At the time, who knew?

[Pappy]

Year, 1957. Place, Aberdeen, MD. The wife and our car in front of our first apartment ( one room) while I attended Army school at the Proving Grounds.

our landlady was a kind woman named Mrs. Ripkin. Her son was always tossing a baseball around, but being a newlywed, never gave it much thought.

well, as you no doubt have guessed, this was Cal Ripkin senior who went on to be a famous player and his son followed in his footsteps.

i have never been back there since 57 so I have no idea if the home is still there or turned into another mall.

at the time, who knew?

 

[That Guy]

Those brushes with fame/ordinary people are always amazing.

 

[SifuPhil]

Yeah, that's cool when that happens. I've never had the fortune of living next to / growing up with anyone famous.

... INfamous, yes, but we won't get into that here ...

 

[janfromflorida]

Your story reminded me of an old one in my life. It was somewhere in the 60s. My little town had a little fair with all the usual contests and such. A friend of mine was in charge of the pet contests for the school kids. She'd filled all the slots for judges of cats, dogs, etc., but asked if I would judge the "All pets" category, which was everything else. Of course I agreed and set about looking over the assortment of turtles, snakes, raccoons, possums, goats, etc. Well, when I came to the contestant his teacher and whole class was gathered around. I walked over and looked into the aquarium on display. Inside was gum wrapper, dried grass and a rock. Displayed in front was a poster board proclaiming all the plusses of keeping a rock for a pet. It was very quiet. It only ate such things as gum wrappers, etc. Of course I burst out laughing. Then I pinned the blue ribbon for first prize on the aquarium, to a huge round of applause. Everyone was very happy. Until later, when my friend came over the loudspeaker announcing the disqualification of the winner and giving the first prize to the 2nd place contestant.

Well, I was furious. This kid had worked so hard on his project and everyone had been rooting for him. I fumed my way home and then picked up the phone and called the newspaper. I said that since he had worked so hard at least they could do a human interest story on him. Well, they agreed and sent out a reporter and the kid got a nice story and big picture one the back page of our newspaper. So we all ended up feeling good about the whole thing.
It was about six weeks later that someone, somewhere began merchandising pet rocks! I guess that little story must have made the wire service! Who knew?

 

[Pappy]

Your story reminded me of an old one in my life. It was somewhere in the 60s. My little town had a little fair with all the usual contests and such. A friend of mine was in charge of the pet contests for the school kids. She'd filled all the slots for judges of cats, dogs, etc., but asked if I would judge the "All pets" category, which was everything else. Of course I agreed and set about looking over the assortment of turtles, snakes, raccoons, possums, goats, etc. Well, when I came to the contestant his teacher and whole class was gathered around. I walked over and looked into the aquarium on display. Inside was gum wrapper, dried grass and a rock. Displayed in front was a poster board proclaiming all the plusses of keeping a rock for a pet. It was very quiet. It only ate such things as gum wrappers, etc. Of course I burst out laughing. Then I pinned the blue ribbon for first prize on the aquarium, to a huge round of applause. Everyone was very happy. Until later, when my friend came over the loudspeaker announcing the disqualification of the winner and giving the first prize to the 2nd place contestant.

Well, I was furious. This kid had worked so hard on his project and everyone had been rooting for him. I fumed my way home and then picked up the phone and called the newspaper. I said that since he had worked so hard at least they could do a human interest story on him. Well, they agreed and sent out a reporter and the kid got a nice story and big picture one the back page of our newspaper. So we all ended up feeling good about the whole thing.
It was about six weeks later that someone, somewhere began merchandising pet rocks! I guess that little story must have made the wire service! Who knew?

And made millions of dollars, no doubt. The only other famous person I got to see was in the fifties my folks took me to the Chenango County Fair. There on stage was this country band called "Hello, my name is Johnny Cash"
this was early in his career, hadn't met June yet, I think, and was in to his heavy drinking days. Luther was also his bass player.

Who knew that a little country band would become so famous.....

 

[Steve]

When my wife lived in London with her first husband, they used to go to a bar to listen to a band of wild kids banging at their guitars and singing crazy songs..
They said they will absolutely NEVER go anywhere with that kind of music..

May I present to you.... "The Beatles" .............