“It was an amazing experience,” she said. “Really moving.”

“She” is Heidi Kretser, who’s always a joy to talk with. She’s bright, funny, well-informed, and always alight with enthusiasm and joy unbounded.

“It” was something that happened to her at a big city airport.

She was in one of the huge waiting areas, indulging in her (and my) number-one airport sports — people watching. I’m a people watcher all the time, but big city airports offer a number and variety of people unmatched by any other building on God’s green earth.

So there Heidi was, taking in the passing parade, when a group of five people came in and sat across from her. They were in their 50s and judging by their manner with each other, they were long-time friends.

Heidi gave them a cursory glance and thought their was nothing noteworthy about them — till suddenly there was: One of them was wearing a Dr. Y’s sweatshirt. Once she saw that, Heidi went on Full Alert.

If you’re a newbie to My Home Town, odds are you’ve never heard of Dr. Y’s. But if you were here in 1979 to ’88 and of legal drinking age, you would’ve known Dr. Y’s — maybe too well for your own good.

It was a gin mill where The Fiddlehead Bistro is now. It was a young person’s bar, and I never went there for three solid reasons.

First, it was loud, crowded, and smoke-filled — things I couldn’t stand in a bar. Second, as an old man, here was a generation gap of sorts between me and that crowd. And third, it was a popular spot for our local college kids — especially Paul Smith’s College kids — many of whom were my students and were the last peeps I wanted to see when I went out for a beer. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the PSC kids immensely, but five full days of them a week was enough. And, though it hurts me to admit it, I’m sure they thought the same thing about me.

While Dr. Y’s wasn’t my kind of place, it was for Young Ms. Kretser. So as soon as she saw that sweatshirt, she went into DEFCON-1. And Heidi being Heidi, she didn’t keep it to herself. Au contraire, she immediately approached the guy.

“Excuse me,” she said. “But I’ve gotta ask you where you got that sweatshirt.”

“You know Dr. Y’s?” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m from Saranac Lake.”

And those were The Magic Words.

The guy was from somewhere downstate, but Way Back When his sister had a boyfriend who went to NCCC. As a result, the guy had come to town a lot to party with them.

A Quick Note: This was back when the drinking age was 18, so all the NCCC and PSC kids, plus lots of townies, were legal and took full advantage of it. Back in them days, Bunkie, Saranac Lake was the ADK Party Central. Sure, Lake Placid had their share of bars, but their young crowds were mostly weekend and holiday tourists, I think. Here, the party never ended (and a lot of my students had the grades to prove it).

Heidi and the guy became instant pals, swapping stories of their Flaming Youth. But then, amidst the tales of fun and frolic, the guy grew serious. Then he said why, specifically, he was wearing that sweatshirt.

It was the anniversary of his sister’s death, who’d passed away a bunch of years before. To him, it wasn’t just a sweatshirt — it was a memorial.

“Running into you today is a sign,” he said.

“A sign?” said Heidi.

“Yeah, a sign from my sister that she’s all right,” he said. “And if she’s all right, then I’m all right.”

And, as inevitably happens in airports, each of them had to go their separate ways. They chatted a bit more, took some selfies, and said their good-byes.

And while that ended the experience itself, to me it brought up two significant issues.

One came from Heidi herself, who said if she’d been on her laptop or phone, as too many of us are too much of the time, she would never have noticed the sweatshirt and would’ve missed the whole experience.

“Just think,” she said, “how many interesting, even great, real-life encounters people miss because they’re on a device of some sort.”

“Believe me, I have,” I said.

Then again, you’d have to be living in a shoebox for the past 20 years not to have thought about it.

The other issue was about signs, specifically signs from the Great Beyond, like the one the guy in the sweatshirt had.

Do they truly exist? Can we get messages from a spirit world? Or are we just believing what we want to believe?

I’m not, by any measure, a spiritual person. Essentially, I believe in what’s provable in the physical realm, and that’s it. But given my lifetime won/loss record, I also know I’m wrong a lot of the time. Aside from that, if people find comfort in believing in the Unprovable, I’m all for it.

But, still, I can’t help thinking about such things. And when I do, I defer to Shakespeare. In this case, specifically, I refer to the quote when Hamlet says to his friend, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

To which I will add two things.

One is, Amen.

And the other is, Horatio, you ain’t the only one.