franksolich & friends seek to deter stalking primitives

[franksolich]

“The problem’s you, not the place,” the femme said, when we were having supper at the bar in town.  She lives a little more than a hundred miles north of here, in South Dakota, but had come down this second time to resume a visit interrupted by recent blizzards.

We haven’t been an item for several months now, but still get along.

“You radiate a certain effeminate submissive ‘come hither’ look when strangers approach you, after which it’s ‘catch me if you can.’”

“I do not,” I hotly protested.

The neighbor’s older brother sat back and laughed.  He and his wife were at the same table with us, as the femme and the neighbor’s older brother’s wife are good friends.

“The only thing that’s effeminate about me is that I appreciate, and collect, fine china.  But nobody’s perfect.

“The only thing that’s submissive about me is that I allow other people to run my life.”

- - - - - - - - - -

This speculation of hers discombobulated me somewhat; the femme’s an instructor in dance and the theatre arts, and of all the hearing people I know, she’s been the best at interpreting body language.

She’s nowhere near franksolich’s league, but among hearing people, she’s really good.

“You let anybody and everybody into the house,” she pointed out.

“Remember where, and how, I was raised,” I replied; “to be accepting of all coming my way.

“After all, it is written that they may be angels in disguise sent by God.”

The neighbor’s older brother laughed again.

“It’s also written that Satan uses many disguises.”

“Think of those old hippies from northeastern Oklahoma who used to camp there,” the femme said; “they looked so novel, so quaint, so curious, so whimsical, so harmless, but the blunt fact was that hippywife Mrs. Alfred Packer’s hippyhubby Wild Bill was out for you, hoping to re-stock his meat freezer.

“It’s just your good luck he figured you were too stupid to be franksolich.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“You let everybody and anybody into your house,” the neighbor’s older brother’s wife said, repeating the femme; “you sit down for hours with Amway salesmen, leaflet pushers, petition passers, preaching hoboes, Jehovah’s Witnesses--”

“Remember the time he let a whole busload of Jehovah’s Witnesses inside the house?” the neighbor’s older brother said; “it was a hot day, and they’d stopped by to ask if they could take drinking water from the garden hose outside, but no, he invited them indoors--”

“But that was the decent and civilized thing to do,” I insisted; “one can’t have human beings drink from a garden hose, as if livestock.  It’s just good manners to allow them to drink water from the kitchen sink, poured into glasses.

“And besides, as I wasn’t doing anything else at the time, I thought I might learn something.  There’s always something new to learn from other people, and I’m anxious to be illuminated.

“But at any rate, they didn’t stay long; once they noticed the crucifix hanging over the thermostat in the living room, and that old traditional framed picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the bedroom, they high-tailed out of there, as they don’t like we foul Papists.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But you let them inside the house--my God, how many were there?  Maybe forty?--and let them roam all over, going into every room, peeking behind every closed door,” the femme said.

“It was almost as bad as when you let those dozen or so gypsies inside.”

“But I’m rather proud of the way I live,” I said; “the austere, spartan life-style, and take every chance I can, to advertise it, as I think that’s the way to go--it’d surely gradually kill off the primitives on Skins’s island, who can’t live without all their toys, their comforts, their sugary fattening foods, their taxpayer-funded pharmaceuticals.

“Neither Atman nor Skippy would last a day, living like that.

“And anyway, as the gypsies found out, there’s nothing there worth stealing.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Well, it is your personal manner, your style,” the neighbor’s wife said when she was here this afternoon.  “It’s probably subconscious, but you blatantly invite people to approach you.”

We were sitting in the kitchen, in the semi-darkness even though it was bright outside, the sun shining, and all the lights were on, because the windows were all covered.

And she’d complained a second time about having to get a hold of me before coming over, and that one had to walk in the knee-deep snow around the house to get to the back porch, because the front entry’s still plywooded shut.

It should be taken care of over the weekend, I assured her; “although I suspect the ride to Omaha on Friday with [the property caretaker] to see the security expert, will be an icy silent one.

“He resents that he can’t just come into the house at will any more.

“But it’s for my own protection, I’ve been told; as a deaf person, I apparently haven’t mastered any self-defense or survival skills.

“At least according to hearing people,” I said,  coldly.

- - - - - - - - - -

Sensing my resentment coming to the surface, the neighbor’s wife slightly changed the subject.

“You know, Romeo may be right; it’s you, the way you treat people, that draws them to you.  And some of them aren’t nice people, but you unfailingly treat them as they are.

“Like that episode in Cowboy Among the Reds, where you asked that peasant lad, ‘Damn it, how come people around here know I’m American?  I’m stuck in this abominable place, no way to get out, and so while I’m here, I might as well try to blend in, to look like one of everybody else here, but they still know I’m an American.’

I suppose, I said; “what was really going on was that while I was over there, people back here sent me clothes, forgetting that I was shrinking.

“So I gave away those clothes to workers and peasants they’d fit, and adopted Soviet attire that fit me.

“I was shrinking because I distrusted the native cuisine, and sometimes for days lived on just weak tea and mahorka, a cheap, foul tobacco that one rolled into cigarettes.

“It’s been said one can get so hungry one’ll eat anything, and I don’t disagree.  But I never reached that point, myself.”

“Well, anyway,” the neighbor’s wife interrupted, “when you asked him how come people knew you were an American despite your appearance and attire, he answered, ‘Because you’re polite.’

“It’s you; you’re the problem.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Uh, we should plan on going to Omaha a lot earlier than mid-afternoon on Friday, when we’re seeing that security guy,” I said to the property caretaker when I let him inside.

“Well, but you haven’t seemed so enthusiastic before,” he said, glumly.

The caretaker’s out of sorts, because while he has free run of the premises outside, he has to contact me first, then come over to get my attention that he’s at the door, after which I carefully look to see if it’s him, and then unlock the door to let him come in.

He’d gotten rather used to coming-and-going to and in this house at will.

But it’s partly his own fault; he along with five others had decided that franksolich, being deaf, has no survival or self-defense skills, and so needs protected from stalking primitives out for his blood.

They’ll probably start showing up around spring-time.

- - - - - - - - - -

We went into the living room, dark even though a 40-watt bulb in the ceiling was on.  It used to be light and airy, requiring no electricity at all, because of the big picture windows looking out at the Sandhills beyond. 

But those being covered up now, for my own safety…..

And it didn’t help that the front doorway was plywooded, until we see the security guy, as the frame and door had been broken by a malicious entry.  Obviously an attempted robbery, but as there was nothing worth stealing, that was the only damage done.  But still, it was a lot.

It wouldn’t have been done at all, had I been allowed to keep the door as I always have, unlocked.  That way, the malicious entry could’ve just walked in, seen there was nothing to steal, and left, doing no damage at all.

- - - - - - - - - -

While sitting at the dining room table, I explained.

“Before I go there, I want to talk to a vanity book publisher; I dunno which one yet, as I’m still checking them out.

“Leaving the other book, the maudlin one that women like so well, aside for the moment, I want to find out how much Cowboy Among the Reds is going to cost me.

“About 500 pages, small print, hardbound, cloth, and slipcased.

“And five color plates, on high-quality glossy paper.

“I don’t want anything like this junk,” I said, shoving three paperback books at him, which I’d found at garage sales, free giveaways, the past few summers.

The first was by some drunken pompous ass, then living in Boston, about the War for the Liberation of Iraq, which he was against.

The second was by some smug broad with a funny-shaped body, who still lives in San Diego, about fantasy gaming.

“Look how poorly they were made,” I said.  “And as the publisher stinted on the glue in the binding, the pages are falling out.

“But they’re not as bad as this one; this one’s really crummy.”

It was a book written by a prominent vote-fraud activist in Seattle, which she’d first submitted to some comics-book self-publishing primitive down in North Carolina.

He’d done a really poor job on it--I’d taken care to look for one he’d published, rather than the second version published by someone more, uh, neat and professional.

“It shouldn’t be any wonder she refused to pay him for them.

“I saw books of much higher quality than this, and really, the other two, too, being used for personal cleansing purposes in the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants.

“I have no intention of having Cowboy Among the Reds being treated so tawdrily, the expense be damned.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But aren’t you hoping to sell them?” the caretaker asked.

No, I said; “franksolich’s literary output is merely a token present for decent and civilized people, and I’d be a heel, charging someone for something meant to be a present.

“If I have to, I’ll ask [the business partner] to find me more work, to get the money for it.”

Our business is just pocket change to the business partner, but it’s a major source of income to me.  He has two other businesses much larger and more lucrative.

- - - - - - - - -

“What are the color plates on high-quality glossy paper going to be of?” he asked.  “Having those alone should run into significant bucks.”

“So far, I’ve decided on only two of them,” I replied; “of course there’ll be a picture of my visa’d passport, as I still consider those visas one of the most remarkable things that’s ever happened in this otherwise bland life.

“It’s just too bad I learned what they really were, too late.

“And there’s this,” I said, showing him a torn piece of scratch paper.

“That’s just a torn piece of scratch paper with really bad hand-writing on it,” he said.  “What’s the meaning of it?”

While I’ve shown others parts of the prospective book, no one’s yet seen the first three chapters, and so he didn’t know.

“This piece of paper,” I said, “I value as highly as I would a First Folio of Shakespeare, or a Gutenberg’s Bible.”

- - - - - - - - -

“The telephone number, the last two digits, were carelessly but innocently transposed,” I said.

"But not by me," I hastily added.

“Upon my arrival into the socialist paradises, because I was unfamiliar with the lay of the land, I was set up to be with an upper-class family there, who knew how we Americans are, and what we like.

“Because of the erroneous telephone number, I was immediately plunged into the subterranean world, the bottom-most level of socialist society, and it took six days to find me.

“It was in the newspapers at the time; it seems I inadvertently generated a lot of press while I was over there.

“Well, I was finally given over to where I was supposed to be, but by that time, I’d become intensely curious about how the other 99% lived, and so while I stayed with them on occasion, I spent most of my time hanging with the lowest of the socialist strata.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Are you going to use any pictures of yourself?” the caretaker asked me.  “I think you have some pretty good pictures you should use.”

No, I said; “I’m not an egotist, a narcissist, a show-off, like the primitives are; there’ll be no pictures of franksolich in the book.

“If the reader can’t figure out what franksolich looks like, merely by reading what I write, well then, I’ve been a lousy writer.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, there’s one thing I don’t understand,” the neighbor’s older brother said, as we were riding to somewhere that he needed my help, given that his sons were in school.

“Despite that you’ve had all these people--among them scam artists, sharpsters, Brooklyn-Bridge sellers, buncombe men, purveyors of lakefront property in Arizona, carnies--hanging around at your place, you’ve never been ‘taken.’”

The neighbor’s older brother is exactly my own age--well, three weeks older than franksolich--and the only person in that age group who’s a friend of mine.

Nearly all my friends are ancients, or people younger than myself.

There’s a gulf, a chasm, between people around my own age and myself; we have nothing in common other than in that we’ve been in this time and place for about the same number of years.

I suppose it’s because deafness inevitably brings a sort of social retardation; we don’t seem to “grow up” as fast as our peers in age.  Cut off from many of the experiences that age people, bringing them insight and wisdom and grey hairs, we remain perpetually, well, sort of juvenile.

Having supported myself since I was 17 years old, and manfully bearing the consequences of my errors in judgement--and oooooh, sometimes there’s been consequences--I don’t think anybody can claim franksolich is irresponsible, but that’s about it.

The neighbor’s older brother sometimes condescends, despite our same-ageness, and he publicly thinks franksolich is destined for a bad end, always getting on my ass for one thing or another, but in truth, if I’ve ever needed something I couldn’t get myself, he’s usually been the first in line, to be sure I get it.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Given the open way you lead your life, if you’d been cheated on something, everybody’d know about it; you couldn’t hide it.

“How the Hell have you done it, getting through life without being ‘taken’?”

I thought about it.

“Well, as you know, I grew up without television.  I dunno why we never had a television, but we just never did, and nobody ever seemed to miss it.

“Also, because I can’t hear, I’m not subject to the incessant advertising that goes on; ‘you gotta get this,’ ‘you gotta have that,’ ‘you gotta buy these, ‘you need this.’

“It’s got to be noisy, for hearing people. 

“The only people less influenced than I am by advertising, are those laying in hospital beds in a coma or something.

“Hearing people let advertising decide what they need or want, while I’m compelled to make such decisions on my own.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“It’s silly, when the primitives yap about how we form our opinions based upon what the radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh says; that we’re a bunch of mindless idiots who simply take in what’s fed us.

“While I own a couple of his books, and generally agree, enthusiastically, with Rush Limbaugh, I’ve never in my life heard him, and so have never been influenced by him.

“My feelings, thoughts, and opinions are strictly my own; it’s just a happy coincidence most of our views are the same.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The same thing about advertising; insulated from advertising, I have to make up my own mind about what I need or want.

“And having made up my mind about what I need or want, I myself go out looking for it. 

“Nobody in my life has sold me something I wasn‘t already looking for, and generally it’s not anything scammers and shysters are trying to sell.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“No, that’s nothing that’s mine,” I said.

I was inspecting a great big wood-axe that had been found on the back porch; just one of those usual and standard long-handled but with a dull and rusted blade that one finds in tubs of tools at auctions, and gets for a dollar a tub.

I was standing in the kitchen near noon with the property caretaker, the business partner, and the retired property caretaker.

I was surprised that the retired caretaker had shown up; he’s 72 years old now, and still substantially crippled from an automobile accident a few years ago.

But as he was curious about measures being taken to ensure the safety and security of a deaf person living here--he’d ridden my ass for years about it, but I wouldn’t do anything--he’d even managed to trek, albeit slowly and cautiously, through the now-knee-deep snow around the house to the back door.

We’d had about 5” of new snow during the night, and the axe was discovered only because the business partner had almost tripped over it when coming to the door.

“It looks to me like someone meant to break down the door so as to get inside,” the retired caretaker said, “but then something scared him away.  Probably a meth-head.”

“Looking to steal something,” I added; “if I’d been allowed to keep the door unlocked like I used to, he could’ve just walked in and saw there was nothing here worth stealing, and left.”

The current caretaker and the business partner glowered at me; they were tired of my bitching about something meant to do me good, but on the other hand, I’d long grown weary of--and righteously indignant about--their insistence that, being unable to hear and wide-open to all coming my way, I have no survival and self-defense skills.

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You went over there with $187 in your pocket?

“I don’t even need to see receipts or other proof,” the business partner said this afternoon; “I know you well enough that you’d do such a thing.

“And you knew beforehand that given the state of affairs as they were then, it’d be difficult, if not impossible, to get money from the outside.”

As the business partner was hanging around here all afternoon, I’d shown him the drafts of the first three chapters of Cowboy Among the Reds; drafts are being passed around randomly, and not in logical order, because that’s not the way I’m writing it.

“Right,” I said; “in retrospect, that was rather rash of me, but I was in a hurry to get over there, afraid all the excitement would be over by the time I arrived.

“And alas, it was.

“And besides, I’d read all about how things were over there; that the ‘average’ wage was eleven bucks a month.

“If that was the case, I figured I could get by for a year and a half on $187.”

- - - - - - - - -

“In my haste, I forgot to remember something; ‘official statistics’ are bullshit.  I’m human, like everybody else; I wanted to get over there so badly I didn’t stop long enough to think things through.

“It’s like the ‘official statistics’ regarding the death penalty, where the United States always ranks near the top.

“Which is bullshit.

“I was aware of extra-judicial executions, carried out by agents of the government while over there--despite that they’d abolished the death penalty [it’s in force again now, but this was twenty years ago].

“If all executions carried out by governments were honestly reported, I’m sure the United States would be near the bottom of the list.

“Anyway, while I was there, I learned the real, the unofficial, monthly ’average’ earnings was something like $700, not eleven dollars.

“Well, it was too late to do anything about that any more; I was already over there, and as you’ll read further in other drafts, when one flies to a third-world country using a third-world airline, an ‘open date return’ doesn’t mean what they promise it is.

“So I was stuck, but obviously I managed, and lasted the entire length of time I‘d planned on.”

- - - - - - - - -

“It was interesting, watching the way the few westerners I encountered while I was there, all the money they had to spend.

“We were in a third-world country, desperately poor, and with very little to recommend it--and here they were, having to spend bundles and bundles of money to get the least little thing.

“It would’ve been far cheaper if they’d gone to London, Paris, Rome, or Tokyo, staying in first-class luxury hotels and dining in five-star restaurants, compared with what they had to spend there just to get by.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The neighbor’s wife was here this evening, giving me something to take to someone in the big city when I go there tomorrow.

I bitched again about how depressing the interior of the house is, what with the windows being all covered over, the back door locked, and the front entry temporarily covered with ¾” plywood sheets.

It’s definitely affecting my mood, I pointed out; “I’ve all but stopped writing more chapters of Cowboy Among the Reds, because I can’t, in an atmosphere like this.”

“Well, I’m sure that when you and [the property caretaker] go down to Omaha on Friday, you’ll find something that’ll keep you safe and secure, after which you can tear down the sheets and throw away the door keys,” she assured me.

“But really, no matter what it is, you need it,” she insisted; “you can’t hear people, and have no way of knowing if someone’s around.  You may not care, but everybody else does.”

- - - - - - - - -

My lips turned dry and cracked, the only way I’ve ever known of expressing resentment.

To avoid any unpleasantness, she brought up that she’d read the drafts of the first three chapters of the prospective book.

“Surely you have to be kidding, when you talk about taking only $187 there, and expected to stay about a year and a half.  It doesn’t seem possible.”

I hadn’t finished that chapter yet, so she doesn’t know.

“Well, actually I had money coming from other sources, but it’s so depressing trying to write in cavern-like darkness, I haven’t written about that yet.

“My visa to the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants was dependent upon that I’d agreed to teach English while there.

“Even after all these years, I’ve wondered if that’s ever struck anyone as being preposterous--it hasn’t seemed to yet--a deaf person, teaching English.

“I omitted that detail when I submitted copies of my academic credentials, for fear they’d then say ‘no.’”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Anyway, in something arranged between a Ukrainian non-profit organization in this country, and the government of Ukraine, if I went there to teach, I’d be paid fourteen dollars a month.

“Three dollars a month more than the official ‘average’ wage, remember.

“With that, and spending about ten bucks a month more, from the cash I’d taken with me, I figured I’d be in great shape, living like a king.

“And the deal was, the equivalent of fourteen dollars a month, in karbovanets, thus shielding me from the ruinous Jimmy Carter-like hyperinflation afflicting the country.

“The first time I picked up my ‘salary,’ it was a single thick bundle of bills, fourteen dollars in karbovanets.

“The last time I picked up my ‘salary,’ the equivalent of fourteen dollars in karbovanets, it took both hands, all the pockets I was wearing, and a knapsack to cart it away, and it seemed as if there wasn’t any room on the bills for any more zeroes.

“Also, in recompense for housing me, the son in the family got his tuition at the prestigious Institute for Foreign Languages forgiven.  I didn’t teach there; that was somewhere else.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“And as you know from other chapters further on that you’ve read, I wasn’t exactly a burdensome house-guest; I ended up sleeping over there only two or three nights a month, all other times zig-zagging through various distant and remote parts of the socialist paradises.

“They didn’t like the people coming to escort me, usually to someone’s grandmother’s village, some of whom they despised because they were of, uh, a lower social order, and about half of them, they seemed to fear.

“Not knowing the language, I wouldn’t know what they were, other than that they seemed like nice guys.

“They shouldn't've worried; nothing bad ever happened, even though some of these random people I’d known for only twenty minutes before getting invited, and agreeing to go.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Anyway, so I taught two classes, but then the third time I showed up, I was told the school had closed; it no longer existed.

“Everything in the socialist paradises was s-o-o-o-o fly-by-night, here today, gone tomorrow.

“That was it, I decided; I’d been there for only ten days, the first six during which time I’d been lost, and already I was out of a job.  Time to just give up and go back home.

“But others advised and counseled, ‘No, no, no; stick around, and it’ll be okay.’

“Taking them on their word, I stuck around, and at the end of the month, much to my surprise, there was money waiting for me.

“Despite that the school no longer existed, and that I was no longer teaching, the byzantine socialist bureaucracy still continued churning out my ‘salary’ (and crediting the son’s tuition) at the end of each and every month while I was there.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“And…..all the time I was there, I was sent a total of $600 in varying sums, by others back home.

“Through clandestine illegal channels, of course.

“Money sent there through proper and legal channels had a habit of mysteriously evaporating into thin air. 

“It was a lose-lose situation for westerners; if they obeyed the law and were sent dollars legally, they’d never get them, and if found with dollars illegally sent, they were fined, the fine usually being approximately the amount they had on hand.

“I dunno how they managed; I managed fine.

“Of course, of that $600 total, sent me, four times I had to make ‘payments’ of $100 each, to get the visa renewed, meaning I actually only ever got a discretionary $200 that way.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But still, that wasn’t a whole lot of money, for all the time you were there,” the neighbor’s wife said.

“It wasn’t easy,” I admitted.  “But it was possible.

“All one has to do is forget about one’s ‘wants,’ and sharply minimize one’s ‘needs.’”

- - - - - - - - - -

“This wasn’t anything I hadn’t faced before,” I reminded her.

“All of my forays outside the borders of this country have been woefully, abysmally, underfinanced.

“Back in the late 1960s, there came out a hippie book, Europe On $5 A Day; I was too young to go anywhere at the time, but I read it anyway.

“The first winter I spent in western Europe some years later, the book had been retitled Europe On $10 A Day, but I insisted upon using the tricks described in the first edition, the $5 one.

“The second winter I spent in western Europe, the book was now Europe On $25 A Day, but I muleheadedly continued using the $5 book as a guide.

“The third winter I spent in western Europe, because of Jimmy Carter-like hyperinflation, the then-current book was Europe On $50 A Day, but I still had my old copy of the $5 book.

“I managed.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

The neighbor’s older brother came by late at night last night, as he needed some more help with something.  He’s got three teenaged boys, but figured as they had school in the morning, best to not use any of them.

Yeah, sure, I said; I’m not doing anything in particular anyway.

While bouncing over the cold snow-covered hills in his pick-up truck, he commented, “You know, Cowboy Among the Reds is turning into a real nail-biter.

“I don’t care if it turns out a thousand pages long; it’s so gripping nobody’s going to put it down until they’ve read it all the way through anyway.”

Hmmmm.  High praise, from one of my harshest critics.

- - - - - - - - - -

“But what ever possessed you, to do that?”

I haven’t written the “forward” yet, where that’s all explained.

“Actually, it was a desperate attempt, a wild throw of the dice, to get my life going.

“We’re the same age; think of where you were, back in 1991-1992-1993-1994, about the time the socialist paradises were crumbling apart.

“You were married, you already had one kid with another on the way, you owned free-and-clear a good-sized piece of land, which you’ve further multiplied several times over since.

“You’d been in the service, gotten a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in physics. 

“You’d already done a lot of things.

“I’d never wanted more in my life than to have a wife, six or seven kids, two dogs, a split-level house in a small town, and a station wagon.  And a job where I could, like my father did, take my time reading the morning newspapers at breakfast before going to work.

“Very modest goals, but by those years, I was further away than ever, from attaining them.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“It’s true, I’d made some pretty poor decisions in life, but I supposed I’d corrected them by then.

“For example, I never wanted to go to college; I wanted to either work, or join the military--I wanted to do something real.

“At which one of my older brothers scoffed.  Our parents were dead, and although barely, I was still young enough for him to have some say in my life.  He laughed at the idea of my joining the military, too.

“So I finally agreed to go to college, and then to prove my point that college was worthless, I majored in history; the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth, as I’d already long ago mastered college-level American history on my own.

“That was really stupid, but I was a teenager.

“So after getting that degree, I guess I proved myself right; it was worthless on the job market, and so I shouldn’t have bothered with college at all.

“But then a couple of years later, I started getting my head together, and went back to college, to add accounting as a second major for my first degree.

“So I thought I’d corrected that misjudgement.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But I’d forgotten something my father had told me many years before; being deaf and a few other things, it wasn’t reasonable for me to expect to advance as fast and as easily as hearing people.

“He thought it would be admirable if I tried, and in fact he’d be disappointed if I didn’t, but, well--perhaps maybe probably I should have other, different, expectations of life.

“My father was wise, and I knew that even when I was a mouthy teenager, much like the PCIntern primitive had been, definitely not chutzpah-impaired.

“The most prescient thing the old man ever said about me was that only insecure people would dislike me; that confident, self-assured people would always be eminently comfortable with me.

“Only paranoid insecure people would dislike franksolich.

“Well, I can thank the primitives on Skins’s island for proving my father right.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“So anyway, forgetting what my father had said, I wasted a lot of years, desperately trying to keep up with my peers, but falling further and further behind. 

“Then the evil empire began falling apart.

“For whatever reason--I dunno, maybe God inspired it--I thought well, if I can’t have a financially respectable life, at least I can have an interesting life.  I wanna go over there, to be right in the middle of it all, to see what’s happening, to first-hand and up close, eyewitness the conquest of socialist darkness by the light of goodness and decency.

“And I was perfectly situated to do it.  I was still young and vigorous, no spouse or woman, no children, my parents and all but two of my many brothers and sisters were dead; I had no mortgage, no car payments, no credit cards, no other financial, legal, or social obligations to anyone.

“I was as free and unencumbered as a bird, so why not do it?

“There was nothing stopping me from at least having an interesting life, if nothing more than that.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“The guy tomorrow’s probably going to try to sell us on something that uses a light to alert a hard-of-hearing or deaf person that something’s afoot,” I said to the neighbor this morning.

“Which of course is going to be a no-sell.

“I dunno where the Hell hearing people get this idea that sight is as good, as all-encompassing, as all-surrounding, as hearing.

“Sound can come from any direction, even from where the ears aren’t pointed, and a hearing person hears it.

“A light can blink all it wants, but unless it’s in one’s face, one’s not going to see it.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

“You’ve been here a few times when that great big red light on the telephone’s blinked, telling me there’s a call.

“But as my back was turned, you had to point, to tell me there was a call coming in.

“Perhaps the biggest fraud perpetuated on those who can’t hear are the smoke-alarms, with a light that blinks.

“I can cite two cases--but only two, because we’re a rare breed--where smoke alarms that blinked a light did no good at all.

“They’re from several years ago, when I lived in Lincoln.

“In the first instance, the guy went into another room to sleep.

“The light in the smoke alarm in the main room was still blinking by the time the firemen came, finding him in the other room, dead from smoke inhalation.

“If he’d been a hearing person, and the smoke alarm a blaring one, he would’ve heard it without even being in its presence.

“In the second instance, a guy went into the bathroom.

“Even though the smoke alarm blinked frantically, he wasn’t aware of it because it hung above the bathroom door…..on the outside.

“Found fried to a crisp, sitting on the commode.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Alarm clocks that blink are no good either.

“One’s asleep, the eyes are shut.

“Now, how’s one expected to see something, if his eyes are shut?

“It’s all bullshit; to hear something, one doesn’t need to point the ears at the source of a noise. 

“But to see something, one has to be looking at it.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“That reminds me,” the neighbor said; “you don’t have an alarm clock, or any sort of clock, in the bedroom here.

“Yet you’ve never been late for work, or a meeting, or an appointment, no matter how early it is in the morning, or how out of whack your sleeping schedule is at the time.

“You’re always up at the right time.

“How do you do that?”

I’ve always wondered why I’ve never been asked that question before, because I’ve always wanted to answer it.

- - - - - - - - - -

“I use my bladder,” I said.  “And of course I’m blessed with a healthy bladder.

“Say it’s 10:00 p.m., and I’m sleepy, but I have to be up at 3:00 a.m. to get to a meeting in the big city at 4:00 a.m.

“I want to get some sleep first, and so I go into the kitchen, where I have three choices; plain ordinary water, milk, or orange juice, all of which stimulate the bladder, waking one up if one’s asleep.

“As long ago as when I was a little lad having to get up at 7:00 a.m. so as to be in school at 7:30 a.m., I experimented with the diuretic qualities of various liquids.

“They’re all different, some being more diuretic than others.

“It took years of course, but I’d mastered it by the time I was in high school--which liquid, and in which amount, I needed to drink before going to sleep, so as to wake up a certain number of hours later.

“And, as you know, I’ve never gotten up late; only always at the right time.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, there’s three problems I’m having with the book,” I told the property caretaker.

This was early in the evening, and it was as dark as midnight outside.

He’d hired a couple of Texans, altitudinally-challenged guys, and of a certain dark tertiary complexion, who are locally famous for their fast, and good, carpentry, to build a new frame for the front door.

The earliest they could get here was this evening, after supper.

Because this of course created a big open hole in the front of the house, all the interior doors were shut, leaving only the dining room and the living room to draw in the weather from outdoors.

- - - - - - - - - -

“One of them, I’d call an atmospheric problem; I’m not showing the aura, the fog, the miasma, of the fear that hung over everyone at the time, like a poisonous cloud.

“All the workers and peasants were as paranoid as Hell.

“And the few westerners around, even more so.

“It was as if I’d been parachuted down into Skins’s island.

“Now, I will admit that being deaf, and that others shielded me from many things, insulated me from all that it was, that made everybody else so fearful.

“This was a whole new world to me, resembling nothing like the world as you and I know it; a sort of wockenkuckkucksheim, a cloud-cuckoo land, where all’s lurid and distorted and weird and nothing makes any sense.

“Again, like Skins’s island.

“But to be honest, I wasn’t seeing anything to be afraid of.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The second, I’d call a technical problem.

“I can’t adequately convey to the reader how a deaf person could understand what people were saying, much less saying it a language I didn’t know.

“Hell, I can’t understand how I do it here; only that I do it.

“Of course, I ‘get’ things wrong about three-quarters of the time--maybe 99% over there--but obviously, what I do ‘get,’ is enough to get me by, wherever I’m at.

“But in attempting to describe it or explain it, this knowing what other people are saying, I can’t.

“And Cowboy Among the Reds is gonna be a flop, nobody’s going to want to read it, if I don’t explain that, and near the beginning.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The third problem’s my resistance to writing anything at all about my first six days there.  Being lost as if on the dark side of the moon, nothing around me familiar to me, was definitely a major trauma, a sudden violent convulsion leaving me paralyzed, unable to act.

“But fortunately, it took me, I dunno, half an hour or so, to recall my British history, and what George VI had said in his radio message to the British Empire on Christmas Day 1939, the first year of the second world war.

“’I asked the man at the gate for a lamp, so that I may light my way through the darkness that lies ahead.

“’Then God said, “Take My hand, and I will lead you through the darkness better than any seen way.”’

“And that’s how it went the next six days, I remained utterly passive, letting other people and events propel me forward until I showed up at the American embassy.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, describe to me specifically what went wrong, and maybe that’ll help you write it,” the caretaker said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I landed at the airport in Borispol--the old one; the new one wasn’t built yet--where it’d been arranged for someone to meet me, and take me to where I was supposed to go.

“There was no one to meet me at the airport.

“As I later learned, what’d happened was that when these instructions were conveyed to that person over there, he figured the information had to be wrong; he knew nothing of any airline flights from Chicago, but he knew one would arrive from New York City the day after my stated arrival date and time.

“And so he had gone and waited for me…..the day after I was already gone.”

- - - - - - - - -

“When it became obvious to me no one was there to meet me, I first thought of contacting the American embassy.

“I’d arrived shortly before supper-time on a Friday evening.

“I was told the American embassy had just shut down…..for the next six days; that there was no one around.

“Now, when I say ‘shit happens,’ I know what I’m talking about.”

- - - - - - - - -

“During the flight over, a Ukrainian guy to whom I’d spoken, learning that it was my first trip there, and that I didn’t know the language, and even if I did know it, I couldn’t hear it, wrote down on a piece of paper a name and a telephone number.

“’If you have problems, call.’

“I gave that piece of paper to someone obviously the head of “security” at the airport--in that time and place, something that should never be done, but I hadn’t learned that yet.

“He got details about me, and then went somewhere else to telephone the number.  Even if I could use one myself, there were no public telephones at the airport…..or lights or electricity or water or restrooms or places where people could sit down.

“The old airport at Borispol was a place where, once one arrived, one got out of there as quickly as possible.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

“He came back and said, ‘But there’s a mistake here.

“It was a woman at the other end of the line, who wasn’t expecting any American, who didn’t know any American--and in fact who didn’t even know English…..but upon hearing of my predicament, and as the man who called said I seemed like a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet, she agreed to shelter me until the American embassy re-opened.

“’After all,’ he said; ‘every young Ukrainian woman’s eager to play host to a strong, handsome American man.’

“He got me a taxi to take me to the woman’s address, and told me how much to pay, so I wouldn’t get ripped off.

“After which I descended down into the abyss of socialist society.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Now, when I came back home, and everybody was bitching about how stupid I’d been, I pointed out that while, yes, I had a certain name, I didn’t have the telephone number.

“In early post-socialist Ukraine, there wasn’t anything such as a telephone directory, excepting those had by the secret police.

“There was no such thing available for me to use.

“Also, there was no such thing as ‘directory assistance.’

“Everybody was still having to keep telephone numbers in their heads--they definitely didn’t keep such information written down on a sheet of paper, either.

“Which is why, as I found out much later, the helpful guy on the airplane giving me the number had misremembered, and transposed the last two digits.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“About the closest thing I can compare it with, is the rampant fear and paranoia of the primitives on Skins’s island, afraid of everybody and everything.

“It was just weird.”

The neighbor’s older brother and I were, for the third night in a row, bouncing over the snow-covered hills to go out and do the same thing we’d done the previous two nights.

Cattle can be a hassle in winter.

- - - - - - - - - -

“From the beginning, I had problems with it.  Everybody was always, ‘oh don’t go there,’ ‘oh, don’t do that,’ ‘oh, don’t approach that person,’ ‘oh, don’t do that again.’

“Okay, granted, it was true I was new to this Texas-sized place; didn’t know hardly anything about it.  Didn’t know the language, and even if I did, couldn’t hear it.

“Although…..it needs pointed out that the first six days, I learned the whole Ukrainian alphabet, and the Russian one, too.

“One learns a lot, under pressure.

“And because of my, uh, extensive vocabularial knowledge, knowing the origins of our words, if the origin was ancient Greek, the word in Ukrainian or Russian was similar enough to the ancient Greek to be discerned, then it was a matter of going Russian or Ukrainian-ancient Greek-modern English.

“It helped only now-and-then, and only in the written word, but it helped.  I could at least decipher headlines in newspapers.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Since the socialist paradises had only recently separated, and all was in disarray, the non-diplomatic western community was miniscule; I think all the time I was there, I got to know all of them.”

[A digression here, and it’s something I’ll have to point out in the book--when I say “westerner” or “American,” the term excludes westerners and Americans of Ukrainian derivation.

I’m referring only to westerners and Americans who were there who’d had no connection of any sort with the socialist paradises.

Sort of like, say, a Japanese in Finland.

Westerners and Americans of Ukrainian derivation, having one foot in both worlds, would’ve been of invaluable help to me, but as it was, I never met any while there; only on the airplane flight to, and coming back from, there.]

“Early on, I learned, mirabile dictu, there was a American around, who’d lived in the socialist paradises since 1978.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“I wanted to meet him, because while having things explained to me simply in English worked, it’d be better to have someone to explain things to me as a fellow American; someone who spoke the same ‘language’ I did.

“Someone--I forget who--tracked him down for me.  He’d been born and raised in New England, last American address Philadelphia, a professor of sociology.  And to show it’s a small world, he’d taught at a state college here in northeastern Nebraska for a couple of years, during the late 1960s.

“He was an old hippie, a ‘60s “flaming radical,” and highly displeased with America, had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the Jimmy Carter malaise, where he lived in domestic tranquility with a Ukrainian woman about his own age.

“He being decently-mannered, and because I was who I was, he refrained from his usual anti-American diatribes when around me, but such sentiments were always close to the surface.  I never did learn why he disliked us, only that he disliked us with a passion.

“However, he talked ‘American,’ and was willing to talk.

“By then, he was about 60, 65 years old, and in decrepit health despite the ‘free medical care for all’ that had existed.  There were many times I gently suggested that perhaps if he’d stayed in America, he’d be getting a good pension and good medical care.

“Oh no, he insisted; America was imperialistic, materialistic, unjust, poverty-ridden and this place, the socialist paradises, this brotherhood of man, was heaven.

“Said by an old man who spent days painfully shuffling from one place to another, in his attempts to collect his monthly workers’ pension, at the time circa eight dollars, which of course he never did.

“Well, whatever; but I’d hoped to use him a great deal, to explain Ukraine and Ukrainians to me.

“That however was not to be.  He had a dirty, scuffy, unkempt, white beard, rotten teeth, and a bug-eye.  When someone’s talking to me, I have to see the face, zeroing in on their lips and mouth, in order to understand what they’re saying.

“Despite that this guy was probably a treasury of useful information, it caused my stomach to quease and convulse when ‘listening’ to him, and so I used him only very little.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“During one of our rare meetings, I commented, ‘You know, everybody in this abominable place is s-o-o-o-o afraid, so scared, so paranoid.

“’I haven’t seen anything yet, to be afraid of.’

“The western community was a small and gossipy one; he’d known all about me before I’d known anything about him.

“Well, he said, there had been comments about my habitual indulgence in extremely risky behavior.  ‘You’ve convinced a lot of people that you’re going to get into bad trouble sooner or later, being so rash and unquestioning.

“You leave Kiev, going out to godforsaken remote primitive villages with people you don’t know and people your hosts don’t trust, gone for weeks at a time, and beyond the reach of any help from the American embassy, who oftentimes advise you to stay away from certain places.

“And given your, uh, disability, it’s doubly or triply dangerous for you.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“’Okay then,’ I said; ‘since I can’t figure it out, you tell me what exactly it is, that I’m supposed to be afraid of, and I promise you I’ll be afraid, very afraid.’

“After which he outlined a whole list of things that encompassed, in total, all 235,000 square miles of the land, and all 52,000,000 occupants of it.

“’No way,’ I replied, ‘I can’t live like that, being paranoid.

“’Remember, my introduction to this place was rather, uh, bumpy, the first six days during which I was kept in the bosom of, as the embassy alleges, organized crime.  I didn’t know who these people were, so I dunno if that’s true or not, but that’s what they say.

“’And I not only came out of it, but I came out of it my person and possessions and money whole and intact.’

“Well, he said; ‘you’re an adult, and no one can tell you what to do, but really, many think you’re destined for a bad end, if you keep doing what you’re doing.’”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, that would make a great picture to have in Cowboy Among the Reds,” she said, standing nearby as I punched on the computer keyboard.

She’d spent the night here, but I’d spent part of the night out in the cold and the snow, helping the neighbor’s older brother, so nothing happened.  Nothing was going to happen anyway, given that the cavern-like interior of this place discourages any thoughts of that.

She spent the night in the bedroom, reading some of my not-yet-released first drafts of the book.

She was referring to a caricature of franksolich, mounted and framed, that hangs above the computer, in between, for no particular reason, an oversized framed copy of a portrait of Charles I, and a black-framed and -bordered portrait of the late Lord Mountbatten, K.G., decked out in all his naval finery.

The caricature’s made using colored chalk, and I rather like it; it was done while I was tramping around the socialist paradises.

It’s a nice, sharp, caricature, Atman quality.

Decent and civilized people all make fun of Atman’s art, and sometimes it does deserve the ridicule it gets.  But his caricatures specifically are excellent, even if I’m the only one to say so.

<<<knows good art when sees it.

- - - - - - - - - -

“I’d always wanted to scan it, to show it off on the internet, it’s so good, but the artist used a really big piece of paper, and so it’s too large to be scanned.

“But no, it’s not going to be in the book.  There’ll be no pictures of franksolich in the book.

“It cost me one American dollar for that portrait, and another dollar for one of the person with me, which considerably depleted my cash resources, but I think it was worth it.

“The artist, before he started, asked what I wished him to draw me as, the person with me translating between the two of us.

“’In spring, summer, autumn, winter; in the city or in the village; as a rogue or a good guy, or what?’

“I told him to draw me whatever; whatever I reminded him of, when he looked at me.

“While he was drawing it, a big crowd gathered around to watch.

“When he got done and showed it to them before he showed it to me, everybody applauded.

“It was franksolich all right, as a prisoner in a socialist labor camp, what with the bewildered look on my face, smoking one of those distinctively-filtered Belomar Kanal cigarettes, the padded jacket ubiquitous in the gulag, and badly-fitting boots on my feet.

“And in the background, a watch-tower and barbed wire all over.

“I dunno why, but that’s apparently what I reminded the artist of.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

We had breakfast, after which she was going to leave, going back home clear at the other end of Nebraska, and I of course had a big day planned, going to Omaha with the property caretaker, to see a vanity book-publisher about Cowboy Among the Reds, after which we’ll go check out security devices ostensibly meant to protect deaf people.

Or at least as hearing people think they do.

The dining room table was cluttered with stacks and piles of paper, letters, documents, and stuff, being used as references while I’m writing the book.

After all, it was twenty years ago now, and sometimes the memory needs jogged.

“You have a lot of stuff here,” she said, reaching for a bright-red-colored two-prong binder.

“Yeah, there is a lot here,” I replied; “and so you don’t have to read that.  You can read something else.  I’m not using any of what’s in that in the book.”

Like a woman, she didn’t listen, and opened it anyway.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Within seconds, after reading maybe three or four paragraphs, she grew solemn, uttering a muted “oh my.”

“It’s an affidavit I wrote, back in 1996, supporting a request for asylum in the United States, based upon religious persecution in the socialist paradises.

“It’s the most important thing I ever wrote in my life, but I don’t think I’ll use any material in it, in the book.”

“It’s immediately gripping,” she said, her mouth half-open in awe.

“I like the way you start out,” she said while still reading the first page, “In the Name of God, Amen, after which you describe who you are, and then your association with the applicant…..and then how it was, that you came to see, or hear of, such things you’re going to describe.”

I use In the Name of God, Amen, on anything legal that pertains to me, such as my will.  Nothing prospers without God, and so best to put God in there, if one can.

“Oh my,” she said, while reading the second page.  There’s 53 pages, describing the treatment of conscripts of Judaic derivation in both the Ukrainian and Russian armies, circa the mid-1990s, the date and place of every event noted.

“Oh, take it with you, but be sure to bring it back; remember, it’s the most important thing I ever wrote in my life.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“I’ve seen his name on your Christmas card list, but I didn’t know he was this,” she said.  “And according to this, the two of you didn’t even know each other while you were there.”

Right, I said; “I didn’t even know he existed, until after I came back here, and a few months later he followed me.  The minute I opened the front door, while I didn’t know who he was, I knew immediately what he was.

“He was from Russia, a couple of thousand miles away from anywhere I’d been around, but had heard of me.

“Apparently my fame, er, name, was scattered all over the towns, villages, and farms, over there.

“It was a lot of work, again like my stay in the socialist paradises, woefully and abysmally underfinanced, but he was used to deprivation, and I’d recently gotten used to it myself.

“We managed, we got by, and he got asylum, and then permanent residency, and now’s an American citizen, gainfully employed, a homeowner, a wife and child.

“Never a day on food stamps; just on franksolich and then on his own.

“But because his wife didn’t care much for me, and because I thought she dominated him too much, and because a man needs to stick with his woman, during the years following, I gradually gracefully receded from the picture.

“Our relations remain cordial.  And since I have no descendants, and don’t particularly care for any of my nephews, he’s the one who‘ll, when I pass on, ensure that I have a decent Roman Catholic burial, with Latin and all that.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Why did you insist your name not be on the book?” the property caretaker asked, while we were having coffee before heading to the security firm to look at “security” devices designed by hearing people for deaf people.

The person at the vanity-publishing firm responsible for making estimates was out, and so I’d dealt instead with someone else, who spent a great deal of time with us, discussing options and ideas.

I guess next week I’ll find out how much it’ll cost for 25, or 50, or 100 copies of Cowboy Among the Reds, hardbound, cloth-covered, slipcased, long-lasting paper, five color plates on high-quality glossy paper, circa 500 pages.

She thought perhaps a different title might be better for it, and because she’s a professional at this sort of thing and I’m not, I agreed to think of another title, to see how that one flies.

The Bostonian Drunkard can eat his heart out, the squalid sleazy sordid greasy boryborygmous mama-financed slob.

“Well, I think I’m sui generis, one-of-a-kind, enough that anyone reading the book would instantly know franksolich wrote it, so no need to put my name on the cover, or on the inside on the title page.

“And besides, the book’s more important than the author.

“Even though I wouldn’t do it again, it was a glorious, exhilarating, liberating, mind-boggling adventure--I’d done something no ’challenged’ person could possibly do, as all the skepti--er, my friends, back home had alleged--and the book’s about that, not about me.

“The Bostonian Drunkard can shove that up his rectal aperture, and smoke it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“I don’t like it,” I told the property caretaker as we were driving back home after seeing the “security” expert in Omaha.

“But do what you will, and we’ll see how it comes out.

“Also, the guy kept on telling me what I, a deaf person, needed for safety and security, instead of asking me what I thought I needed; so fast-talking he wouldn‘t let me get a word in edgewise.

“And too, he slicks down his hair with some sort of grease and wears polyester.  He made Skippy and Atman on Skins’s island look elegantly dressed, in comparison.”

- - - - - - - - - -

As predicted, the original idea was merely two door-chimes, one for the front and one for the back, that light up instead of ring or buzz when someone outside pushes a button.

But then the caretaker further elaborated on my “problems,” specifically that of primitives stalking franksolich, meaning to wreak some sort of harm on me.

The guy then suggested an armed security guard on the premises 24/7/365, another service that his company sells.

I coldly reminded him that when up against something I know about, I can take care of myself, thank you.

So, using maps of the property, the two of them decided there should be “motion sensors” on little posts scattered throughout the property, up to 50 yards away from the house, which when triggered, would blink the lights on the door-bell, ostensibly illuminating me that someone, possibly malicious, was around.

I pointed out that wouldn’t work; I had to be where I could see if the light blinked above the door--and I wouldn’t always be there.  I might be sleeping, I might be in the bathroom, I might be at the computer, my back might be turned away, I might be engrossed reading a book, &c., &c., &c., and not see it.

“No problem,” the caretaker had unhelpfully said.

“I’ll just wire it so that when motion’s detected, not only the lights above the doors would blink on, but also every ceiling light--you have one in every room of the house--would flicker on and off until you turn it off.

“And since it’d detect anything moving from as far as 50 yards away, giving you time to react instead of being abruptly surprised, you can go back to life as usual, uncovered windows showing the vast panorama of the Sandhills around you, and throw away the door-keys.

“It’ll be just like it’s always been, yourself being freely accessible to people you want to see, or who want to see you.”

I wasn’t going to win, so I’d just said, “Okay.  Give it a try.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know, it’s a good thing you have a gift for euphemism,” the neighbor’s older brother said, as we were riding over the snow-covered Sandhills, again late at night, and for the fourth night in a row.

But this time, two of his three sons were with him, so it’d be a quicker, easier job.

“Your vivid description of the personal waste-elimination facilities in the socialist paradises brought back a lot of memories to me.

“You have an eye for detail; you didn’t leave anything out.”

That’s why, I told him, it’s all going to be in the book, but I have no plans of quoting it elsewhere.

Unlike the provincial primitives on Skins’s island, the neighbor’s older brother’s been places--Turkey, Malawi, Ghana, Paraguay, and India, that I know of, and maybe some others--and’s seen a lot, on religiously-sponsored humanitarian missions.

- - - - - - - - - -

“After seeing the first one--gaaaaaaa--I began laying down a condition for going to someone’s grandmother’s village: that I had access to an indoor water-plumbed commode somewhere, and that there’d be no drinking.

“The first condition was always met; the second one, never.

“I couldn’t believe it; I’d imagined things’d be like I’d seen them in remote areas of Scotland some years before, or what was probably around in Appalachia, the late dear old sweet Lu of the cooking & baking forum on Skin’s island’s terrain, fifty years ago--but this was a scandal, a crime against humanity.

“I suppose it’s the culmination of the silly ‘enlightened’ secularist ‘rational’ notion that there’s no God, and man’s only a soulless animal.

“And the socialists certainly went out of their way to prove it.

“Like with forcing the old women, the babushkas, to sweep the streets and sidewalks using short-handled, rather than long-handled, brooms, bending them permanently into upside-down Ls, the socialists hadn’t even invented a ledge on which one could sit.

“Just two planks, a gap between them, over a hole.

“Personal waste-elimination facilities in the cities and flats, were different, but damned near the same thing.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“When I left the socialist paradises, on the flight home, the airplane had to land in Cork, Ireland, for some sort of inspection.  All of the passengers had to get off, and they went to the coffee shoppes, the kiosks, the souvenir shops, the bars.

“I instead went into the men’s room, which was spacious and clean and empty, and even though I didn’t need to do anything, I went up and down the line, flushing each urinal and commode in turn, just to watch the water swirl around and go away.

“I’d been away too long; I was utterly entranced, watching that.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“How’d you keep clean?” one of the neighbor’s older brother’s sons asked.

I haven’t written that part yet, I said, “but it was a lot easier to keep clean in the villages, than in the cities.

“The socialists had ‘rationalized’ hot water by centralizing it.

“Water was heated up in a central plant, and then piped to the individual flats and other buildings.

“Meaning that by the time the water arrived, it was cold again.

“I never once had a decent bath in a city, no matter how ‘modern.’”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Water in the villages was heated at a central location too, but during one of my first trips to a village and looking around, I noticed that the water-heating plant invariably had a shower-head.

“I dunno why, and nobody could tell me why; it was just something the socialists had put in.  And they’d put it in some of the oddest places, like at the end of a corridor, or in a small room with no door, or out in the open in a gymnasium-sized room, or next to the control panel.

“It’s like a certain two-lane highway in Crimea that I saw, running alongside the edge of a cliff reaching down to the Black Sea. 

“Suddenly, boom! there was this tree, standing in near the middle of this two-lane highway, making one lane half a lane, and the other lane, one and a half lanes, wide.

“Nobody knew why it was there; only that the socialists had built the highway that way.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But what about their famous saunas they have?” the neighbor’s older brother asked.

“I never used one of those,” I said; “while I liked the workers and peasants, I didn’t want to get that chummy with them.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“So anyway, after noticing the shower-heads, I inquired about the matter.  I was surprised to learn that nobody in the village ever took advantage of them, despite that this was the water-heating plant, and one was guaranteed water as hot as one wished.

“Whenever I wanted to take a shower, which of course was nearly every day, I’d go to the water-heating plant with a bottle of home-made vodka, summahon, and the workers’d let me take a hot shower.

“It was usually out in the open, and they’d watch, curious because they’d never seen a real-life American, but that didn’t bother me; all I was interested in was having hot water.

“What bothered me was the chance that, in washing my hair, I’d inadvertently betray that I had no ears, and that’d lead to a lot of questions, about why.

“A few times, the workers applauded, as I was drying off; clapping at what, I had no idea.

“And every time, after I was dressed again, we’d all take the summahon and bread, and while they raised toasts to Americans, I courteously in turn raised toasts to the workers and peasants.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You know it’s going to cost some money,” the business partner said, while we were having supper at the bar in town.

“Yeah, probably lots,” I replied; “that’s why I’m asking you if you can find any more work for me, so I can pay for it.”

“Of course I can,” he said, “but I’m still at a loss why you think you should have to pay to have it published.

“I tell you, this is high-quality, top-notch stuff, and that’s only from the first draft.  I think you need to show it to an agent.”

“I’m going to do it my way,” I answered.

- - - - - - - - - -

As we dined, he commented, “I think there’s another story in you, that’s probably just as good.

“I’ve known it for years, what happened after you came back from the socialist paradises, but it wasn’t until Cowboy Among the Reds--and she’s right, you need a better title--that it suddenly struck me that that in itself is a book, too.”

Uh, no, I said; “after I get near to completing this book, I want to resume again writing that second book, the maudlin one.

“And besides, it’s his story, but I doubt it’ll ever be told, even though he’s in his late thirties now, this all having happened so very long ago, and he’s securely established here.

“He’s one of the most modest, shyest, self-effacing people one can meet, and probably it’s something about only which God, he, and myself will ever know the full details, all others eyewitness to it at the time seeing only parts of it, as they didn’t think I should be doing what I was doing, that it was something far beyond my meager resources to get done successfully, and so didn‘t get involved.

“He was the one who took a Great Risk, doing all that he did, leaving Russia illegally (but entering the United States legally), knowing no one here, having only my name and address, with no idea of what America is really like, and with less than two hundred dollars.

“My God, the risk he took; it blows the mind.

“It’s his story, not mine.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

When I got home this afternoon, I found it necessary to summon the property caretaker.  I usually don’t like doing this for only minor matters, as he lives eight miles away in town, but I wanted to make a point.

As it was, he was already on the highway anyway.

“It looks like somebody tried breaking in, and something else scared them away,” he said, examining the front door.

Not much damage had been done, although it was visible, and it was something he could fix himself.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Where were you at, when this probably happened?” he asked.

“At least next week, after I get everything all set up and turned on, I can guarantee it’s not going to happen again.  You'll always know when someone's around then."

I’d been away, I told him; “I was working.”

I wanted to point out that this wouldn’t have ever happened, if I’d left the door unlocked.  The malicious intruder could’ve just then walked in, seen there was nothing inside worth stealing, and left, doing no damage at all.

I also wanted to remind him that I’ve lived out here ten and a half years, and no damage, no damage at all, had been done the premises…..until two weeks ago when he insisted that I start locking the doors.

But to keep the peace, I kept my mouth shut; this wasn’t anything I hadn’t gone through before, and it was probably going to play out the same way all those other times had, or something similar to it.

- - - - - - - - - -

Being in a good mood, the caretaker said, “I know it’s his story, not yours, but at least tell me how it began for you, and then I promise I’ll quit asking about it.”

“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” I replied.  “I was sitting at the computer--in Lincoln, I sat facing the front window, so I could see if anyone was coming to the front door--something I can’t do here.

“I was reading a report on the internet about how, three years after passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the ADA, there were now fewer disabled Americans in the workforce, than there’d ever been…..and more on the disability gravy train.

“I was getting all worked up, because it was working out exactly as I’d figured it would, when I noticed a flicker of movement on the other side of the window.

“I went to the door.

“It was one of those ’life’s most dramatic moments,’ when in less than the twinkling of an eye, one’s whole life is irretrievably upended.

- - - - - - - - - -

 

“While I didn’t know who he was, I instantly recognized what he was.

“He was 18, and looked 18 over there; over here, he looked 14.

“And the Red Army at the time was needing him.

“The odds must’ve been astronomical; out of 300,000,000 Americans, he’d come to one who was intimately acquainted with what happens to conscripts of Judaic derivation in the socialist armies.

“I saw a lot while I was in the socialist paradises, mostly because I didn’t have to waste time hearing, and had someone else do my talking for me. 

“So I had all the time in the world, to just look around.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Did you ever find out how he knew of you?” the caretaker asked.

“Of course,” I said; “while we were getting acquainted, he mentioned a cousin of his in Ukraine had sent him my name and address, describing me as a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.

“I couldn’t remember his cousin, until later when he showed me a photograph, then I remembered.

“That was the kid when I was still new to the socialist paradises, got he and myself arrested by the secret police, and detained.

“After the visa was renewed, I never had such problems again, although as you already know, I didn’t know why.

“But for a ’first time,’ it was nerve-wracking.

“I later on got whacked, and good, by a policeman with his baton, but that was before he’d seen my passport, and never having seen a real-life American before, he’d assumed I was a German.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

"Now, tell me about that," the property caretaker said.

"There isn't much to tell," I replied; "it was all so wockenkuckkucksheim, so cloud-cuckoolandish.

"Nothing made sense; it was like Skins's island is."

"I'd seen something that wasn't supposed to happen, and because it wasn't supposed to happen, I wasn't supposed to see it.

"Socialist 'reality,' I guess."

to be continued

[franksolich]

"Oh, come on now," the property caretaker said.  "Tell me more."

"Not now," I said; "if I tell everybody everything now, they won't bother reading the book.

"Anyway, after battering me, he inspected my passport, and drew back, surly.

"'A lamb among wolves, but a lamb who escapes the slaughter nonetheless,' he said.

"I'm not sure if that's the exact quote, as he looked somewhat upset and bent out of shape, and my 'translators' had a habit of 'sanitizing' comments made to me.

"But I want that put on my gravestone."

to be continued

[franksolich]

“I remember seeing him one time,” the neighbor said this morning.

He and his whole family--wife and five children--were here after attending church.  I attend the same church, but at services when there’s not many people around, as I don’t care for crowds.

The neighbor and I have known each other since 1988, when he was a freshman at the University of Nebraska, and I was manager of a privately-owned student union there.

After he graduated in 1992, he went away, and I, bored, went far far…..far…..away.

When I came back, we resumed the association, although he lived up around here, and I in Lincoln, and later, Omaha.

“At first, I thought he was about 14 years old, and wondered what’d possessed you to get in over your head again, something too big for you to handle--it’s not like you were making a whole lot of money, and you were still drained from your experiences in the socialist paradises.

“We all thought you need time, and should take it easy, relax.

“You were all beat up, worn out, considerably underweight.  That haunted look on your face.

“But no; almost right away, boom! this.

“It wasn’t until later I learned he was actually 18, and that to his credit, his conduct was exemplary.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, that was almost twenty years ago now, and a lot of water’s gone past the dam since,” I said.

“He grew taller and put on a few more pounds, but alas his hair’s thinning now.

“Anyway, that’s his story to tell, not mine.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor took his five children out to the garage, as he wanted to show them something.  The neighbor’s wife and I sat at the dining room table, chitchatting.

“You know,” she said, “I think that’s a better title than Cowboy Among the Reds.  I like Lamb Among Wolves--"

Nope, nope, nope, I hastily interrupted.  “No way.

“’Lamb’ suggests someone young, trusting, and naïve.

“As if I don’t already have a public relations image of that.

“It drives me nuts, the way people condescend, as if I can’t take care of myself.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“When my last brother died recently, the first thing I thought of was how sad it was…..and the immediate second thing, ‘oh good, now there’s nobody left any more, who can remember me as the helpless incompetent simple-minded youngest brother who couldn’t take care of himself.’

“But no--much to my dismay I learned that the parents had impressed their own perceptions of me on their children.

“All six of my nephews--all that’s left but me--even though some are near my age, they’re of course all younger than me, are now giving me, the new patriarch, the new Elder, of the family, the ‘little brother’ treatment.

“I can’t get any respect for age and wisdom.

“Unhappily, that seems the destiny of all deaf people; nobody thinks we’re especially bright or competent, and that we need to be watched over, protected, lest something bad happen to us.

“Like with my chronological peers, for example, people my own age.  We’ve lived on this earth the same number of days, and’ve absorbed the same quantity, volume, or weight of ‘input,’ although of course in different things, but still--

“I get no credit, no credit at all, for my age and insight, because I’m seen as the helpless incompetent simple-minded youngest brother who can’t take care of himself.

“I wish to Hell I knew what I do, to give that impression, so I can get rid of it, and start being treated my own real age.

“It’s a really big chip on my shoulder, and I can’t shake it off.”

to be continued

[obumazombie]

franksolich is prolific when it comes to dealing with stalking primitives.
Or any primitive for that matter.

[franksolich]

“But you had a younger brother,” Romeo said while we were riding to the big city, after I got done bitching about always being treated condescendingly, even by my best friends.

“Right, but he died so very long ago I’ve spent most of my life being the youngest one.

“And it’s probable that if he’d lived, sooner or later he would’ve outstripped me, flip-flopping our roles.

“When I look back, I made some whoppers of mistakes as a kid.

“The main one being that I wasn’t assertive enough.

“On one hand, it’s very true that I was, essentially, ‘home-schooled,’ tutored by the parents and older brothers and sisters so that I could keep up in school--and I’m very appreciative for that, as I know I was a pain, and one had to be s-o-o-o-o-o patient in explaining things to me.

“But on all other things, such as practical skills in life, well, it was easier for them to do things themselves, rather than showing me how to do it.

“Even as a teenager, whenever something went wrong with my car, my friends always insisted on fixing it themselves, instead of showing me how to do it.

“And so I got rather used to it, having things done for me, instead of doing them myself.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, the situation was rectified a long time ago.  I’ve been self-reliant since the parents died, making my own way.  I was still in high school; the older ones were in their thirties, with families and careers.

“As I loathed their hippie values, I most certainly didn’t want to owe them anything.

“And on the matter of automotive mechanics, well, once I moved up here, I found it necessary to make up for lost time, and in a hurry.

“I wish there was some certain ‘defining’ action where everyone else finally admits, ‘Okay, he’s proven it; he’s our equal.’

“I had no such problems being accepted thusly by the workers and peasants, but it’s not by anything I’d recommend.”

- - - - - - - - -

“As you know, I quit drinking when I was still reasonably young, back in 1987, became a total abstainer.

“But when I was in the socialist paradises, I learned in a hurry that if I wanted to get along, I had to go along.

“Drinking and getting drunk’s deeply embedded in that culture, and I hated it, I detested it, I avoided it every chance I could get, which wasn’t often.

“And once I returned home, I immediately resumed being a total abstainer.

“There’s half-written drafts for the book, about how the workers and peasants made alcohol, what they used, and how they consumed it.

“If I happened to have a tube of toothpaste, or a bottle of rubbing alcohol, or some men’s cologne, whenever I went into a village, well, none of these things got out of there alive.

“It was poison, this home-made vodka, summahon.”

- - - - - - - - -

“I’m sure I represented America well, though.

“Less than half the time, but more than a third of the time, say, circa 40% of the time, I managed to be the last man standing, raising toasts to Robert Dole and Leonid Kravchuk, or to H.M. the Queen and Vladimir Kirilovich, the then-current head of the Romanovs, while the workers and peasants were laying on the floor in various states of drunken stupor.

“I hated it; it turned me into a monster, but perversely, to the workers and peasants, I proved I was a ’real’ man, and they found no humiliation, no degradation, in being bested by me.

“There was one time, forgetting my own strength, I yanked off the outside door-handle of a provincial police’s chief’s car--pulled it clean off, had it off before I even realized I’d grabbed it.

“Everybody, including the police chief, cheered and slapped my back, and went back to drinking; in the morning, I was assured, one of the prisoners in the local jail would have to fix it, make it as good as new, as the cost of being let out.

“I always felt badly for that poor son-of-a-bitch, who had to fix it.

“There was another time, in a village just inside Belarus, that I noticed a bust of Lenin sitting atop a low wall.  I decided I had to take a piss, and drenched Vladimir Ilyich’s hair.

“Then one of the policemen, as drunk as I was, retrieved a sledge-hammer from the trunk of the car, giving it to me.  I dunno what the bust was made of, but I smashed it pretty good.

“Then they took me around to a couple of other busts, and graciously allowed me to sledge-hammer those too.

“That stuff was poison.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“There was one time, wishing to moderate things, I suggested to the host that they try drinking ‘the way Americans drink.’

“I happened to have a small unopened bottle of authentic Scots whiskey with me, gotten from a hard-currency store, that I was taking as a gift for someone else further on, but decided to use it there.

“He looked at the bottle, and recognized it as the real thing, given the quality of the label on it.  They were aware of course, that many American or other western goods were actually cheap imitations made in Poland or Turkey.”

Yeah, I assured him, “It’s the real thing.”

“How do Americans drink it?” he asked.

Well, various ways, I told him, “but refined Americans drink it with water, as whiskey-and-water.

“So…..we’ll be refined Americans,” he said.  “How much water, and how much whiskey?”

“One part whiskey…..and nine parts water,” I told him.  “After all, it’s very strong.”

“They tried it, didn’t seem to care for it, and went back to drinking their horrid homemade vodka, although later on I noticed the bottle was empty, someone probably downing it straight.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Why were you hanging around with the police so much?” the property caretaker asked me, when he was unloading the posts to hold the sensors on various parts of the property.

Usually, I help, but in this case, since I don’t care for the idea, I just sat on the swinging bench on the front porch as he did it all.

They were pretty light posts, anyway.

It was unavoidable, I said, “remember my two conditions for visiting a village--that I have access to a plumbed-and-watered commode, and that there be no drinking.

“Well, in a lot of these cases, the only plumbed-and-watered commode in a village was at the local police chief’s house.

“This was way out in the remote areas, and the police there weren’t like the police in the cities.  They were thought to be ignorant illiterate brutes and bullies, but I learned they were actually nice guys, some of the nicest guys one could ever hope to meet.

“And I was the first real-life American they’d ever seen.

“In the cities, the police gave up on me after discerning I had no money, and had nothing else to do with me.

“In the villages, the police seemed to think that even if I didn’t have money, as they were intensely curious about America and Americans as not derived from television, just seemed to enjoy my company.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“It got to be a problem, though, because after knowing of my existence, they then tended to monopolize my time.

“They were eager to take me all over--and they were usually the only villagers who could, the only ones with operable motor vehicles--and they did.

“They loved showing me all these things, but of course while they were showing me one thing, I was actually seeing something else.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But they were always taking me away from the family I’d gone to see, and this was a problem.

“However, about my third month there, I’d mastered the trick of holding it in for four or five days until I could get back to an indoor plumbed-and-watered commode, and so I dropped that condition [for visiting a village], risking that my austere diet wouldn’t compel any such necessity.

“It worked; the standing-up business, one could do anywhere, but I never had to use one of those pestilential god-awful holes, always making it in time to decent and civilized porcelain.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“I no longer remember why the subject came up, but months after returning here, I mentioned to someone else who’d spent a couple of weeks 'touring' the old Soviet Union--the usual St. Petersburg-Moscow-Kiev circuit--that in all of my time in the socialist paradises, I managed to never have to use anything less than plumbed indoor sanitary facilities.

“He was incredulous; didn’t believe a word of it.

“Of course, the ‘indoor plumbing’ in the 'modern' apartments of urban workers and peasants was rather weak, and one had to be careful how much one put into it, but at least one could sit on something clean, the water ran, and it was…..eventually…..flushed away.

“He couldn’t believe it because even if one were staying in a first-class hotel with such facilities, inevitably a ‘need’ suddenly arose, and one was compelled to use whatever was available.

“Ah, but I said; ‘You were gorging down on all this strange food and self-admittedly drinking up a storm, overtaxing the intestines.  I was eating very sparingly, and only those foods in which I had any confidence.

“’I could go for days and days without any of this sitting-down business, and I always had time to get to a place with civilized utilities.

“I may have come close at times, and got nervous about being bumped or jostled enough to cause an 'accident,' but that never happened.’”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Sometime when I was still a kid, the socialists bragged that while decadent capitalist America was ‘only’ 97.76% (or somesuch percentage) indoor-plumbed, they’d accomplished 97.77% (or somesuch percentage) modern sanitary facilities.

“A ‘fact’ which their useful idiots in this country crowed about.

“It was sort of true; during the mid-1960s, the socialists made a concentrated effort to indoor-plumb the villages, installing indoor facilities in peasant cottages.  The workers and peasants had no say in the matter, and resented it because it took up valuable space in their homes.

“When I was there, every cottage boasted a lilliputian sink, a commode, and a bathtub, porcelain vintage the 1960s and 1970s.

“Nice work, the socialists did, putting in these things…..but then they failed to install connections for incoming water and outgoing sewage.

“So the workers and peasants stashed potatoes in the bathtub, tomatoes in the sink, and onions in the commode, and continued using the old outdoor facilities for personal purposes.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Wow, this is a long check-list,” the property caretaker said, as he examined several sheets of paper.

“But there’s not many checks on it yet; you’ve got a lot of territory you want to describe, but you haven’t gotten to yet.”

Yeah, I said; “I imagine the book’s about three, maybe five, percent done.  I’ve got acres and acres to plough yet, before I can rest.

“But it has to be done, and it has to be done now; as you can see, the socialist ink used in typing letters and handwriting notes, is fading, becoming nearly unreadable, and the socialist paper on which all was written, is starting to get brittle and crumble…..after only twenty years.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“But you keep on avoiding writing about your first six days, starting when you were dropped off at that one woman’s apartment, a woman you didn’t know, and she didn’t know you.”

Right, I said, “but that’ll probably be the last thing I write, to finish up the book.  I’ve never been able to write about it.

“The first letter I wrote home, the first evening I spent where I was supposed to be, I simply wrote, ‘Well, I was found, safe and sound,’ after which I back-tracked, describing the flight over, stopping at my arrival at the airport, and then finishing up the letter with a detailed description of the worker’s flat where I was.

“It wasn’t that those first six days were a blank--in fact, I remember them in great detail--it’s just that I had no power of articulation to describe them, describe what it was like being on the dark side of the moon, out of contact with everybody and everything familiar to me.

“An utter loss for words.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Okay,” he suggested.  “Put that aside, all the time you were lost, and describe what it was like, when you were finally found.”

The morning the American embassy finally re-opened, I’d been taken there, along with my luggage, by two men and a woman.

The ex-KGB agents, now security guards for the embassy, allowed only me, the holder of a blue-and-gold passport, through the gate, compelling the other three to wait outside, with my luggage.

I was escorted inside, to a woman standing on the other side of some sort of plexiglass barrier. 

I shoved my passport through the slot, saying, “Hi, it's me, and I need to find out where I'm supposed to be.”

The woman, another ex-KGB agent, now a clerk for the embassy, apparently didn’t know English, but could at least read my name, and she sort of jolted.

At the same time, a man, obviously an American, had walked out of his office, and she summoned him over.

He came over, looked at the passport, and then up-and-down at me, at least the part that wasn’t hidden by the counter.  He looked at me up-and-down for the longest time.

Then he indicated for me to come to the door, and I’d be let in on the other side of the plexiglass.

We went into his office, where I watched the biggest exposition of cranial fireworks I’d seen since a colonel in the British army in Belfast (Northern Ireland was under martial law in February 1978; I wasn’t supposed to be there, but wanting to see what was going on, was there anyway) went absolutely ballistic--it was awesome, the way he went ballistic--upon learning I’d been picked up while wandering around a factory district where there were explosions, fires, and shooting going on, and that I hadn’t even noticed it, being deaf.

“It was awesome, and this one was almost as good.”

the end