I am all about killing and eating tasty chickens but I draw the line at shaving them!

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This article about the Hyatt Regency disaster published in the Weekly World News on August 11, 1981 has a curious inset.

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Soviet people were genetically predisposed to reading between the lines. When on November 10, 1982 all three available TV channels started showing non-stop symphonies and ballets, we knew that something wasn’t right. Rumors and predictions started circulating among the population and finally, when the government couldn’t keep it a secret any longer, a news anchor in a most somber voice possible announced that the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died just a few weeks short of his 76th birthday. Twenty six years ago today many people didn’t know what would happen. Brezhnev was in power for a generation and became so associated with the Soviet Union that it was hard to imagine the next leader taking his place. Little did we know that his successor was already picked while Brezhnev’s body was still warm. It wasn’t that many people thought that Brezhnev was actually running the country; long before he died, he became a butt of many jokes (still not openly told), his 5-hour speeches broadcast in full length and couple of books someone wrote for him were required and unwelcome reading in schools and everywhere else. The regime change is always a time of uncertainty and many people didn’t know what to look forward to. During later Brezhnev years the quality of life, still very low compared to many developed nations, somewhat stabilized, people felt better, happier and more upbeat. The same years were also marked by huge levels of corruption, bribery, Brezhnev cult of personality and total disillusionment with socialist ideas.These were the years of Brezhnev Stagnation.

When we went to school the next day, the building was decorated in red and black colors of mourning. We had a meeting where the teachers read the announcement and some even pretended (?) to cry. However, the most exciting thing about your country’s leader dying is a day off. Unfortunately all the movie theaters were closed on that day, so there was no other entertainment available except watching the funeral, and it was a funeral of a lifetime.

The funeral procession was led by high-ranking officers each carrying a small pillow with one of Brezhnev’s 114 medals. At 12:45 the Red Square and the rest of the country went silent for a moment so everyone heard thunderous sound of a dropping coffin. Then every siren and factory whistle in the country went off. No other head of state funeral ever matched Brezhnev’s.

Unofficial accounts of Brezhnev’s life painted him as a very personable guy, with a great sense of humor, generous and sensitive, movie lover and a fan of Chuck Connors – The Rifleman. Most of us didn’t know any of that, we just saw an old man who half the time didn’t seem like he knew where he was and what he was doing and still remained one of the most powerful men in the world.

More photos.

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One picture is worth….

• So “DOOs” are a good thing? I hate to see the “DON’Ts”. Some MO state park employee got paid for this.

And on the subject of DOO’s.

• If you ever wanted a scale with an opinion, this one is for you. Currently the display says “UH-OH”, you must be getting heavier. If you continue gaining weight, the scale will just make a disgusted face and possibly puke. Cut out from the sales flier.

• You may be able to read this billboard now, but the only way you can do it from your car is if you crash right into it. Too bad that would be after “the bad things happen”. This one is located at the merge of I-35 and 71 HWY.

• I wonder if this car ever parks by KFC.

• Few more from my growing license plate collection.

• This one required a second look to decipher. Does it actually say “Our 4 little ones?”. I guess this pattern would work up to and including 9 little ones.

Happy holidays Thanksgiving!

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Nineteen years ago today an otherwise routine TWA flight landed in the Kansas City International Airport with me, my family and all of our possessions on board. We walked out into a 70F day wearing winter jackets and fur hats to start our lives in this country with a few hundred dollars and our broken English.

To mark this date I will answer the question I’ve been asked the most during these years – How do you say “fuck” in Russian? What part of Russia is Ukraine? Do you miss the old country?

Do I miss the old country? The short answer is no. I really don’t. I don’t long for the streets and the beaches; don’t miss the sound of a familiar language; don’t care to mingle with the people; don’t feel like I belong there.

There is a long answer though, to a slightly different question: do I miss the old country between 1969 and 1992? Yes, I do.

I had plenty of time to think about nostalgia and even test it out by going back several times. I think that places don’t mean much without the memories. Memories is the difference between the place that means something in one’s life  and just another tourist attraction. You walk down the streets and remember a place where you first walked next to a girl; or a spot where you stood on your first day of school with a giant bouquet of flowers; a storefront that used to sell the best ice cream in the city; a toy store where you wandered in without any money; a street where you got punched in the nose (and still have a crooked nose as a reminder); a park you used to go to with your parents; a place where you learned to ride a bike; a building where you first love used to live; a street where you walked wearing a gas mask to win a bet; many other things, probably not that important in the big picture but still somehow stored in your head all these years. These things I miss, but they are no longer there, they were just a brief moments of my life and there is no way to go back and relive them. Maybe it’s better that way; that’s what makes these memories unique and a huge part of who I am.

I don’t have to go back to a specific place to reminisce. The place since moved on anyway – rebuilt, reinvented, repainted, renamed, refurbished, re-branded, repopulated, recycled and replaced. I no longer feel like I am a part of it. I feel like I am going back to the old country when I talk with my childhood friend in Argentina, or call my old neighbor in Boston, or catch up with my army buddy in New York. Old country is us. Old country is our memories. Old country is these photographs. Fuzzy and oddly vivid, just like I remember.

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