Are your parents immigrants? Mine are.

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OneMoreRobot3021

Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,038
Loc: the sky

Are your parents immigrants? Mine are.

#5668151 - 05/24/06 10:39 AM (20 years, 4 months ago)

Both my parents came from Russia when it was still known as the U.S.S.R. They met here in America, and came here about five or seven years apart. Whereas my mother was one of few families to actually obtain permission from the Soviet government to leave the USSR and come to America by way of Italy, my father actually escaped the cold clutches of the iron curtain.

Though my father and I are often at odds, I'm always compelled to share his story with people, because really, it's a great one.

There is a book that was published after the fall of communism in Russia called The KGB's Most-Wanted, and it is made up of the final copies of the KGB's most-wanted lists. My father appears in there twice for anti-Soviet activities in his native Estonia. While in Russia he studied to be a doctor, and got that degree successfully, but knew all the while that he had to leave and get to America, the land of promise where the streets were paved with gold. There were some Russian peasants who actually believed this myth - that there were specks of gold you could pick up off the street. That is how closed off Soviet-era Russia was.

My father made a decision to leave, but because of his anti-Soviet activities (activist groups, protests, etc.) he knew they would never let him. So, he got a job as the ship's doctor on a merchant marine ship that had one route: From Russia to the Ivory Coast in Africa, and then back. The trip to the Ivory Coast was a long one.

Each day, my father spent hours working out while his shipmates drank vodka. Not to say he didn't partake in the vodka as well, but usually while they could all be found carousing somewhere on the ship, my father was on the deck doing jumprope to build up the muscles in his leg, as well as running laps around the ship. See, he was preparing for something.

When they finally got to the Ivory Coast, the men on the ship were only allowed on land under the supervision of one of the head officers on the ship, and so they all descended into the port there to do some shopping, get some girls, get some drinks. By command, they all had to stay together.

My father pulled one of the oldest tricks in the books. He pointed in one direction, and told everyone that they should "look at that!" And when they did, he summond up all that he had been working towards with his exercises on the ship, and he turned tail and ran. He ran his heart out. He ran until he couldn't see them any more, dove into a cab, begged the cabbie to drive him to the American Embassy, and once there, they welcomed him with open arms.

The next day the CIA flew my father to America and set him up with a guy who helped him find work, and gave him a tiny sum of money to work with. From there and then, my father has taken advantage of capitalist America better than any other immigrant I've ever met. In Russia his family was rich, but he gave that up, and once here, went rags-to-riches all over again. THough, he never was quite in rags I suppose.

I dunno. I don't respect many my father's actions since the time of that amazing tale, but I'll always be inspired by the actions he took to improve his own life.

--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

Extras:

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