Episode 10: A Little Bit Country
One of the first songs I head in America was I Beg Your Pardon, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. And just as Karen Carpenter’s singing was different from anything I’d heard before, the style of music this song belonged to was new to me.
Country music, especially the way it was done in the 1970s by Dolly Parton, Glenn Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Johnny Cash, Barbara Mandrell, and other Country greats, is unique. Songs that told stories of universal human experiences were delivered with deceptively simple words and haunting, catchy melodies by voices that resonated with the truth of emotion. Living in Louisville, KY, for the first couple of years after immigrating to the U.S., this was my first experience with American music. I would, eventually, listen to many other music genres, and I must admit that Country is not my favorite, but it was a fitting introduction.
We arrived in Louisville, KY on August 26, 1976. I don’t remember much about the actual flight from New York to Kentucky, nor do I really remember much about the flight from Rome to New York. I’m sure that there were crying children, and I do remember lots of people smoking, which was permitted at the time, on both flights. I was used to cigarette smoke, as both of my parents were smokers, so I didn’t think much of that, though. There are a couple of details that stick in my mind upon landing at JFK in New York. One was the size of the cars in the parking lot, which we saw as we made our way to a hotel to spend the night before our morning flight to Louisville. I mention this in an earlier episode.
Another memory I have is of waiting for our luggage to come off the carousel at JFK. We had a total of eight suitcases, mostly packed with clothes, but also with a few other things. My mother had packed the woolen “pled,” which I think is probably Russian for plaid. This was a woolen blanked in a plaid design of various colors, which had been left to her by her grandmother, who had passed away a couple years before. There were also some pieces of crystal, vases, serving dishes, etc., that were considered very valuable in the Soviet Union. My parents brought those to sell if we needed the money, not realizing that such pieces were plentiful and cheap in the U.S.
The baggage carousel was slow and bags came off in inconsistent clumps. One or two pieces of ours arrived, and we were waiting for the rest. My brother, six years old at the time, was pretty tuckered out from the trip and fell asleep on one of the bags. I was awake and looking around, my mother hovering protectively over me and my brother, as my dad waited for the rest of our bags. At one point, my father came back to us with a few additional adults in tow, one of them carrying a large, professional-looking camera. These people, he explained to us, were gathering first-hand accounts from Soviet refugees and taking photos for a book they were working on, and wanted to know if my family wanted to participate. Strangely enough, my parents said yes. My father had just enough high school English to communicate in a limited way, so he spoke for the rest of the family. They took several pictures, including one of my brother asleep on the suitcase, and left. Those pictures did make into a book, and we received a copy.
The last memory I have of our arrival at JFK has to do with food. Not knowing whether we would be able to get any sort of food outside the airport, my parents took my brother and me to one of the places in the JFK food court. I got a piece of apple pie and a cup of hot chocolate, not exactly nutritionally sound fare, but I think my mom was probably too tired to argue with me, and besides, none of us knew anything about how the food court worked or about any of the food offered at the many restaurant fronts there. So, apple pie and hot chocolate it was! There are no words to describe my reaction to these. Nothing I’d ever eaten before had tasted that good! The hot chocolate was probably from a mix, but it was sweet, and rich, and it had a swirl of whipped cream floating on top. I had drunk sweet drinks before — tea with sugar or honey, Russian kvass (a fizzy cola-type drink made from fermented barley), Soviet-style lemonade which was carbonated and didn’t bare any resemblance to American lemonade, kefir (a type of drinkable yogurt), compote made with apples or other fruit, and kissel (a thick, sour drink also made from fruit) — but nothing, absolutely nothing in the world compared with this. Like drinkable candy, it was a life-altering experience.
The apple pie was a revelation in its own way. Again, I had eaten plenty of sweet things as a child — candy, chocolate, my mother’s amazing Danish-style and fruit pastries and unrivaled poppy seed rollups, ice cream, my aunts’ boozy cakes and pastries, and Napoleon, the quintessential torte of light-as-air pastry layered with rich cream and considered in my family the pinnacle of refined desserts. But somehow, all these paled in comparison with the simple pie crust and apple filling. I have no explanation for why these two simple things seemed so incredible to me at the time. Maybe it was the long flight. Maybe it was the stress and uncertainty of our situation. Maybe it was just the novelty. Whatever the reason, my first meal in the U.S. remains in my memories as something of a wonder.
The next afternoon, we deplaned in Louisville and walked though the jetway into the airport. We were immediately met by Frankie, our local HIAS agent, who would help get our luggage and take us to our new apartment. I didn’t understand a word Frankie said, but it was obvious she was here to help, and her smiling, round face, and bubbling speech made me feel welcome and safe. And then we were outside.
It was like walking into a wall of invisible steam. I was suddenly covered in sweat and unable to breathe. This was no simple summer warmth. It had been hot in Ostia and in Rome. This was different. This heat enveloped, threatened to smother. This heat made it hard to see and even harder to move. It stunned. I thought about the meeting in Rome, where my parents had requested to sent somewhere with seasons, somewhere northern. I was pretty sure this wasn’t it. Louisville may have looked north of many other places on a map, but it was a lie!
Frankie, seemingly oblivious to the heat, lead us to her car, and we piled in. She drove us to the outskirts of the city, to a small apartment complex of two-story, brick buildings, and we took the stairs to our first home in the U.S.
While my parents unpacked and looked around, Frankie left. She came back about twenty minutes later, carrying a white paper bucket with red stripes and the picture of an old man with a white beard. The most amazing smell was coming from that bucket! In this way, I was treated to my second meal in the U.S., a bucket of fried chicken from KFC, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, as it was still known then. This stuff was incredible! Russians don’t do deep frying. The chicken I had eaten up until that moment had been boiled or roasted. This chicken was on a whole other level. Crunchy, salty, greasy, and absolutely delicious. OK, so it was hot outside. August in Louisville is no joke. But we had a place to live, and my dad would get a job, and there was fried chicken! We would be ok.
