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.

The King's Death

By now everyone in the Western world has heard of the movie “The King’s Speech.”   Yesterday was Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain’s 85 birthday, and in a week her grandson and flag bearer for the royalty will get married in Westminster Abbey.

Helen Mirran got an Oscar for playing royalty in the movie “The Queen.”  Colin Firth scored by playing the Queen’s father.

Growing up in Sliver Lake we didn’t have kings and queens.  We had cheerleaders who got pregnant and football stars that ended up working at Albertson’s.

The closest I got to “royalty” was when my grandmother went on a cruise with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  “Their children were very well-behaved,” she told us.

So when I arrived in Sweden for graduate school, not knowing a single person in the nation, I found myself in a monarchy for the very first time.  There were royal residences guarded by Swedish soldiers with shoulder length hair.  And names that I needed to learn.

The king’s name was Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden.  He was old and beloved.  And he had an interesting history.  His first marriage was held at Windsor Castle and his second marriage was at St. James Palace in London.  These were the days of the royal in breeding. His second wife was the aunt of the present British Queen’s husband, The Duke of Edinburgh.

His son, who may or may not have been sympathetic to the Nazi cause, was killed in a plane crash in 1947.  The King’s grandson, Carl XVI Gustaf became the heir apparent. 

Carl Gustaf met his future wife Sylvia at the memorable 1972 Olympics held in Munich and marred by the deaths of the Israeli wresters.  They fell in love and married.  Their progeny are the next generation of royals.

On September 15^th, 1973, shortly after my arrival at Valhallavagen Fem, the King passed away due to pneumonia. He was 90 years old and his grandson was a young man with a very new and non-Swedish bride.

The power of royalty made itself known to me at that time.  I stood on the street, amongst the mourning Swedes and watched as the funeral procession passed by. 

I had been a bit taken aback at the unrestrained patriotism of Stockholm’s main department store.  EVERYTHING including underwear could be found in yellow and blue with crowns.  Coming from America where we were the scourge of the world because of the Vietnam War and a President like Nixon, it seemed odd to see such unbridled patriotism and confidence in the government.

 Sweden is one of the most egalitarian places I have lived.  But more on that later.

Easter redux

This is a re-post but one I still feel the same about the Easter holiday. I've made a few changes and adds. 

My grandfather was a minister and a quite prominent one at that.  If you google his name—Cleveland Kleihauer—you’ll see that he is credited with (cough) being a mentor to Ronald Reagan.

So at our house, Easter meant several things.  Both my sister and I expected, and awaited, the arrival of the Easter Bunny and the cellophane wrapped baskets that would be sitting at the ends of our matching twin beds when we awoke on Easter Sunday. Somehow, though, this was nothing like the thrill of Christmas morning.

No explanations as to the entire oddity of Jesus dying, bunnies, crucifixion, chocolate and Jesus returning were ever mentioned. But, in return for the Easter Bunny gifts, we were put into the scratchiest, stiff, pastel colored dresses that we’d ever worn. And, almost worse, were the little hats we had to wear.

At Hollywood Beverly Christian Church we were THE GRANDCHILDREN. Our church didn’t DO Lent, Ash Wednesday or Shrove Tuesday.  Just Sunday. Our communion beverage was Welch's grape juice. Women would pinch our cheeks, comment on our dresses and suck up to our mother. My sister and I stood stiffly in white socks and, sometimes white gloves, and smiled. Once home, we were free to explore the chocolate—after my father did the family photographs in the back yard where I could still see the stains from the Fourth of July worms on the bricks.

My mother would switch out of her “church clothes” and begin dinner. Our father would hang up his tie.  My sister and I would eat candy free from the crinoline.

I’m sure this must not have been a good day for my mother. Having worked all week, bought the Easter baskets and dresses and hats, she still had to produce the "Easter dinner."  I wish I could give her a hug of thanks.  But it's too late. 

I’ve never liked Easter, in spite of the candy.  But, I’d rather eat potato chips anyway.

The Funnies

I come from a dying breed—practically extinct-- of children who ate breakfast with their parents at an actual table.  A major part of those meals was spent reading the morning newspaper:  The Los Angeles Times was our main source of information.   I vividly remember my mother, newspaper spread across her face, commenting on Eleanor Roosevelt’s death; telling us what a wonderful woman she was. The bombing of the little girls in a church in Birmingham, Alabama was shared over the same table.  This was how I learned about the world.

The sections of the paper were divided up between the four of us. My father taught me how to read the baseball stats, know the initials “ERA”, “RBI”, and see who would be pitching for the Dodger’s that night all from the sports section.  I learned a lifetime of common sense from reading DEAR ABBY. But, without a doubt, the best part of the paper was the “funnies.”

People of a “certain generation” have their favorites.  I loved the drama of REX MORGAN, MD and the “I’m so superior and all knowing” nose butting of MARY WORTH.   I could almost picture her walking down the streets of Atwater. NANCY and SLUGGO were my best friends, and the war orphan DONDI tweaked my pre-adolescent heart. They even made a movie about that cartoon and by his demise, the orphan from Italy had morphed into being Vietnamese. ANDY CAPP gave me a glimpse of what my future life in Britain would be. There was one cartoon that made me want to change my name. I’m grateful that I didn’t.  Not telling.

I followed the black and white stories with more passion than I did the Mickey Mouse Club, Leave It to Beaver, Bonanza or The Monkeys. And on Sunday’s they were in color.

When today’s newspaper was delivered, something that I am well aware will soon be an anomaly, I went straight to the comics. Now the comics are always in color. The strips that I loved are no longer.

But there is one “comic” that hangs on.  It is the one comic that I never “got.” It was in the LA Times and it is in The Honolulu Star-Advertiser.  But only on Sunday;  same as when I was a child. PRINCE VALIANT never got his hooks in me because I could never buy into the once weekly story,

It ticks me off that there are crossword puzzle questions about Prince Valiant’s wife. And it ticks me off that I don’t know the answer. Give me a question about Kryptonite and I am good to go.