A Russian New Year

    
 
                                                         

   The Aeroflot flight from Helsinki landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International at just about 1:00 PM on December 31, 1989. Passport Control was slow as everyone was scrutinized for several minutes by security officers. Staring back I remember that the officer studying my passport had fuzzy hair on his cheeks. I wondered if he shaved yet. Custom's Control was a breeze - "Nothing to declare." The Russians at this point would let just about anything that wouldn't explode into the country. I was collected by a representative of my host, the Pereslavl-Zalessky School District and a driver. We climbed into a minivan and were off - traveling north up the Yaroslavl highway. The drive to P-Z was over two hours of bouncing and swerving on a pot holed, two/three land road packed with roaring trucks belching clouds of exhaust. But kilometers of the ride were as always Russian beautiful - snow covered landscape, stands of white birch trees and church cupolas rising above villages in the frosty distance.
     By the time I arrived at Yulia and Yuri's apartment I was starting to fade. The "rush" from arriving in Moscow was giving way to fatigue. Tea and snacks revived me and Yuri and I were then off to the "banya". This military banya had its own building and was restricted to officers. New Year's Eve - it was packed with men and their sons. After shedding our clothes we (there were now four of us) approached the door of the steam bath and it sprang open - out poured thirty or forty laughing, yelling men and boys. We rushed in and the bath filled rapidly. Defensively I sat on the bottom of four long benches . The door slammed shut - someone opened the furnace door and threw in a thick three foot log. I was impressed he could lift it. This was followed by a bucket of water. The ensuing shock wave of heat nearly flattened me. Ten minutes later we were out of the bath standing under cold showers. A vodka bottle appeared and we began toasting the New Year and everything else. Now I was getting "severely" tired. We returned to the steam room.
     Back at Yulia and Yuri's we had a light supper - a table was covered with delicious dishes accompanied by vodka and wine. Then it was off to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's apartment - more meats, salads, caviar and of course vodka, wine and brandy. Exhausted but realizing that I was the only one in attendance who was not an officer or a wife I was careful to - as the vulgar expression goes "keep my shit together". Russians drink a lot - the only defense against alcohol annihilation is to either stop drinking which many hosts find exceedingly rude or to keep eating. I cotinued consuming food and measured drink.
     New Year's Eve 1989 became 1990, the year before the extinction of the USSR. Five men, all slightly inebriated (the truly wasted had disappeared) sat around a table in a dimly lit room
having a dark conversation. Assume you are a fire control officer at an ICBM installation. And assume that a thermonuclear war erupts and amid a nightmare of firestorms and lethal radiation the earth is being destroyed, its population annihilated. Deterrence has failed. At this point you receive the order to "FIRE" your missile. Would you? A US Air Force study was cited that indicated in this situation perhaps 25% of US fire control officers would refuse to launch their weapons. I remember being surprised and impressed by the sympathy for the 25% that seemed to roll around the table. Then the only American present noted that 75% would fire - the agony of a dying planet be damned. There was some nodding, a depressed moment of silence and we moved on to another grim subject.
     Sometime after 5:00 AM I remember staring down at a single bed - a combination of jet lag, a great banya, vodka, wine, brandy and the lateness of the hour had taken their toll. I aimed and then collapsed face down deciding along the way to skip the disrobing function. At 9:05 AM I was capable of lifting my head briefly - to check the time - then back to sleep.

                                                    
                                                                             Bruno

John Takachenko

     I thought I saw John in Huntington Park on a February afternoon in 1997. Driving away from the library a man with John's proud, straight features in a black coat and dark hat was sitting on a bench set against a snowy background. He was looking straight ahead. I quickly leaned over to the passenger side preparing to wave but then realized that it couldn't be John. There followed a brief rush of sadness.
     The legend was that John and Soya Takachenko fled Russia in the 1920s, spent the next several decades in Brazil and then found their way to Oneonta in the 1970s. Soya taught Russian language at Hartwick College and he became a self-taught watch repairman. There were no children. Soya died in the 1980s and was buried at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville. I would visit her grave once but primarily as a sidelight to strolling in the Russian Orthodox cemetery.
     I then began to see John rather frequently as he took his morning walks. He had a route that included at the very least Church, Center, Elm and Main streets. John was a tall, elegant man with precise but rugged features and moved with strong, purposeful strides. He was always well dressed suitable to the season. No depressed, lost soul this European. When we met pleasantries were exchanged. I would practice my probably incoherent Russian on him. He would ask about my last or forthcoming trip to the USSR. We were always pleased to see each other. One such encounter occurred late in the era of "perestroika" in a grocery store parking lot. The Soviet Union had loosened the travel restrictions on its' citizens. John in exact, precise English announced that to his amazement and delight his niece was coming to Oneonta to visit him. "I am so happy!"
     About two years later John invited me over to his house on Hill Street to meet his two brothers on the occasion of their first visit to the USA. In a rather dimly lite living room we would chat, share light snacks and vodka. Compared to John who was in his mid 60s, his brothers looked past 125. But of course it could also have been simply exhaustion. They had also been "cheated" out of several hundred dollars by a New York City cab driver who drove them from JFK to Oneonta. One of the brothers would also require a couple of days of hospitalization for diabetes.
     John and I would chat only once more. On a couple of other occasions we were a block apart and did not meet. Someone told me that his health was deteriorating. Next I knew he had sold his house and in anticipation of dying returned to his old home town in southern Russia. During those years I had periodically thought about having John over for s small dinner and some chess. But I never did. It is now 2012 and I still regret it.

                                                           Charlie
                                                




    

"Our Featured Volunteer"

                                         Humane Society of Sarasota County
                                                      November 4, 2012
                                                          John Lindell
                                                          Canine Coach

We asked John to share a little about himself and he was kind enough to send us this response.

On January 1st, 2000 I retired from a college in upstate New York as a professor of government with a specialization in Russian/Soviet affairs. Then as a gentle, kindly, somewhat reclusive, old pensioner, I moved to Florida to play some tennis and golf. Over the first six years I also worked periodically as a field assistant in Costa Rica and Panama for a brilliant Michigan State ornithologist, Dr Catherine Lindell. I was a ship's cook on three sailboats on several Gulf cruises and worked five seasons as a tax preparer in an IRS/AARP program. Then I discovered the dogs (and the people - of course!) at HSSC.

For the past half dozen years I have made many new friends - among them Diezel, Cooley, Emmitt, Catahoula John, Dutch, Zoey, Troy, Hoyt and more recently Shadow, Sarge and Bruno. There were many others. I am pleased to report that the record of adoptions among these dogs has been excellent. HSSC led by behaviorists John Pfohler, Karie Hajek and volunteer Christine Christian seems to excel at getting its' rescue dogs and cats placed in new homes. This makes volunteering at HSSC a pleasure. One meets new dogs - soon friends - provide them with exercise, training and affection and then almost all go on to a "forever" home. But each and every one leaves behind a gentle and lasting memory.
                                                           

                          

                                                                                                                                                       

 

                        Shadow - b. 2003 -  d. 12/5/2012          
                      Third chance Reprieve - 12/5/2012


        

Pereslaval-Zalessky, Russia

                       
                                       

                             

                                                          Goritsky Monastery

    During the winter of 1990 I was in Russia lecturing, consulting  and living in the Frigate Hotel. The Frigate a modern Soviet hotel had been built in the 1970s.  My room on the fifth floor was quite warm and pleasant. I had a bathtub, toilet, television and a large window looking out back at nothing special, some yard and part of a building. But every day there were snow showers and I could watch the snow swirl and drift to earth. My electric coil allowed me to make a cup of hot coffee and I always had bread, jam and a few snacks available. Truth is I was very comfortable.  On Sunday my day off, I would rise, bath, snack and maybe watch a little TV as I hand washed clothes in the bathtub. By roughly 11:30 AM I was ready to hit the streets.
     The Frigate Hotel was located on the west side of the Yaroslav highway as its two lanes passed through the city from Moscow in the south to Yaroslav in the north and on to Archangel. Across the highway from the Frigate and one block south was a single story buffet that was the less expensive
alternative to the Hotel's restaurant. It was popular with truckers, workmen, a few local residents and me. I climbed one snow bank, crossed the slick street, climbed another, then padded down the sidewalk on an inch of ice and entered the buffet. The decor inside was Soviet brown with simple tables and chairs, all with uneven legs. The food on the steam line seemed to be all brown. Beige meat sat next to brown stew next to brown vegetables - I was never hungry enough to load up a plate and find out what was what. My food selection was simple and always the same, a cabbage soup with pieces of meat, a roll and tea. The soup was always delicious, the roll large, doughy and great for dunking, the tea hot with  rich flavor.
     At the end of the steam line sitting at a small table was a rotund woman, an ubiquitous "babuska"  (a "grandmother"). In front of her was the cash box. Every now and then she would shriek at a customer usually for not having the correct amount for their purchase. I the visiting westerner found it amusing. The customer might feebly protest but most simply took the tongue lashing and then sat down and ate. No one ever seemed to leave the buffet in a pleasant mood - faces reflected indifference and irritation.
     It was perhaps my third or fourth visit to the buffet - I carried my tray to the babuska with the cash box. Without thinking or even trying to approximate what was due I placed a five ruble note on her table. The screaming hit me like a shock wave. I stood there not exactly believing that I was the object of her tirade. But indeed I was. Then the storm passed. She reluctantly made change, shoved it at me and looked away. Slightly shaken I moved to a table to eat. As I sipped my tea the shock of the assault was slowly replaced by a warm sense of belonging. The babuska had treated me exactly the way she treated almost everyone. I was now a buffet regular, just another guy to yell at, an ordinary Russian. I exited the restaurant ramrod straight, deeply pleased and with a dark, somber face.

Franz Kafka

Hi again Chuck,

RE: your question.
     Franz Kafka was a Jewish, Czech born in Prague, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to German speaking parents in 1883. Kafka wrote in German. His Metamorphosis, is a story about an ordinary guy who wakes up one morning to realize he has turned into a cockroach. He and his family are of course surprised! dismayed! horrified! In another dark work In The Penal Colony the protagonist develops a sophisticated machine for torturing and executing individuals and provides an ethereal justification for its' use.  Happily he gets to experience his invention. Kafka unknowingly anticipates the Nazi, Soviet eras but his work suggests that homo sapiens can do and rationalize anything.
     Kafka is also famous for his novels. In The Castle the protagonist for 300 pages seeks to make an appointment for an unknown reason, with someone high in the bureaucracy. Finally before securing the appointment he dies but receives a memo from the bureaucracy stating that he is permitted to continue living where he is. (Mark Harmon's 1998 translation is brilliant.)  In The Trial an individual is arrested one morning and spends the next 250 pages trying to discover with what he is charged. Never learning he is still convicted and executed. In Amerika (Kafka liked the place - kind of ) the hero experiences a series of surreal adventures (New York and Boston tend to blend together) and ends up in Oklahoma - we think. And there was much more. Kafka died in 1924 at the age of 41. His two sisters were later murdered at Auschwitz.
     You already knew? More than you wanted to know? Forgive me I was a professor.
     Years ago I had a situation develop in the New York State DMV Office in Oneonta.
I was trying to sell an old car of mine to my daughter Jennifer for $1.00. On my fourth trip to the DMV Office trying to complete this task I submitted an important, required, NYS form stamped with a "DO THIS". I pushed it towards the clerk - and she looked and pushed it back. "No, No, you must not do it that way!" I protested "it says "DO THIS"! "That doesn't matter!" she replied. "You must "DO THAT"! Then I kind of lost it - emotional control.
      This kind of situation and the one I believe you are going through are frequently described as Kafkaesque, meaning a bureaucratic situation of the surreal, with excruciating frustration and much insane crap.
     A friend and neighbor of mine Bob ______, also happened to manage the DMV OFFICE heard the commotion and came out.  Bob took me by the hand and led me back to his office. We completed the paperwork for the transfer in ten minutes. Two months later I purchased a vanity license plate KAFKA3. (Three other New Yorkers had the idea before me.) In Florida I have Kafka1. For me it represents a very minor, hopeless protest against the massive, overwhelming and  mostly inevitable intrusion of public and private organizations into our lives. I also want to believe that if Kafka with his rather depressed personality and dark sense of humor could see his name on a license plate it would  perhaps make him smile.

:-) John

                                                   
                                                                         Hardee
                             photo by Emilee Fuss www.emileefuss.com
                                                   

JOL's Premature Obit Bio

    


                                             

     
      John Oskar Lindell was born ____, ____ to Mary _____ and John O. Lindell in Utica, N.Y.. He died ( but in protest) 

_____________________. in ________________________. of mostly natural causes. 

     Mr. Lindell attended Sacred Heart Grammar School (now a community center and partially abandoned), Utica Catholic Academy (demolished for a parking lot) and Utica College of Syracuse University (the Oneida Square Campus was abandoned for a new location). Lindell was an uninspired student in high school though something of a basketball player. He began his years at Utica College in 1955 with an athletic scholarship that he promptly lost due to a grossly inadequate academic performance. Mr. Lindell would become a "student" late in his sophomore year. After getting priorities straight he received his BA from Syracuse University in 1959.
     In the autumn of that year Mr. Lindell enrolled in New York University to begin work on a Masters degree in the Department of Government. Upon arriving in New York City he stayed initially at the Broadway Central Hotel (in the 1970s the building collapsed) but then moved to 99 East 4th Street (subsequently razed for a parking lot). Mr. Lindell received his MA degree in 1962. 
     In 1960 another graduate of Utica College, Annette Nicotera received and entertained Lindell's proposal of marriage. There were family misgivings concerning the proposed match. Ms. Nicotera's Uncle Cy Susso, a superb American patriot, noted that Lindell had no Italian blood, was most probably a communist, perhaps a Russian spy and had no job. Rather courageously she accepted the proposal, they were married and took up residence in Utica. Over the next seven years Mrs. Lindell would issue forth three precocious and beautiful daughters; Catherine, Elizabeth and Jennifer. But unhappily a twenty-two year marriage would end in divorce in 1982.
     From 1961 to 1965 - defying the expectations of some - Mr. Lindell found a job, in fact several jobs. He taught at Utica Free Academy (now an assisted living facility), TR Proctor High School and Mohawk Valley Community College. Other employment included the New York State Legislature, IBM and General Electric Radio Receiver Division. As the alert reader will surmise the "radio" industry was not a wise career move. GE would subsequently layoff Lindell, close and abandon the plant. In 1965 he returned to NYU to begin work on a PhD. His area of special interest would be the USSR and he secured his doctorate in 1973. But in 1966 with years of work on his degree still in the future, Lindell accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. The Lindells moved from Utica (the population of the city over the ensuing years fell by 40%) to accept the position in Oneonta - "the city of the hills" where "life [is] enjoyed".
During his first two years at Hartwick Lindell occupied an office in a building designated Card Board Alley and shared a wall opposite a row of urinals. In addition he would be "fired" twice for not completing his PhD program. Remarkably he would also be reinstated twice. The CBA building would be demolished and Lindell moved to Arnold Hall and then upstairs into a refurbished Chapel. There he would have an office with a 35 mile view of the Susquehanna River Valley until retirement. Arnold Hall was torn down in 2009 and replaced with a parking lot.
     During his 34 years at Hartwick Dr. Lindell taught most of the courses offered by the Department of Political Science, a Department he organized in 1972. But his speciality was Russian/Soviet affairs and through the years he led tours, taught, lectured and did consulting in Russia. Contrary to Uncle Cy's suspicions Lindell was never a member of the Communist Party (his doctoral adviser had in fact vetoed his proposed contact with the CPUSA) and throughout his career Lindell had little interaction with the security services of the USA or the Soviet Union (the exception being in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1988). Professor Lindell did like to emphasize that as the USSR tottered on the abyss of oblivion he gave the Russians "lots of good advice". The USSR totally collapsed in 1991. Dr. Lindell retired in 2000.
     In retirement - now a gentle old pensioner - Lindell did many of the things that preoccupy such individuals. In 2000 he sold the family home in Oneonta that he had maintained with care. Shortly after the sale the house was "flipped", became rental property and shortly thereafter a slum. Houses up the street from the old home were also sold and converted to student housing. Finally in June, 2012, Center Street Elementary School - one block away and the pride of the neighborhood - closed forever.
     Mr. Lindell also played weak tennis, pathetic golf, did some minor research and inconsequential writing. He lived with his companion Carol A Hanlon for many years (anniversaries were not celebrated or even noted) in Fly Creek, NY and Sarasota, FL. Lindell also worked as a Field Assistant for his biologist daughter Catherine, in the Eden-esque rain forests of Costa Rica and the debilitating humidity of Panama. He crewed on sailboats as a "ship's cook" participating in his only "Mayday" aboard the floundering Critical Path off Boca Grande, FL in 2003. (The crisis would pass and Lindell that evening would serve the crew an excellent baked lasagna dinner.) For five years during tax season he worked as a Volunteer Tax Preparer for an IRS/AARP program in Sarasota. Thus did he face and rather heroically overcome his great fear of the IRS brought on during a period he referred to as My Time of Serious Tax Troubles.  For several years Lindell worked with dogs as a volunteer at the Humane Society of Sarasota County rising in rank to K-9 Coach. {The ranking system was then abolished.) He also volunteered at the Sarasota County Animal Services and Satchel's Last Resort. Mr. Lindell often said (paraphrasing Mark Twain) that if there were no dogs in heaven, he demanded to go where they were.

                                                                       
                                                                        

Trapping Wild Creatures; Lessons for the Uninitiated

   

  At 6:45 AM a scream ripped through the upstairs. The dog had discovered a something and chased it into Carol's room. We brushed by each other in the doorway as she exited the area. I shut the door and saw our Lhasa/mix drive a fat chipmunk from under the bed across the room to beneath a stuffed chair. I thanked Chloe for her efforts and ushered her out of the room. Now - what kind of trap would I need to remove this animal.
     My experience with the "have/a/heart" trap has been excellent. Carol's flower gardens were besieged by numerous woodchucks a few years back and I borrowed a trap from a friend. To be successful one must carefully prepare a delicious bait salad. My salad consisted of apple and pear slices, lettuce, carrot sticks and celery, slathered with a peanut butter dressing. I easily trapped five woodchucks that summer (one of which before release had finished every scrap of his salad). The first two animals I hand carried in the trap over a quarter of a mile. I took them around a pond and out into a meadow (absolutely no cows or horses in the area) to a corps of trees. There they were released.
     A sunny morning five days later I looked out a window and saw two woodchucks running side by side across the field toward the back of the house. With sixty paces to go they stopped, appeared to rub noses and split up. One ran to the burrow under the back deck and the other to a burrow in the field bordering the lawn. The next three chucks I trapped were driven miles to a state highway Rest Area (again no cows or horses in the area) bordering vast meadows and with a panoramic view of the Mohawk Valley - they were released. Today happily, we only have one, perhaps two, but certainly not more than three woodchucks residing by the gardens.
     A scream at midnight from Carol's room alerted me to another intruder. I rushed into her room - the light was on and she was under the blankets. "There is something in here and its flying!" At first glimpse it was a dark bird - but no it was a bat. It flew from one side of the room to the other - grabbed on to a curtain, rested for a few seconds and then flew off. For the purpose of capture I chose a pillow case. My plan was simple - keep the bat flying, get it tired and after it lands bag it. It took approximately fifteen minutes of harassment before the bat was exhausted - it landed behind a curtain. Using both hands I covered it with the pillow case, gently squeezed and picked up the almost weightless body.  Down the stairs I rushed and out into a starry night - two gentle flaps of wings and the bat was gone - no problem. Before discovering how that bat gained access to the room and fixing it, there was another scream three weeks later. A pillow case was secured and harassment began. The bat finally collapsed onto the rug and I covered it with the pillow case. But now the wrinkles in the pillow cloth prevented me from determining  precisely where the bat was. So I gently began to press down on each of the lumps until - one lump emitted a cry - like a baby. I scooped it up and outside my friend flew off into the night. That same summer our neighbor Harriet, sought assistance - a bat was flying around her second floor. Armed with my pillow case I slowly ascended the stairs and saw a very active bat. Upon reaching the top step I held the bag open and the bat flew directly into it. I took this as a personal vote of confidence in me by the Order Chiroptera - bats. It was clearly my finest capture - and release.
     To capture the chipmunk now confined to the bedroom I selected a 2x3 foot plastic clothes basket placing it on the floor and covering it with a dark blanket. One corner of the basket was then jacked up with an aspirin bottle making an inviting place for a chipmunk to hide. Now the chipmunk had to be kept moving until it scrambled under the trap and I kicked away the aspirin bottle. My plan worked perfectly and I trapped the chipmunk twice. Unfortunately the little rodent also escaped twice. It proved difficult to slide a cover, sheet or any damn thing between the basket and the floor without offering the diabolical creature enough space to escape. Now it was personal. I selected a smaller basket. Chloe was unleashed and deployed to assist. A rapid chase ensued. Once the chipmunk stopped - the two animals were nose to nose twelve inches apart. Chipmunk, "You want a piece of me"? Chloe, "No, I just enjoy the chase." Again they were off. The chipmunk was finally herded into a restricted space in a closet, the basket was placed over the animal  and then slid carefully into- you guessed it - a pillow case. Released after a two hour encounter a happy chipmunk (Chloe and I also hope our new friend) alternately ran and bounced off into the deep grass and trees.

                                                    
                                                   Brody - photo by Beth Macaulay

Haunted, sort of . . .

  

  Of course I believe in time travel. Most of us experience it, just not the way we would want or expect. A great novel or movie has a flux capacitor that moves us around in time. Or our mind might confuse eras and it simply happens. Standing in the sun in front of a grammar school waiting for my granddaughter Sara, I am asked the reason for my presence. My reply, "I am waiting for Jennifer" instantly rolls away three decades for a few micro seconds and I am again in the warm, beautiful time of my daughter's youth.
     Nor are most of us strangers to a chemically induced trip. For those of us not doing recreational drugs they are surprisingly vivid. I was stretched out on a gurney awaiting minor surgery. The view up was of elongated ceiling lights and waiting I revisited scenes from a movie in which a dying Carlito Brigante stares  up at similar illumination. But now a nurse administers to me a drug and my reverie was instantly replaced by a sharp vision of a brown and white Guinea pig sitting on his haunches and looking straight at me. Behind Jay, the hairy, white profile of a dog - Swede was also staring me down. My old dog seemed slightly embarrassed that Jay stood so assertively in front of him. But both were communicating the same questions. "Are you coming now?" "When are you coming, we are waiting." Emotionally I dropped way, way down - but was also happy to see them. Nurses now quickly rolled me into surgery.
     My father John, died in 1998 at the age of 94 and I have rarely dreamed of him. On a cold, snowy January night in 2008 I arrived in Albany NY from Florida and picked up a rental car - a powerful vehicle with rear wheel drive. Proceeding up the Northway it occurred to me how inexperienced I now was driving in winter conditions. Exiting on to I 88 west the conditions deteriorated - snow swirling and an icy roadway. Occasionally the car began to fishtail. It was then the instructions began - "Slow down!" "No passing." "Stay more to the right." A veritable barrage of orders banged around in my  mind - my father's instructions repeated to me over and over when I was learning to drive (and once in a while through the years when he felt they were needed). "Slow down - a car approaching on your left." "Use your mirror!" So many instructions - once I glanced at the passenger seat to see if he was there. "Gently pump your brakes if you feel a slide beginning." In my mind I answered "Dad, this car has anti lock brakes - we don't need to do that anymore." "OK" he replied "Then slow down some more." The instructions and banter went on for perhaps fifteen minutes and then faded away. I drove on alone.
     I am standing in the snow by the stacked fire wood in the yard of my long ago home. Across the yard Swede is walking from his dog house through the snow towards me. His beautiful white coat is matted with dirt and stuck to his body. There are specks of dirt on his eyes and face. (As I buried Swede I had carefully wrapped up his face to prevent just this from happening.) Now using my foot prints in the snow Swede walks right by me never looking up. He rushes up the back porch steps intent upon getting into the kitchen. There by the radiator, under the table Swede had his sleeping
rug, food dish and water bowl. He wanted to be in his home - we both miss our home.

                                                      
                                            Zoey - photo by Ginny Armington

James F Dyer Ph.D

     Jim Dyer died May 11, 2012 at the age of 76. My daughters alerted me last Fall that he was having issues and had been in the hospital at least twice. Jim's problems were fluids, weakness and medical blah, blah, blah - he slid down hill and died. I had sent him a couple of cards and received a nice note in return. " . . . a few more doctors, a few more pills and I'll be through this."
     I knew him in high school but not very well. He had a tremendous sense of humor and at some point we became friends. We marched in a couple of parades side by side in the first rank as (tall) sailors and he would happily hurl comments at helmeted soldiers, "Avast - air raid wardens!" We dated the sisters Nicotera - in fact I introduced him to Madeline, his future wife of fifty years - and eventually we became brothers-in-law. We had funny times courting the sisters - and occasionally after dates - the fun would continue - we would slip off to dark "joints" to meet up and socialize with their uncle, a hard drinking, macho, kinda racist, short, thin, bald, Italian-American super patriot and veteran of WW 2, Cy Susso. Cy had come to enjoy our company in spite of our lack of Italian ethnicity  (" two (expletive) big guys"!) - and we had fun.
     Jim's daughter "little Annette" (her aunt was rarely called "big Annette") and my daughter Cathy were born about the same time and saw much of each other growing up. We vacationed together even getting Jim to try what he referred to as "that camping shit". Jim was not a great swimmer - he hired another sailor to swim the pool for him in boot camp - but in their second child Jimmy, was collected all the family's swimming DNA - from the earliest age Jimmy Jr. would crab, crawl, totter and stagger into any water be it ocean, lake or brimming bucket.
     Jim may once have saved our father-in-law's life, certainly his sanity. Louie had just carried an open gallon of paint up the stairs to begin painting an apartment. He put it down at the top of the stairs and then inexplicably kicked it over. As a torrent of white poured down the stairs Louie stood at the top, arms raised to the heavens yelling "Jesus Christ on the cross - take me now!!!" Jim had just come through the front door. He quickly picked up a paint brush - and that is how the staircase of the house on Lansing street became white.
     I deeply regret that I never heard Jim, an English professor give a lecture or lead a seminar - reports are that he was charismatic, sceptical and humorous. Through the years we had drifted apart as he became more conservative and I became more liberal. Then Annette and I divorced.
     Two years ago in August I was walking by the Cider Mill and Jim hollered at me from the gift shop. They were all there, Jim, Madeline, "little" Annette and her husband George, young Jim and his wife. We shouted pleasantries and then chatted for a few minutes. I choked up to see them together - now that is a memory I shall carry the rest of my trip.
     I miss Jim and those years ago and Louie - and Uncle Cy.