Yep it’s a gym!

“Straight Talk Express” has left the city.

His name is not “The man upstairs”, his name is Jesus

When I was growing up®, everyone knew a poem that started with:

Day of 7th of November
Is Red Day in your calendár

or something like that.

People who read this blog for a while are well-versed in the holidays that were celebrated in the USSR and the 93rd Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution is not an exception. A whole generation has grown up without seeing a real parade on the Red Square in Moscow but the 7th of November is still remembered by many people around the world and celebrated at a least one suburban dwelling in the Kansas City Metro.

I wasn’t really impressed by the new TV series “The Kennedys”, which briefly touched on many controversies, rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy family. The only new revelation for me was the fact that both President and Mrs.Kennedy were receiving amphetamine shots from Dr.Feelgood. One of the more interesting episodes covered the Kennedy Administration handling the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962.

The true story of the Cuban Missile Crisis may not as glamorous as it’s generally portrayed in the American official history books, but what’s not in dispute is the fact that during these weeks in the fall of 1962 was the closest the world have ever been to a nuclear war. I wanted to see the headlines the American people were seeing in their daily newspapers, so I went to the library and scanned some microfilm. However, the most telling find was probably this article, talking about the dedication of the first of the 612 nuclear fallout shelters planned in Kansas City. The article is readable, click on it if you need it magnified. Imagine the mood in the city and the country, not even 20 years since the WWII, having to prepare for another confrontation.

We don’t have many traditions in my family. We don’t sit around the Seder table asking questions; we don’t eat Chinese food on Christmas; we don’t have Taco Tuesdays or Gefilte Fish Fridays. We are pretty ordinary people in that sense. Or every sense.

There is one tradition that I’d like to keep and pass along to my kid – sitting down for the road.

Every time we were about to leave on a trip my Dad always said “Let’s sit down for the road” and we would set down our suitcases and sit quietly for a minute. It wasn’t my favorite thing to do – when you are a kid on the way to an exiting destination the last thing you want to do is to be stopped in your tracks and sit around even for a minute. But then again it’s a minute well-spent. You could realize you forgot something, or just look around one last time so a memory of your place will travel with you and eventually make you homesick. You could concentrate, finalize a plan, prepare for the departure, as a pilot might say revving up the engine. Many useful things you can do in a minute. Or you can just not do anything and wait for your Dad to signal that the sitting down for the road is over and open the door to something that awaits outside.

I’ve done this ever since I can remember. I sat down in places I’ve never returned to; I sat down with people who I never got to see again; I sat down before the trips I remember and many forgotten ones. Now I get to tell my kid to sit down and I like the continuity of it. It’s a real tradition, beautiful in its simplicity and as meaningful as one wants it to be.

For the road…

In 1939 Life Magazine published an article “America Gambling: Half of the nation made bets in 1938“. Kansas city was prominently featured as one of the most notorious gambling towns.