My beautiful Dalmation Painting
This beautiful little, well not so little, dog kept me good company for 13 years. I still miss her.
Read MoreThe Story of the First Russia Trip
On 09/28/2010, in Poetry, Prose, Russia, Thoughts, Writing, philosophy, by g.abbey
No poetry this time, a change of pace, for now. Prose this time, true story that changed my life for the better.
At the time, I was the CFO of a hazardous waste company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had opened a CPA firm in Oklahoma City after my divorce and during that time I took on a partner, who’s name will be, for this story, Z, He was a great partner. I was the technical one, who had the ability to search out and find the answers to whatever technical, accounting question needed an answer.
He was the political partner, the one who could move our partnership forward to the place where we were both making as much money as was reasonably possible in Oklahoma City in the early ’90′s. We came upon a rather unusual customer, who, over time, took more and more of both of our times. Unfortunately, he and his company were in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Door to door, my house to the door of the office was 108 miles. Now at that time, I was a very competitive person (ok, still am!) and I would play a game with my car every morning on the way to work in Tulsa. I had a beautiful red BMW (in the first few years, black later) and it had an on board computer. Now, I know that on board computers are commonplace now, but at that time, they weren’t. It was during the time of radar detectors and following semi trucks to keep from getting a ticket.
Somehow, we happened upon a great solution to this “problem”. First, let me tell you the game. I spent every day for three years, trying to “beat” my time from the day before. And I’m not good at losing!!! So, I generally won that game. The only thing that would slow me down was either really good music that I didn’t want to stop listening to or the wonderful advent of books on tape. I would slow down so that I could hear the end of the book. And I’m betting I’m not the only one who did that.
We also found another wonderful solution that had NOTHING to do with slowing down. Now, I know some of you are from Oklahoma and have surely spent some time on the Turner Turnpike between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. If you have, then you know that about three quarters of the way, there is an anonymous speed trap that is tracked by low flying airplanes. I don’t know about you, but to me this was not playing fair. So we started contributing to the State Highway Patrol Benevolent Fund for the families of slain troopers. We would get a new sticker every six months and instead of taking the old one off, we would position them so that, even from a distance, it was easy to see that we had contributed a lot, over a lot of years.
Then when either of us was pulled over in one of those, “everybody in car pull over for your ticket lines (because we got you with the airplane)”, the troopers, who were by now our friends, would see our cars and our stickers and wave us through, past everyone else, sometimes as many as 30 or 40 cars. You may think this was not right or not fair, but it is what it was. It is unlikely that I would do such a thing again, but I never did get a ticket on that turnpike, and neither did Z. Between us we were stopped more than a hundred times.
These were the fun times. During this time, I was asked by his church to accompany his wife on a cross political trip. I only know how to describe it as a trip that was sponsored by the governments’ of the USSR and the USA. They were still the USSR, Russia had not come into it’s own yet, and this trip was supposed to be a visit between business people. As in, ‘I’m a business person, so I’ll go stay at a business person’s house and then you will come to stay at my house.
The purpose was to expose both parties to how the other country did business. We were set to stay two by two, like the ark, in their homes, seeing as how we didn’t speak any Russian, and doubted that they spoke English.
Sometimes things have a way of working out the way they are supposed to be. As we spent many hours on trains, planes, and automobiles just to get there, you can imagine how tired I was when it appeared that we were finally approaching this little town in Russia, 1800 miles inland from Moscow. (Trust me to Never do things part way and only go to Moscow!!… Oh, no, I had to go all the way to the middle of Russia!.:)… Back to the story, the leader of our little bedraggled group approached me, which included, by the way, press from both countries, as we were breaking ground here. This was the first “official” visit of American’s in masse to the middle of Russia, with permission to go there.
I could see on his face as he approached me that, whatever he was going to say, he was a Lot apprehensive of my answer. He opened his mouth to say, “Oh, Lynne, do you think it would be all right…. ” And I just burst out laughing. “Just spit it out”, I said. So he did. The people where we were going had taken our list of visitors, and split them up they way THEY wanted to have company and two by two was NOT what they had in mind!!! So his question was, “would I mind, if I went by myself to stay with a different family?” Of course, my mouth opened before my brain engaged and I said, “That’s ok, I don’t mind”. To his credit, he did stop me and say, wait; there is something else you need to know. It’s not a family, and he is not married. He lives with his daughter and her husband. :<}… Well you can’t say I wasn’t forewarned.
We got to the destination, after having ridden two nights and a day, four to a bunkroom, (during which I had fallen off the top bunk screaming at the top of my lungs at a bad dream. like brother… like sister)…. on a troop train (with real Russian troops, who had real Russian guns!). I was tired, we were all exhausted, but also very excited to finally be where we were going. A nice looking gentleman with an arm full of flowers met me at the train, asking “Lynne?” When I said yes, he handed me the flowers, picked up my turquoise backpack (which is another funny story). And said, “Let’s go, then.
Trust a naive American to assume that we were all going to the same place. Wrong. We drove and drove and drove and drove. During all of the time, out of nervousness, I was jabbering away, IN ENGLISH, assuming he could understand every single word I said. After all, we HAD been told that they could all speak English, that it was part of their school curriculum and that it should be NO problem if we didn’t speak ANY Russian. THANK GOD I stopped on the way to the airport and picked up a phrase book. 16 pages long, most of it was a dictionary. The rest had a few “phrases you might need” Not written in phonetics, which would have been nice.
Suddenly it was deathly quiet. I started looking outside and realized that we had been driving for over an hour. There were NO other Americans near or far, for that matter, and there I was with a strange man whom I had never met and who did not speak a single word of English, not one. And I spoke not one word of Russian, not one. Then I got a tiny bit apprehensive.
After what seemed as if it were another hour, though it probably wasn’t, he pulled up into the parking lot of an apartment building and said, with pantomime, “home”. Now this would normally have been a sign of relief, but let me describe for you what it was I saw. Not another car in the parking lot. Weeds in the “grassy parts” that were at least four feet tall. Not another soul in the world. He parked the car, close to the door, got out and came around and opened my door. (I’m thinking, maybe this was just a stop on the way. yes? No.)
I carried my flowers, he carried my turquoise backpack, and we wound our way up to the door. As soon as we stepped inside, and the door shut, it was pitch black. (Mind you, it was still in the middle of the afternoon).
No electricity in the hallways. What next? Oh, never fear, there was more. We used our feet to follow the hallway to the end, whereupon, he pushed a totally unseen button and, lo and behold, light. Light, in the elevator, thank you God. We squeezed our two not large bodies plus the flowers, plus the LARGE turquoise backpack into an elevator the size of a closet in a tiny trailer. On the outset, it was 2′x2′ big. And the doors closed and… you guessed it, the lights went out.
Has anyone ever heard of claustrophobia? That was when I learned what it felt like.
Up we went, s.o.o.o. s.l.o.w.l.y… t.h.a.t. … I. t.h.o.u.g.h.t…..I. w.a.s…..g.o.i.n.g…..t.o……l.o.s.e. . i.t…….
I didn’t.
On floor Seven, we got out and, true to what I now expected, the lights went out again. We used our feet to follow the wall. I was getting good at this by now. I figured whatever was going to happen to me was going to happen.
I had brief visions of never being seen or heard from again. Of course, my kids were too small to come after me, and my not quite ex-husband would have been glad, it would have saved him the attorneys’ fees and the death threat that he ended up making. Too bad for him and me, I would have loved to have missed that.
When we finally got to a door, we stepped into a very small foyer with a LIGHT on and two doors. A very large angry man came out of one of the doors and spoke something I’m sure I don’t want to know, and then retreated back to his apartment. Then the other door opened, and a VERY large Heavy Doberman met me at the door with teeth bared.
Let me tell you, it had been a looooong time since I had left the safety of the Oklahoma City airport and it seemed longer yet before I would feel safe again. But I was wrong.
Behind the dog, whose name was Archie, by the way, was the most beautiful young girl I had seen in a long time. She had on an apron and the entire apartment smelled of the wonderful dinner that she and her father served to me All my fears were put to rest. My host gave up his own bed and bedroom and slept on the floor in the other room to make sure that I felt safe and at home.
I spent a wonderful three weeks there. He had to work, so I spent some time with his daughter, who I came to love as if she were my own. And yes, I found the other Americans. Two days later, it seems, there were plans for tours for the Americans to see the sights of what is known as the “Paris of Russia”. We went on a cruise, visited hospitals that broke my heart, (which I later went back with a plane full of medicine to help those same hospitals), visited retirement homes where I was offered a job, saw the space center, (their version of our NASA), saw amazingly, a graveyard for airplanes, where I saw everything from old world war II planes, to subsonic jets that could obviously break the sound barrier.
Unfortunately, we were not allowed in the space center, due to the sophistication of our camera equipment. It was on our tour, but was “cancelled” at the last minute.
I saw the most fun things. I saw grown men jump naked from a steaming hot tub and roll in the snow… oops that was the next trip. I’ll save that one.
What I have to say most is that when I left, I left crying for the family who had adopted me and as I looked back at them standing on the train station platform, I could obviously see that they were all crying that I was leaving. They had become my family.
And, although, things were different when I returned, I went back to them. I never again saw my newfound daughter, or her husband. They had gone. But my friend who was my host was there and was my gracious host for another three weeks. Later, when he was allowed to leave, he spent a wonderful time at my place in Tulsa with my own daughter, son, and myself. An experience I would never miss if given the chance again.
Next time, I will tell about taking back the medicine to the hospitals and my time at the medical school.
(c) g.abbey Dec/2009
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My Heritage
These Native Artists are my ancestors. I feel honored to have them in my bloodline. Our Native American race is comprised of the most talented, peaceful, people, who have been treated over the years as the scum of the earth that they worked so hard to protect. From that standpoint, it pains me to be only part Native, because that means the other part of my ancestors were the offending parties. My great, great, great, ad inf. grandmother walked from Kentucky to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears with no shoes, no coat in the dead of winter and she survived. I’m convince that she is the one who gave me the will to survive in some of the extreme circumstances that have comprised my life. My hat(s) are off to all the Native Americans, the few of us that are left.
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