone tag, but we finally connected. And he did confirm that he rarely uses email, since he does not have a desk job. Now we’re just going to have to find an excuse to meet up back in State College.
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