SitRep, Auslander goes behind enemy lines
I have just returned from a trip to USA. It matters not why I had to go, it simply suffices to say it was not my choice and it will in all probability be my last journey west baring an emergency that requires my presence. I am getting old and such long journeys are pretty hard in regards to the time and strain of so many hours in flight.
My first impression of Miami Airport was not particularly favorable. Every few minutes there was an announcement in English and Spanish of the penalties for doing this, that or the other thing, half of which seemed to concern smoking on Airport grounds. From my visual and audio observations roughly 95% of the Airport workers spoke in Spanish to each other, in English to those of us who spoke same. TSA was different, marginally so. As I walked past the various food and goods kiosks and small shops in Airport I noticed the prices. 9 dollars for a cup, as in small coffee cup size, of ordinary beer and 5 dollars for a hotdog.
After collecting my bag I hailed a cab and was promptly told I could not do that, I had to go to a particular area to get one. I did so, got a cab and told him where to take me. $24.00 for a roughly 1 mile trip. Cab was clean as a whistle and the driver was polite although not particularly skillful.He was from Pakistan and had been in US for 6 years with his wife and very extended family.
Arrived at hotel. Before I could rent a room there was a problem involving a credit card. I don’t have one and Hotel could not understand that concept. In the end I offered to leave a substantial deposit for any damages to the room and assured them I would be leaving before noon on the morrow. They relented and charged no security deposit after I showed them my Russian passport, which they found exotic and made a copy of. Once in the room I cleaned up from the long flights and then went downstairs in a quest for food. I asked the front desk of restaurants in the general area and also where I could purchase a lighter since I smoke. I was instantly informed that smoking was forbidden on Hotel grounds except at the far end of the building in the middle of the small parking lot in a smoking area with no seats or roof and smoking anywhere else would get me evicted on the spot with no refund of payment for the room and my belongings would be brought to me at the entrance gate and guard post. I mentioned that she had not answered my questions. Lighters were available at the benzine station adjacent to the hotel compound and numerous Cuban and Mexican restaurants were located. I don’t particularly like Mexican or Cuban and said so and the charming young lady said she thought the in house restaurant had a hamburger on their menu. I went out, purchased a lighter ($2.50, sextuple what I pay for the identical Bic in Russia), enjoyed a smoke outside the compound and then went back in, went to my room and changed shirts, donning a genuine Black Sea Fleet tee shirt. By this time I was not particularly caring of whom I might offend.
I went down to the rather nice but not palatial restaurant, sat at the bar and asked for a beer and a menu. The barmaid asked if the shirt was in Greek, I told her no, it was Russian. She asked where I bought it, she’d never seen a Russian shirt, so I told her it was purchased at the Russian Navy Uniform Store in Sevastopol. She asked where Sevastopol was. The beer was 5 dollars but at least it was a liter, not a 6 ounce cup. Since it was early in the evening, actually very late afternoon, we ended up chatting for a while as the bar was not crowded. This young lady was American, college educated, a liberal arts degree, and she was quite gleeful that she was making far more as a barmaid in a good hotel than many of her friends who were struggling away in just about any vocation except what they were trained for. She had an out of wedlock child that her grandmother cared for while she was working and hoped to eventually buy a house in Miami although she said she could not buy anything without help from her grandmother.
She had several tattoos that were visible on her lower arms, one of which was a large marijuana leaf. She is clever, she saw me glance at the body art, smiled and pulled both her sleeves up to expose her shoulders. She had solid body art as far as I could see. She then pulled her shirt collar aside just a little to expose the fact that her upper chest and shoulders were covered with’artwork’. I asked her why, if she supposedly wanted to buy a house, did she spend giant money on body art plus a very expensive I pad or whatever plus a very expensive cell phone. She replied that she liked body art and the electronics were demanded if she wanted to keep in touch with her friends. I ordered a $15 hamburger with fries. The burger came with a lot of different items stacked on it according to the menu so I told the barmaid I wanted it plain, just the meat,the bun, the fries and catsup, salt and pepper. She told me salt and meat are bad for me.
By this time the after work crowd was arriving in dribs and drabs. I was alone at the bar at that time and a well dressed lady entered the bar area and sat beside me. Within 5 minutes I knew she was divorced with three children, her oldest having killed himself last year, she hated her ex husband, she worked for a large PR firm based in Texas where she lived and she hated President Obama, plus she was here without her boyfriend. She asked why I have two wedding bands, one on each hand, so she learned a tiny bit about marriage in Russia.
She asked my vocation and I told her I was retired and now I write. She asked what I write, I told her my first book, a novel, had been published on Kindle back in June and this winter it would be translated to Russian for the home market. She asked the name, I told her, she pulled out her Ipad and in seconds she had the Kindle info in front of her. She quickly read part of the preview on Kindle and bought the book. I was a bit surprised. She said she was going to Bermuda in two days for a week of holiday and would read the book there and she also asked me what the general story line was. I told her and also told her that the tome was written in an English version of how we speak in my home city. She said the part of the first chapter she had quickly read the language used was very formal and polite with proper rank and titles used in normal conversation and was that how we actually talked. I told her that is, indeed, the way we talk. She stated that such formality was foolish and not needed.
During our conversations two Navy officers, fliers, walked in and sat on the other side of her at the bar. We ended up chatting for the next couple hours after taking a table, where we were joined by two other Navy fliers, officers also and staying in hotel with the first pair.
The officers were very polite in our conversations and asked nothing of me that could not be construed as public knowledge. The officers were quite knowledgeable of the current situations in Syria and the general area but knew only what west media tells them about Novorossiya and EU, the lady also knew of the assistance of Russia to Syria. All five were well educated in the formal sense and the lady was quite strong in her comments about President Obama and how inept he is in her opinion. While the officers offered no opinion on Mr. Obama they showed no discomfort while the lady denigrated the president. We also spoke of the conditions of the American citizens and all were of the opinion that the current economic situation was not good and all offered anecdotes of friends or relatives who are no longer doing well economically and saw no redress in the near future. We also spoke of the continuing passage of ever more repressive laws concerning what American citizens can or may do and say. Each, now that we had a couple beers in us, again offered anecdotes of the repressions of free speech in normal conversations and the restrictions that were placed on everyone as to how their children would be raised, especially in the Armed Forces. The oldest officer, who looked to be mid 40’s, mentioned that his two sons in University were afraid to say anything that would offend their classmates,generally concerning anything that could be construed as being conservative, racist, negative concerning those of the alternative life style, negative concerning the floods of immigrants coming to USA, and one had made the comment that if he said anything against the overriding liberal mantra of his university that ‘they will destroy me and I will have to change schools’. Another officer said the same had been happening to his three grade school children, he said it was almost as if they were being brainwashed daily. He said it had gotten so bad that his wife went back to work so they could put their children in a conservative private school. I asked if the situation had improved and he said yes, to a remarkable extent but at the cost of his wife having to go back to work to pay for the school and not being home to raise the children while her husband served.
Next morning I was up early and set about taking care of the main reason I returned, obtaining anew passport. Having set that process in motion I went back to hotel, checked out and their shuttle took me back to aerodrome. I arranged a round trip flight to Orlando where my friends would pick me up. $400 for that early afternoon flight. On arrival in Orlando it was again continuous announcements over the intercom of the penalties for doing this, that and the other. I had forgotten about my lighter in my pocket and handed it to Miami TSA going through security.The TSA man said not to worry about the lighter, I could carry it with me. Interesting.
Recon, it begins. The gated community.
My friend’s wife picked me up and off we went for the hour or so drive back to the coast. The roads were full and as usual the main road was in excellent condition. Everyone was doing exactly the speed limit and I noticed a good number of patrol cars on the road, not only on that trip but everywhere I went in my almost three week stay.
My friends live in a gated and affluent community on the water. By gated I mean it was just that,two ways in or out, gate houses with guards and electric gate and 2.5 meter walls around the entire community with security patrols all night. I had spent a couple days at a time with them last year when I was in USA, this time that is where I stayed for the duration. The entire roughly 10 hectare community within a community is spotlessly clean and orderly. The houses are not mansions but surely not poor. Service workers are in there every day during the day but not a sound is heard before 09:00 or after 16:00. Each service vehicle had a windshield tag stating their company. Not a single child living in that community goes to public school.
After setting to my second important task on the first full day of staying with my hosts I took part in the early evening tradition of gathering with neighbors and talking. One, living on the west side of my host, was an up and coming mid level designer for a well known air frame company. The one on the east side was a serving 05, the one directly across the street was a serving 04, both having married well. All three had grade school or younger age children, the children out with the adults but quiet, properly dressed and very well behaved. My hosts had told the neighbors and security that I would be visiting for a period of time but not much else. One of the first questions was of course where I was from. When I said Sevastopol, one wife stated she had been to Sevastopol in Wisconsin and it was nice. I gently corrected her and told her I was from the other Sevastopol, the one on the Black Sea.
For the next two and a half weeks the neighbors met several evenings a week to talk, some bringing friends to see the exotic visitor from The East. These people are not foolish, they are all very well educated, upper, very upper, middle class, with vast information at their fingertips but none had ever met a ‘Russian’. The conversations were erudite and interesting, intelligent questions were asked by them and by me. No one was standing there with an I pad or talking on a cell phone as is so extant in America now, all paid attention to each other and to the conversations. I answered all questions honestly and completely, the answers often leading to other questions. I don’t know how many times I went over the sequence of events in Sevastopol before, during and after the journey back to Mother with new visitors, our work with the evacuees and refugees summer and fall last year, our duties at Battery amongst other places and so forth. Of great interest was the day to day life in our humble city, how people live, shopping,services, just about everything. Again, all questions were answered honestly, good and bad told.
Mid level economic status