Summer, Okanagan Lake

Five hours of driving through two high and often snowy even in summer time passes and you are in the subtropical valley. The boat is mooring here, on the South side of Okanagan Lake:

This is a beautiful place for summer style life. Being there I was thinking about new subject for my stories. It looks like I will start “Stressmen” series soon. What it will be about? About people, airplanes, technology, software, analysis, design, optimization and many other things that are part of my life. And of course it will be a story about long way from Kuibyshev to Vancouver.

Siwash Rock and Dr. Sun-Yat-sen park

Interesting place:

This rock resembles a bowling pin. I had good swimming not far from it. The water temperature is close to 20C and the air is 24C. Very comfortable.

Dr. Sun-Yat-sen park is quiet:

Especially in its bamboo alleys:

Missilemen story is presented in pages now, starting with Missilemen (0,1) and finishing with Missilemen (conclusion).

Cannery Row and Missilemen Conclusion

This is a place that resembles me Monterey and Steinbeck’ Cannery Row:

Nice place with nice boats:

And my story is finished. Missilemen Consclusion

10. Conclusion

It sounds like Vertinsky’s song, “occasional common talk brought these dear but useless words”:
- all Il-96s are grounded for the brake system defect revealed;
- the central airfield in Moscow is transformed into park and residential area;
- manufacturing of the Tu-154 is stopped in Samara.

The word “useless” has direct meaning what makes these sentences even sadder and the following pictures pop up in my memory:
- October 1973. Diploma practice at Kuibyshev Aviation Plant. I am studying the Tu-154 F-4 fuselage section assembling rig.
- May 1976. I got a job offer after finishing my military service in the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces. My new chief told me that my tasks will be related to design of the new intercontinental passenger jet Il-86-300. The Il-86-300 was renamed soon into Il-96.
- July 1997. My dream is realized. After several hours delay due to problem in the PS-90 engines I am flying from San-Francisco to Moscow by the Il-96. I had a chance to visit cockpit during this flight and enjoy the northern lights above Szpicbergen.
- January 2002. Staying in Aerostar hotel I am going to the Khodynka, central airfield. Mercedes cars from near dealership are speeding on the runway. I exchanged several words with Valery Chkalov’s son who works as security at aviation museum here. Then I had a look through the fence to the Ilyushin design bureau experimental plant. Nobody were inside. Dust and spider webs are on the office windows.
- October 2003. I park my car at Spanish Banks, take laptop, start writing. Then I make a pause and look around. Beautiful view: strait, mountains, cargo ships on the roadstead, downtown’s skyscrapers line. The 727 takes off from Sea Island. It looks exactly like Tu-154. But I know what it is…

Ilyushin, Tupolev are not only names of the famous aircraft designers and their planes but the design bureaus, plants, engineering schools and people, who call themselves Ilyushinets and Tupolevets. There is no place for them in new post-communist reality. The state has the PIPELINE and needs nothing else. Mercedes is a car for president and the 787 will be a plane.

The life in Vancouver is relaxing. But such news brings light melancholy related to the past. And the question arises sometime. Why they in Russia can’t live quietly and with comfort like people in other industrialized countries?

May be my stories help to find the answer? Or they give the direction to find the reasons? Just in the seventies and eighties of the last century the people who rule the country today were formed.

I have doubts that somebody can explain what is happening. But in my narration I made attempts to motivate readers to think that way and pose same questions to myself. Who are we? What is our world vision? How was it formed? What are our life values and priorities? Can civil society be created by the people that were brought up under Communist Party rule? How much time and social troubles will be on the way to overcome all this political and economical infantilism?

Who knows? Maybe I have to go and drink a glass of vodka? Is it a way to have dawn and find the answers? No. I finished with drinking more than ten years ago. Therefore I will not go and will not drink but maybe will start to think if it is good idea to continue my story about winding road from socialistic Kuibyshev to capitalistic Samara and Vancouver.

Crabbing Season Opened and Missilemen 60

Delta looks beautiful in the beginning of summer:

This is the area of my crabbing:

During crab hunting I was thinking about finishing my story and, as a result, Missilemen 60

Demobilization was approaching inevitably. We started to pack our suitcases in the end of February 1976. And same time other guy started agitating me. This was division commanded deputy on politics. It looks like they were motivated some way to do this.

“Where do you plan to work after army service?” – he asks me.

“In the university”.

“How much they will pay you?”

“One hundred ten per month”.

“We will pay you two hundred fifty plus twenty rationed. The clothes is for free. We feed you in the battalion. Every year your family vacation trim travel fairs are paid even to Kamchatka. Do you see the difference?”

“Yes, I see”.

“Do they arrange apartment for you in the university?”

“No. May be in several years”.

“Here you will get new one same moment when sign contract. Stay with us”.

Strange. Now his reasons look very convincing. But in that time the youth idealism, pseudo-freedoms and civil friends were much more important in comparison with material values. Not many of two-year officers left for professional 25 year service. Even those, married, with their families didn’t buy all these military life temptations.

Finally, in the beginning of March all of us were commissioned from the Soviet Army and started our new civil lives.

Hovercraft on Spanish Banks and Missilemen 59

Time to start swimming season is very close. Today the air temperature is 22 Celsius and water 15. A little bit windy what help seagulls to hover in the air:

But not only gulls can be seen here today:

It’s a very impressive machine. And I continue my usual story. Missilemen 58

There were other people that take care on the problems of our future jobs. Once during quiet evening in the hostel Gena Schekov asked me sipping tea from a cup:

“Has Gena Kuzin badgered you?”

“Which way?”

“Recruiting. Kuzya is caught”.

“Really? This is a reason of his pensiveness”.

“Yes, this is true. It was difficult for me to refuse. I explained that my health is not perfect and I have some problems with my heart. May be after medical treatment”.

In couple of days Captain Kuzin invited me to his hut for conversation.

“You showed good yourself during army service. And you have good marks from your university” – Gena started with opened cards – “We need such people in KGB rows”.

I was prepared for this conversation.

“It’s my pleasure” – is my first reply – “but I do not fit your organization”.

“Why?” – Gena’s voice is raising – “I told you that that you fit!”

“I have relatives abroad. In enemy camp. In the USA”.

“A-a-a… Uh-h-h…” – Gena has no words – “Where?! Where?! In the United States?! You hid this?! Why I do not know this?!”

“It happened last fall. My sister married guy who has aunt in the USA”.

“Okay…” – Gena change tone – “I have to know her name, address, date and place of birth and her occupation. You have to write the report to my name on these subjects”.

“Yes, Sir!” – I promised.

I’ve never seen Gena after this. His interest to my persona disappeared. Thanks to Galina Antonovna, the citizen of the USA and resident of Monterey, California.

Victoria Day and Missilemen 58

Every week we celebrate something. This time it’s the birthday of Queen Victoria, state holiday, by the way, on Lulu Island. This is official start of summer season. And we celebrated it in this place:

The summer flowers, lupins, are in blossom:

And my story is very close to be finished. Missilemen 58

Our compulsory military service was going to its finish. The time to think about civil career stated. Many of two-year officers used a chance to become a member of Communist Party, being in the rows of the Soviet Army. In that time the career success depended on the fact of your party membership. It was not easy to enter Communist Party being engineer: even lines of those who would like to be a member existed. But every officer has to be a communist, and, as a result, the entrance line problem doesn’t exist in the Soviet Army.

“Have you written application?” – Kuzya asked me in one of those days.

“Why? Where? To whom?” – I do not understand him.

“To the party”.

“No. For what?”

“Are you fooling? There will be no such chance else”.

“You are fooling. Application to the shit. I am crazy about all these political training here. Hope to survive without all this stuff in the future”.

“Will see” – Kuzya sounded with some treat.

We never had conversation with Valerka on the subject after this. He started to behave a strange way, cut links with our team and didn’t discuss his plans for the near civil future. As it became clear later in that time he linked his life to the KGB and started to build his own career as the knight of cloak and dagger. I didn’t understand why his mother, very clever woman, professor, head of the chair in the university, supported him in this decision. After return to Kuibyshev, Kuzya worked several months in her university as a chair of the Young Communist League Committee for several months before going to Minsk into KGB school.

I made my decision too. It was a junior research worker position in the aircraft design chair at Kuibyshev Aviation Institute. I didn’t know all details of my future work but it was obvious that it will be interesting for me.

We continue our military life in Lebedin waiting demobilization order. There were many friends between local population including girls. One of them, Zoika Kolughnaya, was very helpful. She worked on the local telephone station and had possibility to connect me to telephone numbers everywhere in the Soviet Union. It was possible to have telephone conversations with my friends in other cities being inside battalion. Once Zoika connected me with Vovka Utking who served in 8K64 complex at Drovyanay, in Siberia.

“How you managed to find me here?” – Vovka was very surprised.

“I can. How are you doing?”

“Bad. There are only pebble hills, wind, frost and Nerchinsk vodka that is worse than hydrolyze alcohol. The frost is below forty and now snow disappeared because wind blues it away”.

Vovka told me that he plans to work in Moscow and added, joking, that plans to marry general’s daughter. It’s strange but all his plans became reality and in several years he moved to Moscow downtown and married Natalia, general’s daughter.

Tzu Chi Buddha’s Birthday, Russian Victory Day and Missilemen 57

May is a festive month. We continue celebrations:

Russia celebrates Victory Day paranoid way with military parade and hard drinking on the streets. I remember this day all my life. In the childhood all adults were world participants and the day wasn’t day off but usual working day. Later Brezhnev made it state holiday and the less participants stay alive the higher hysterics around this event rises. Now it looks like nothing left for national proud except this day of Hitler’s Germany capitulation in 1945. For me May 9 is memorial day when I call to my dad in Poltava and congratulate him and mom, real participants of this war. The colors of cherry blossom resemble the flowers of victory:

And I continue with Missilemen 57

We stop the first bus commuting by the Sumy-Lebedin highway and in twenty minutes was in the buffet of bus terminal in downtown center.

“Bottle of Mirgorod water” – Captain asks bartender.

“Maybe take something to get bite?” – I assume.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, but…”

“Then repeat after me”.

Captain fill the glass with approximately thirty milliliter of spirits, takes deep breath, bring the glass to his lips and with one gulp directed liquid inside. After five seconds of pause he starts to breathe out slowly pouring the glass with mineral water, makes two mouthfuls, finishes the breath out. Five seconds pause again during which Captain was listening what is happening inside and how process is going, the condition of gullet and esophagus. Only after this he makes the first breath, very carefully, protecting his bronchi and lungs from burn.

“Understood?” – He asks me and repeats the process in wording – “Breathe in, gulp, breathe out, water, breathe out, pause, and breathe in”.

I repeat his actions in accordance with proposed algorithm. Really, nothing terrible happens. Spirits was inside and pleasant warms started to penetrate from gullet and stomach, filling the whole body.

“You told me that autogiro can take off vertically” – the commander continues discussion of the subject we started on our way in the forest – “How it can be? As I know, the propeller is used as a wing and required airflow for lift creation?”

“Propeller has driving gears from marching engine and has to be rotated to maximum turns before taking off. They do it with angle of attack equal to zero, vehicle is braked, and power throttle is on the maximum too. Then they change the angle of attack to maximum rapidly and jump like grasshopper” – I explain – “Everything is very simple”.

“Yes, it’s interesting. Can you make the sketches?”

“Yes”

“Okay. I have note-book and pencil. But let’s drink more first”

“Okay”

I will never know how the day was finished. Next morning I found myself in my bed in the hostel with big yellow-green apple on the side. Where did I take it? But it was to the point and very tasty and sour helping me to cure terrible headache and bad taste in the mouth.

Buddha’s Birthday and Missilemen 56

“Hurray! Hurray! The first of May!” This is not for Lulu where the first of May is usual weekday without any signs of communist’s holiday. But the second of May is Buddha’s birthday and great celebration here this year. In the morning these 9 dragons washed Buddha:

The island is in blossom celebrating the events:

And I continue. Missilemen 56

9. Demobilization 76

Yes, time was flying fast and soon we obtained the “old-men” status. It was not real status like private solders have after one and half year of compulsory service. In general “old-man” term was not applicable to two-year officers even this service was compulsory for us. The “old-man” phenomenon that has place in modern Russian army was absent in Strategic Missile Forces in the middle of seventieth. And from where it could revealed if day and night two officers of every battery were together with battery solders on the permanent readiness service in the battalion.

But permanent readiness was not permanent all days. Every year we were in so called maintenance week when heavy duty services were doing on the battery equipment. In our department the major task of such maintenance was contact washing with pure alcohol. There were so many contacts that several liters of spirits had been ordered for this. Ordered doesn’t mean used. Only small amount of spirit was really going for the purpose. Half of this valuable liquid had been taken but battery commander; other was divided between officers of the department.

“Have you brought the flask” – the department commander asks me on our way to the start area.

“No, I do not need spirit” – I answer, understanding what is question about.

“Really?!” – Captain is surprised – “I think you do not know how to drink it. Okay, today I will teach you”.

On 3 pm he called me to my quiet apparatus room where I was studying English, doing writing drills.

“Return keys and let’s go” – he orders.

Throwing the key to battalion command shelter we took direction to the entrance check-point and after walking through electrical fence and mining company gate made turn to the small grove on the road side.

“I do not want to go through the battalion entrance check-point. The solder will report about us” – Captain explains.

“And how?”

“Will see soon”.

We reach the firs line of barbed wires. He steps on the third from the bottom line and pulls up the forth one.

“Squeeze through and make same for me”

I get through and repeat my boss actions. In a second he penetrates the fence too. We continue same way with other fences.

“Do you see these yellow thin wires? Be careful here. This is the “Crystal”, warning system. Do not tie it much”.

Soon we overcame four fences and found ourselves outside the military zone in the normal forest.

“We will not go by the road. Let’s take this path and come out to the Sumy highway after its intersection with the road to battalion”.

“Yes, of course” – I reply understanding well that we are not willing to meet somebody from regiment headquarters in their way to our battalion.

On the Lulu boundary and Missilemen 55

Nice sunny day. The river airfield is working:

I had a good nap on the slope not far from this place. Young curious snake waked me up:

After this I went hope to type the continuation. Missilemen 55

One day in September 1974 Kuzya addressed to me:

“Let’s go to Moscow? It’s becoming dull here”.

“Are you going to take part in the parade?” – I asked him back.

Our regiment was a parade regiment and two times on every year, once on the First of May and another one on the Seventh of November, representative of our military unit took part in the parade on the Red Square.

“Yes! Why not? It will be a good rest”.

“No, I will no survive all these drills” – was my negative reply.

But Kuzya managed to survive all these drills and three times visited Moscow on the parade occasion. He told us the stories about exercises on the Central Airfield and very good rest in nearest café Lira on Leningradsky Prospect.

“Have you seen Breghnev” – I asked him one day after his return from this trip.

“Yes, of course! And even drank for his health same moment when my truck passed the Mausoleum tribune I got my flask with cognac and made couple of swallows”.

Same fall Gena and his battery carried out the real missile launch in Kapustin Yar. I envied him because not all of us had the chance to push the Start button for real rocket launch. They traveled there by echelon taking the missile from their stock and all battery equipment including launch table.

“What bring for you back?” – asked Gena before this trip.

“Big spider” – I am joking.

“Okay” – Gena promised seriously.

And he kept his promise bringing back big spider in 3-liter glass container. It lived in the hostel with us all the winter. Cockroaches were his major food and we had no problem to catch these insects in battalion canteen. Sometime his menu was diversified by flies occasionally caught in our places of work and dwelling. One sunny day in spring we allowed our spider to walk outside his container in the empty lot not far from our hostel. The hens from the neighbor’s backyards were wandering here too digging the dust ground. One of them paid attention to our pet and started to sneaking up moving sideway and looking at us slyly.

“Take spider back!” – I tell Gena – “It gobbles him!”

“It’s not known who will gobble whom!” – Gena put a good face on.

Everything happened so fast that we had no chance to prevent the sad event. Hen mad powerful acceleration from its place and with one jump-flight attacked spider from the air. It swallowed it in two motions.

The time of our service was flying too in training and simple entertainments.

Nettle, Burdock, Russian Orthodox Easter and Missilemen 54

These plants are very important for my head hears and joints:

There is only one midow on the Lulu where you can find them. And I know the spot very well. Today is Orthodox Easter and the best place on the island to celebrate it is here:

Beautiful camellias make the event even better:

And I continue my story, Missilemen 54

Different accidences happened with Sergey often. He sheared a hostel room with Gena Schekov. One day in the morning I met Gena in the washing room. Gena made his eyes round as usually when he had something very exiting to tell you:

”Hi! Do you know what an oddly thing Serega made this night?”

“Of course not! What’s up?”

Gena told me the story with pleasure. It happened that Serega got drunk in the restaurant together with his Sevastopol friends last night. Approximately at 11 pm he came to the hostel and got into his bed there. In an hour he felt sick with his stomach, started to groan, waked up Gena, got up and went to the washroom. The sound of his puking there was heard well in the room. Then this stopped and silence returned back to the sleeping hostel. But through short period of time Gena heard that Serega’s loud swearing and the noise if somebody shook the metal bed with spring grid. The opponent voice was heard too. This stopped soon too but Serega didn’t return home. Gena was worried about this. He got up and went for the search. The washroom was empty. The hostel has a long central corridor with the washrooms at its ends. All dwelling rooms had similar doors and were equipped with the same kind of furniture. The sound of familiar snoring came from neighbor room and Gena opened the door there. He had seen Serega on one of the beds scattering above the blanket. Unknown man was sleeping on the other bed. Gena waked up Serega:

“Get up! Let’s go home!”

Serega recognized Gena and started to apology and complain:

“Sorry that I took your bed. Fucked somebody lies in my place. I can’t make him away! Let’s punch him in his muzzle!”

“Quiet! Quiet” – Gena tried to calm Serega – “Get up. I will show you your place”.

Somehow Gena managed to take Serega to his room.

But the most interesting thing happened this day later. When we arrived to our battalion it was announced that new regiment political commander in deputy takes his job and while his house is not ready yet he is dwelling in our hostel. Luckily this guy was not scandalous, I can say, even understanding one. This story had no continuation.

Hard drinking was usual and wide spread phenomenon in the life of the Soviet officers. However many of two year conscript officers avoided this and spent two years for self education and preparation for the future career. Volodya Nikolenko, for example, studied COBOL programming language. In those times it was not interesting for me. But just in several years I started to learn more complex PL/1. However this is another story. During these two years I studies English. I had very nice textbook with exercises that helped to increase my vocabulary and technical texts understanding. Several interesting Soviet issued books with original texts from American military magazines were available too. All this helped me later in my future civil life and career.