I have discussed this before, that no matter where you go, Hinesville finds you. Or someone from Hinesville finds you.

As difficult as it is to escape the all-encompassing and pervasive heat and humidity that come knocking around April with all its luggage and stays until mid-October, even finding a spot where there isn’t a trace of Hinesville is getting harder to do. Oh, we know we tell people, even from our own state, that we’re from just outside of Savannah. Sure, not everybody out there in God’s great world has heard of Hinesville. You could probably say that of most people in Dublin. And I don’t mean the county seat of Laurens County right next to I-16.

No. That Dublin. The one across the Irish Sea from England. The home of James Joyce and William Butler Yeats and George Barnard Shaw and U2. Many years ago, I knew some students at Emory who were reading Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” It was so difficult to understand they formed a “page of the month” club. That’s another story, for another time.

Didn’t visit the counties of my ancestors – Cork for my mother’s mother’s people, Armagh and Monaghan for mother’s father’s kin and Sligo and Galway for the old man’s ancestors, whom he said didn’t come over to the states until the 1870s. As he once opined in his usual matter-of-fact yet sarcastic tone, “They thought the potatoes would come back.” They didn’t, and a trip to those locales will have to be on the next itinerary.

I’ve learned how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. And learned how to consume it. Kinda taught myself that one, though all the Americans in Dublin said the Guinness in Ireland tastes better than the Guinness in the states, and the English say the Guinness in England tastes better than that in Ireland.

But after that very hard and extensive Guinness pouring course work, and after a trip to the absolutely amazing, gripping and chilling Titanic museum in Belfast (where thankfully much construction is underway. You wouldn’t build hotels and shops if you thought The Troubles would resume, the nearly 30 years of violence and bloodshed that besieged that city), it was time for someone else to pour me a Guinness.

There, not far from the southern banks of the River Liffey, we overhead a conversation at an adjoining table. One of the two gentlemen got up for a minute — it turned out to be former Georgia Tech quarterback and onetime Heisman Trophy runner-up Joe Hamilton — and we approached the other one.

Turns out the fella we were talking to was the new engineer for the Georgia Tech radio broadcasts, taking over for the late and legendary Miller Pope. Mr. Pope, widely regarded as one of the finest people in broadcasting, was synonymous with Tech radio broadcasts, his name getting mentioned at the start of each football or basketball broadcast by either Al Ciraldo, Brad Nessler, Wes Durham, Brandon Gaudin or now Andy Demetra.

So the conversation turned to where we were from. Savannah and about an hour from Savannah.

Oh? Where about an hour from Savannah?

Well, Hinesville. Our new acquaintance’s eyes widened, as if in great shock. His name is Isiah Stewart. And he went to Hinesville Middle School. And Bradwell Institute.

“Running into two people from Bradwell was not on my Dublin bingo card,” he exclaimed.

Five thousand miles from Pafford Street. On Parliament Street in a city that has houses and pubs older than our state.

And wouldn’t you know it. You run into someone from Hinesville.

Mr. Stewart also has a World Series ring – he’s been working on the Braves’ postgame broadcasts as well. He’s affable and intelligent, just the kind of person from Hinesville you’d expect to meet.

Even half a world away.