12/22/22
Newsletter #196
The Crack of Dawn
And a final note about my two summers at Agree Outpost. Although there were at least three trippers at the camp – guides, if you will – I somehow got the same tripper, Loren, for every hiking and canoe trip I went on there. In every case Loren got us lost. He couldn’t read a map or a compass, and his instincts were always wrong. OK, fine. We made it back in every case, so what the hell? Who cares?
A couple of years later I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A few days into the semester I saw Loren carrying an armload of books up the street. I called out his name. He heard me, then looked all around trying to locate who had said his name. He may well have seen me but didn’t recognize me (I had just shaved off my beard). Suddenly, I just didn’t want to talk to him, so I didn’t wave or respond. Loren looked around appearing confused, then continued on his way. A week or two later I saw him again. I called out his name, then intentionally stepped behind a pillar. Loren looked all around, seemed perplexed, then kept going. Over the course of the next four months I saw him about a half dozen times. Each time I’d call out his name, then duck out of sight. He’d look all around, appear befuddled, and then keep going. I hadn’t planned it, but now I got my revenge for his incompetence. After the third or fourth time I found it incredibly amusing.
I was just in Marin County, CA, visiting several friends from Detroit. I stayed at a hotel in San Rafael, home of George Lucas. In the park are statues of Yoda and Indiana Jones. Since each friend was in a different little town, I ended up using Uber more than I ever have before. In Detroit, Uber drivers are black or white Americans, or middle-easterners (as a note: since the Detroit metropolitan area is the home of over a million middle-easterners – more than anywhere else outside the Middle East – we don’t see them as a polyglot group called Arabs. Iranians are Persians, Chaldeans are Christain Iraqis, people from Lebanon are Lebanese, Saudis are Saudis, etc.). In Marin County, the Uber drivers were from all over the world. If I hear an accent, I immediately ask where they’re from. This can be touchy if they come from certain places, like Russia or Germany, but I’m very good at putting them at ease.
I had a female Russian driver, about 35, 300-pounds, sharply bobbed red hair, who barely spoke English. I got into her car, said hello, she said hello, and I asked her where she was from. She hesitantly said, “Russia. Is bad.” I said, “No, Russians aren’t bad; Putin is bad.” She shrugged sadly. At this moment Russians are bad; she accepted it. To reassure her that wasn’t so, I said, “What about Mikhail Gorbachev?” She nodded and smiled, repeating his name properly. Both Russians and Bulgarians do that, correct you because there’s no way anyone but them can say it correctly. Since I made her smile, now I knew how to do it. I said (improperly), “Pytor Tchaikovsky.” She shrugged and smiled. I mean, how can you not like the guy who wrote Swan Lake? Now I was off and running, doing my best Boris Badanov impression: “Sergei Rachmaninoff.” She smiled. “Dimitri Shostakovich.” She smiled and chuckled. Now I really went for it. “Sergei Prokofiev.” She full-out laughed. Of course there were good Russians. I added, “Fyodor Dostoyevsky,” as a capper.
My heavyset, Russian Uber driver with bobbed red hair was finally was able to say, “My father, Russian. My mother, Ukraine.” But now they were all in Marin, CA. Lucky for them.
A fine day awaits.