School Smells

A simple list of the school smells that I remember.  From elementary, jr. high and high school in no particular odor….oops, I mean order.

Wet paper towels in the bathroom

Algae water in the classroom aquarium

Shepherd's Pie in the cafeteria

Vomit...not as a result of Shepherd's Pie

Right Guard deodorant spray in the locker room

Boiling hot dogs on Hot Dog Day.

Sour milk in the lunchbox thermos that wasn't rinsed

Damp clay in ceramics class

The urine dankness of the underpass

Cinnamon rolls served at "nutrition"

Luden's cherry "cough drops"

High Karate aftershave

Formaldehyde on fetal pigs

TABU cologne by Dana

MarksALot  black pens

The alcohol on the freshly printed purple mimeograph papers

The soap in the bathroom soap dispensers

The blue fabric on the three ring binders

The buff, lined paper in elementary school

Brown paper lunch bags

Teachers wearing Estee Lauder “Youth Dew”on the off chance that they would seem youthful.

Spring Break in Moscow: Part Three

Jeans were a big deal during the Soviet era.  I don’t understand why the Soviets couldn’t make the equivalent to Levis….but they didn’t.  Jeans were a hot item.

So when I went, armed with the knowledge that jeans could easily be sold on the black market, I took a pair of worn demins that I had purchased at Fred Segal in L.A.

I’ve always loved fishing.  And trolling for jeans buyers didn’t take long.  Within minutes I was given rubles and the buyer had my jeans. 

I spent those rubles on a good meal in a restaurant and in a bookshop.  I bought a set of Anton Chekov plays.

A few years later, my soon to be husband took me to see The Cherry Orchard at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre.  I pulled out the Russian book and read up so I wouldn’t seem uneducated about the play.

Spring Break in Moscow: Part Two

Leningrad was beautiful. The gold of the Peter Paul cathedral glistened in the April light, the art of the Hermitage was overwhelming.  But the NO TOUCH ladies, as I called them, were everywhere; always stout and always in black, They were in every room of the museum and if one dained to go too close to a work of art, there was a scolding that transcended the language barrier. The NO TOUCH ladies also occupied every public bathroom.  Their job was to dispense one lone piece of toilet paper to each user.  The toilet paper was akin to the wax paper bags my mother used to pack my sandwiches in for school lunch.  These were the widows of World War Two.  The Soviet government made every effort to employ them, whether it be passing out toilet paper or sweeping the streets with twig brooms. 

Moscow was altogether different; a huge city with the Soviet era architecture that has also infected the look and landscape of Beijing.  Concrete, bold, stout—like the war widows—and crumbling.  It was when I went to Moscow University that I first came to the realization that all the red scare of my childhood was needless.  If the premier university was in such a state of shambles, what did this say about the Soviet Union? I had a private laugh at the folly of our fear. 

The Soviet Union Part One: Spring Break in Moscow

 Some college students go to Palm Springs, others to Fort Lauderdale, Miami or Cancun.  All for Spring Break.  I went to Moscow at the height of the Soviet era.  And Leningrad too.  But, of course, it’s now back to being called St. Petersburg.

It was 1973 and I was a graduate student at Stockholm’s Universitetet.  I lived on about 10 Kroner a day, which was the equivalent to $2.50-in those days.  My main meal was eaten in the student cafeteria and invariably coincided of torsk—a.k.a. cod.  Torsk with cream sauce, torsk with lemon, torsk fried, torsk in a casserole.  Always with boiled potatoes.

So money was an issue.  All my fellow students purchased the “femtikort” which was a bus pass that cost 50 kroner a month and gave unlimited travel.  Instead, I walked the roughly four kilometers to the university wearing black Swedish clogs and coat purchased in Pasadena, California. My leather-shearing coat, which had been a gift from my boyfriend’s brother-in-law, was stolen out of his car. Those walks gave me time to think and dream.  I sang Carly Simon songs to myself and once I found an Irish coin on the sidewalk.

In the early months of my program most of the students went on a trip to Goteland.  I chose to save my money.  But when spring break neared and the opportunity to go to the Soviet Union arose, I was in. 

As a treat I bought a copy of NEWSWEEK for the trip.  It happened to be the week that 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in the cover after Leonid Brezhnev had exiled him from the USSR.

First our student group boarded a ferry that took us on an overnight trip through the Swedish archipelago to Helsinki, Finland. I slept on the floor between the seats of people who had booked a touch higher class than the carpet.  Helsinki was an amazing spring fest of market gardens, floral delights and reminded me of my mother’s love of the Marrmekko brand that has now been added to Crate and Barrel.  A touch of spring, cat tails and flowers and we were on the overnight train to Leningrad.

I was raised in a family that showed us the wonders of nature: Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Yosemite.  But the skies I saw from that 1940’s era train were like nothing I had ever seen.   They were the BIGGEST and WIDEST vistas that I hade ever seen. The train chugged across Finland and finally into the Soviet Union.

 And then when we were at the border of the country I had lived in fear of my entire life, I wondered what would happen. I tucked my copy of NEWSWEEK under the cushion of my seat.  My papers were in order.

 The Soviet custom guards entered the train and proceeded through every compartment.  When they came to mine, they lifted the cushion I was sitting on, removed the NEWWEEK with Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the cover and moved to the next compartment.

I found it frightening and wondered if they had bugged the compartment.   Soon waiters with hot tea in high glass containters and sugar cubes arrived to server us.

We were on the way to Leningrad.  Not the stuff of a little Silver Lake kid.

The Queen's Skin

I spent the summer of 1974 working in a pickle factory in Regensburg, Germany, having finished my studies in Stockholm.  Now it was on to Glasgow, Scotland.  My boyfriend drove me as far as Strasbourg where we shared one twin bed in a hotel the night before my departure.  They next day I set out carrying literally everything I possessed.  I had a backpack, suitcase, duffle bag, money hidden in the bid of my overalls and a passport. I boarded the train and did the Hollywood style farewell from the window.

The train chugged across France to the English Channel and I decamped to an overnight ferry.

As we neared the white cliffs of Dover—and well before I would hear that song in my mind when listening to those words—the ship’s P.A. system asked all non-British persons to report to a certain area to deal with customs.  I stood behind a youngish American, the type that didn’t have the savvy to put a Canadian flag on his backpack.  The customs agent asked him a question and his answer was “Hunghh.”  He was immediately rebuked.  “In this country, sir, we say ‘pardon’.”   This was my introduction to a country I would live in for several years.

The ferry took us across the channel and I re-boarded a train to Victoria station.  From there I took a taxi past Buckingham Palace to Euston Station and finally a train to Glasgow,

It was one of those trains where two people sit facing another two people over a laminate table. Riding in trains was something I had never experienced until I went abroad.  In LA we had our cars.  I was also not aware of the types of magazines women read in Britain.  This was well before PEOPLE and magazines of that ilk. 

Across from me was an elderly woman reading one of the those women’s magazines.  I watched out the window as London quickly disappeared and a rural landscape took over.  The woman was very friendly and asked about me and my trip.  I explained that I was going to Glasgow to do graduate work at Strathcylde University.  As we reached the Lake District, I saw sheep—tons of them.  And they were spray painted with different colors.

The train chugged along as the elderly woman read her magazines.  Suddenly she looked up at me and said  “Doesn’t she have beautiful skin?”  She held up a picture of Queen Elizabeth.

I was a bit taken aback.  I have never found Queen Elizabeth to be a “looker.”  And now I had to be polite to my friendly passenger. I was in my early twenties, the Queen in her 50’s and the woman in her 70’s.  I believe I muttered something fairly kind.   But what that comment taught me was the utter devotion of some British to the Royal Family.  I am married to a Scot who abhors the royals.  I do suppose that not having to get up at all hours to go to work, having someone put toothpaste on your toothbrush and seeing your face on all the stamps and money will make for good skin.  I’ll never know.