My father had passed away just a few months prior when one evening my husband and I were chatting with an older gentleman at our church in south Texas, someone whom I knew casually by sight, no more. My husband asked him where he was from, and he named a small town in Kansas. The name of the town meant nothing to me, but Kansas certainly did.
"My family lived in (small college town), Kansas, until I was eight!" I said. "You're kidding," he said, "that's where I went to college." I looked at him again, trying to guess his age.