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.
Tags: Missilemen
