Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

This year, during the solemn moment preceding Thanksgiving dinner when everybody remembers who they are thankful for, I’m going to remember the Russians. They’ve saved us from ourselves more than once.

There’d be no America as we know it without the Russians. During our Civil War, when England was threatening to get involved on the side of the Confederacy, the Czar sent fleets of his warships into New York and San Francisco harbors as a warning to the English to stay out of it, or else.

As America spread out across the western plains, homesteaders soon learned that the only wheat that would grow in the treeless environment came from a Russian seed, annually fallowed, genetically modified over centuries to grow on the treeless Russian steppes.

During WWII, twenty-seven million Russians, our allies at the time, lost their lives in our common struggle against self-indulgent racism. Something nobody there is likely to forget anytime soon.

Today, allied with China and the so-called “Global South,” they are helping to wean America off of a toxic English colonial economic system that benefits the few at the expense of the rest.

After Thanksgiving, Culley Jane and I will start making plans for the coming year, especially about our big trip next summer to somewhere in the world.

Like, first, we have to decide where to go. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.

It was originally Culley Jane’s idea to take each of the four grandchildren on a two-week trip to somewhere in the world around the time they turned sixteen. Two years ago, the oldest spent her sixteenth birthday in Paris. Next year it’s time for the next one in line.

Where to go?

The granddaughter turning sixteen next year said she’s open to anything. Anywhere sounds cool to her. She mentions, though, that she’s already been on a couple of Caribbean cruises, which were great, but been there, done that.

Culley Jane’s first thoughts tend to lean towards western Europe. She has friends there and knows the languages. Last night she mentioned Amsterdam. We could visit the Anne Frank museum, she said.

As soon as she said the thing about the Anne Frank museum, I realized that on this trip I didn’t want to be looking for the past, at least not that one. I wanted to know what was going on now. And for personal reasons, I wanted to know what was going on now in Russia.

From the time I was a kid growing up in a typical small town in America, I was told that Russians were our enemy, a semi-barbaric race of communists who wanted to enslave the world. They had powerful weapons. Everybody had seen pictures and film clips and news of Russia’s nuclear tests. At school, random “duck and cover” drills were announced with an ear-splitting alarm over the loudspeaker system. You never knew at first if it was the real thing or not. Some of the girls would scream. Like Pavlovian dogs, we learned to fear Russians like we feared the End of the World, and for all the same reasons.

It’s interesting, now that I think about it, but there must have been a few Russian families in town because there was a small Russian Orthodox church down the street from where I lived. Some of the Lutherans and the town’s one Jewish family went there sometimes, at least for the potlucks. But the Dominicans at my Roman branch of the one and only Catholic church said it would be a mortal sin to ever step foot inside the Russian church.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s in the mid-70’s that I began to seriously ask myself: Why do I think the way I do?

The catalyst was the Church Committee hearings, a deep dive into the CIA led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Like Watergate had been and the O.J. Simpson trial would be, the Church Committee hearings were broadcast nationally in prime time, gavel to gavel coverage for all the juicy stuff.

The hearings were like a Hollywood spy thriller being produced in real time. The committee peeled back opaque layers of what our secret government had been up to while we were watching Leave it to Beaver — coups, assassinations, torture, drugs, dripping poisons at the tip of a needle.

But what really caught my attention was Operation Mockingbird, a production of the agency’s department dedicated to propaganda, recruiting journalists and writers and artists, promising to make them famous as long as they made sure everybody knew who the enemy was.

That’s when I began to question the source of my own orthodox thoughts; ones I’d thought I’d come up with all on my own, like that Russians are the enemy… defeat the enemy, go, fight, kill if you have to, just like coach said before sending us out onto the field for the big game.

It was during my 20-year-career as an over-the-road trucker that I got to meet lots of Russians who’d been told the same things about me that I’d been told about them. Russia had secret departments of propaganda too.

Sitting around tables and at counters in truck stop cafes, they’d show me pictures of their families, and I’d show them pictures of mine.

Russian drivers liked to hang out at trucker lounges and bars in states that allowed such places near major truck stops. To Waylon Jennings on the juke box, maybe, we’d lift our glasses, and all agree: “We no enemies. We all truckers!”

We all agreed.

We’d been lied to.

I decided I wanted to take our soon-to-be sixteen-year-old granddaughter to Russia so she could see for herself with her very own eyes and not through a screen dreamed up in secrecy. She was a smart kid. She would recognize the obvious right off, while she was young, with a lifetime ahead of her to do something about it.

“Russia,” I said to Culley Jane.

“Russia what?”

“I want to go to Russia.”

“Mmm…” she said, nodding. She had connections to Russia like I never had. Her father was a history professor, PhD. … University of Chicago, then five years as Director of the Service Center for Teachers of History in Washington, D.C. before going back to teaching at Oregon State in Corvallis where he landed when Culley Jane was in junior high.

Everybody in her family called him “George.”

He died on a tennis court when he was not that old.

During the height of the Cold War, he wrote a book about the history of the Russian election system. I’ve read it. Objective. Academic. Reasonably boring. Just the facts ma’am about a time when everything that I was hearing about Russia was being filtered through Dominican nuns and AP/UPI wires bringing us the news of the world.

She remembers special nights when her parents hosted friends visiting from Russia. To this day, she remembers about forty-five Russian words, like how to say thank you to a Russian guest who says something nice about your shoes.

“Ok,” she said, “I like the idea of Russia.”

She would have to be the one to get us there. She’s the world traveler around here… lived in Europe; was dean of the college of Arts and Sciences at a university on an American island in the western Pacific.

The next day she got on the internet to start checking out European train schedules and rates. She spent the whole morning at it and came back with good news and bad news.

The good news was that there was a train that ran directly from Paris to Moscow; 30 hours; two nights; meals and comfortable sleeping accommodations, watching Europe pass by beyond a train’s window, like strolling through a museum, getting a lay of the land.

“But,” she then added like she was more than a little pissed, “but… the bad news is that the overnight train direct from Paris to Moscow is not running anymore. We could probably try to schedule transfers in places like Belarus or Hungary where you say their governments are on better terms with Russia. But there’s new regulations, changing every day. It’s all a mess, like trying to get through a war zone.”

Maybe by the time the next grandchild turns sixteen we’ll be able to take the train from Paris direct to Moscow.

Maybe by the time it’s time for the youngest, we’ll travel there by car, through a tunnel beneath the Bering Sea.

It’s possible.

I’ll be thinking about it during Thanksgiving dinner this year. We are, after all, all truckers and it’s a trucker’s job to get ‘er done.

--30--

Fiction:

by

Mathew Woolums

Denver Confluence Writers

Mathew Woolums

A Prince,

Another Prince,

And a Rock

One lucky day, a prince went out bow hunting, something princes do instead of listening to people and their problems, which he does not have. Problems, that is. At least, not that he knows of.

The weather was congenial, and he preferred to ride alone into a nearby forest. After an hour or so, he felt hungry. It happens that the prince didn't plan very often, and this time he forgot to bring any sustenance. The prince (everyone calls him by his title: Prince Ponder) dismounted from his horse. He lashed the reins to a nearby tree, the forest being full of trees, and looked for an animal to shoot, which seemed like a lot of work. So Prince Ponder decided to look for ripe, edible berries. The forest, conveniently being filled with berries, provisioned an easier snack.

While stopping to pluck the fruit of the bush, Prince Ponder noticed an irritating, sharp object in one of his practical boots. It must have been enormous. In spite of this vexation, this turns out to be his lucky day. It also turns out Prince Ponder wasn't alone.

Another prince, Prince Broccoli the Younger — there being no Elder Broccoli — the younger sibling of Prince Ponder, and keen on ascending to the throne, happened to also be hunting in the very same forest, just not for game. Prince Broccoli aimed at his elder brother.

Not aware of danger, Prince Ponder, who wasn't keen on danger, paused and looked down at his annoying boot. At the same time that Prince Broccoli let fly a nasty-looking arrow, Prince Ponder bent over to take off his boot. A whooshing sound flew over Prince Ponder, followed by an ominous thudding of an arrow into the tree next to which he stood.

Well, having missed, Prince Broccoli hastily made a retreat back to the castle. Seems all princes and princesses prefer to live in castles, by the way.

Prince Ponder stood there next to the tree with the arrow in it, the arrow being about chest high. After a moment of statue-hood, Prince Ponder began to put the pieces together. Prince Ponder did not have a reputation as a quick thinker, but he got there, eventually. Tree, arrow, chest. Arrow in tree. Arrow in chest. Things could have gone horribly wrong. He took a deep breath, surveyed his surroundings, which resulted in seeing no one. So he proceeded to check his boot, which happened to still be in his hand. He shook the boot and heard something rolling around in there. Prince Ponder tipped the boot, and what tumbled out of his boot was a small rock, about the size of a small rock. Prince Ponder wasn't particularly imaginative and so was unable to think of anything else that small. Instead of dropping or tossing the small rock-sized small rock, Prince Ponder put it in his pouch. The pouch, which I forgot to mention earlier, was strapped by a leather string around the prince's neck and under one arm. The right or left is unimportant, so we'll leave that part out. What we leave in is that Prince Ponder managed to retrieve the arrow, much to the appreciation of the tree, and returned to the castle.

At dinner that evening, or supper, or repast, or feast, or whatever it was called, Prince Ponder finished his goblet of wine and placed the arrow on the table. Next to it, he placed a small rock-sized small rock on the table next to it. When everyone else noticed the arrow, they all stopped talking. Most of them did not see the rock as it was a rather small rock.

"My brother, I found something of yours." Prince Ponder gestured to the objects he'd placed on the table. "Thanks to this small-sized small rock, I'm still here to enjoy another meal with you all. Some of you may find out this is their last meal."

No one likes broccoli, after all. Seems small things can have large consequences.