So many
things happened on that trip in 1985! I never thought that Mimi would remember
much. Yet she remembers in great detail certain things that I never thought she
would have even noticed. They had made such an impact on my little girl. She
never traveled back again as an adult. Relatives from generations prior to mine
are long gone except one maternal aunt.
Aside from
the long flight, throwing up from motion sickness, missing the connecting flight
in New York, doing without our luggage which flew ahead of us, and being
threatened with jail time if she did not stop rattling a metal fence that
irritated a Kalashnikov-carrying guard at the airport, the communist “adventures”
kept stacking up.
A very
musical child early on, my daughter was in love with Michael Jackson’s latest
album, Thriller. She played his music every night on her Sony Walkman
until the batteries drained. Disaster was looming.
Batteries
were hard to find just like everything else in the communist economy, but my
dad and cousin Mircea went on a day-long hunt on the black market at Obor,
where people sold second-hand clothing and things obtained beyond the vigilant
eyes of the economic police.
Nobody in
the poor and starving proletariat was allowed to have more food or personal possessions
than everyone else had, hence the strict laws in place against black market
purchases. People did it anyway and bribed the local police to stay away.
My cousin
Mircea and dad were remarkably close, they played chess together for hours on
end and would do errands to expedite transportation. Mircea was the only person
in the entire family on dad’s side of the family who owned a used and beat up Dacia
car which he had to frequently repair himself.
The duo
returned six hours later victorious with two Romanian production batteries
which lasted about two hours of play before the acid leeched inside the Walkman
and ruined it. My child’s tears could have drowned the entire neighborhood.
Every day we
went on a driving hunt with Cousin Mircea to find a place that would feed us
because dad had no food in his pantry at all; everyone in families on both
sides struggled to feed their own children and spouses, did not have enough
food to feed me and my daughter.
In 1985, the
dear leader had passed more laws and decrees, specifically outlining how many
calories each person was allowed to consume daily, and they had issued rationing
cards to reflect the purchase of just enough food to keep that person alive in
his/her category of calories permitted. The socialist man had to sacrifice for
the good of the collective while the elites in the Communist Party were fat,
happy, obscenely rich, and wasteful. The caloric decisions were made for everyone
based on the type of job a person had.
The one place
we found that could feed us daily for a high price, of course, was a restaurant
at Lake Snagov. The cozy open terrace by the lake had good fresh food and Pepsi
Cola, my dad’s favorite. The place also had an outdoor pool encircled with wooden
walls and a wood bottom. I found the choice of materials curious at first but
glad of its existence.
The lake was
saturated with waterlilies’ roots which had drowned many would-be swimmers by
entangling their legs into the vines and dragging them under the water.
Mimi
remembers with fondness swimming with her grandfather in that wooden pool, a rare
treat for people like my proletarian dad who would have never been allowed in
the area had we not been carrying American passports.
Close to the
restaurant was the club built for Ceausescu’s family and cronies with a Versailles-like Garden with a myriad of paths adorned with marble statues and
iron benches near manicured bushes and beautiful flower beds, artificial lakes,
artesian fountains, and intricate gazebos. It was a dream world that the
proletariat was never allowed to enter.
Behind
hedges and trees were buildings with a cinema, a bowling alley with its own
café in a glass conservatory filled with palm trees and tropical plants. There
was a banquet hall, a ball room, bars, and comfortable chairs for the elite
communists who visited their opulent club daily, a short, chauffeured drive
from Bucharest. Unseen guards appeared out of nowhere if anybody tried to get
too close to the dear leader’s and his henchmen’s playgrounds.
Mimi
remembers wading her feet in the large fountain downtown Ploiesti on the
hottest day of our trip and the scary policeman who appeared from the tunnels
under the building across, threatening us with jail if she did not get out
immediately. Who would put a four-year old little girl in jail for having fun
like millions of other kids around the world when they find a fountain, a
puddle, a creek, or a pond? The answer is simple, a heartless, evil communist.
As American
citizens, there were places where we were not allowed to enter. It drove my
husband mad on previous trips because he could not go inside certain buildings.
But we could shop in the very rare luxury stores set up for foreigners and for
the communist elites where goods were priced in dollars, not lei. First of all,
it was illegal for the masses to hold foreign currency, it was punishable by
hard prison time. Secondly, the poor proletariat had to shop in their stores
with empty shelves; they stood in endless lines, large wads of cash in their pockets,
in hope that some food would be delivered eventually.
Mimi
remembers her maternal great-grandmother, Elena Ilie, pumping water out of the
ground in the yard, to cook our lunch; having no tub to take a bath in the
country: going to the outhouse in the back of the farmhouse; and not having
running water. So many things that people take for granted today were missing under
the communist rule. As a child, Mimi thought it was fun to pump cold artesian water
out of the ground and get wet and muddy while doing it.
Mimi remembers
her grandfather frying chicken in a pan in heavy rapeseed oil which was an
unpleasant looking dark yellow; the chicken was swimming in the heavy grease
which it had absorbed. Dad did not have paper towels, nor napkins to soak the
excess oil, it was a luxury only found in the homes of the party elites. As a
southern girl through and through, Mimi loved fried chicken, but she barely
nibbled on dad’s cooking and his French fries.
Mircea drove
us to the Black Sea in his Dacia that had seen better days, a treat for my dad
who went on vacation twice in his life. Unfortunately, due to the restrictive
communist laws, even though we were close relatives, because my daughter and I
held American passports, we were not allowed to stay in the same hotel as my
dad and my cousin. My daughter and I had better rooms in a special hotel
reserved for foreigners, for double the price, while dad and Mircea stayed in accommodations
reserved for Romanian citizens. It was so upsetting for Mimi and for us that we
were not allowed to stay together! We had come a long way to spend six weeks with
him and the long arm of communist control was still keeping us apart.
We did not
know at the time, but this was the first and the last time my dad was going to
see his oldest granddaughter and the last time we would see him.
For seven years
we had tried to get a passport and a visa for dad to come to the U.S. to visit
or stay with us, but he was always declined. Four years later, in 1989, dad
passed away after another severe beating he received at work from the evil goons
on the Communist Party payroll. He was 61 years old and in good health – he
never took any pills. He should have been left in peace to live happily in his
retirement. But his distaste and hatred for communism ended his life.
This is another excellent article! The closing paragraph saddened me. Your father stood his ground proudly. The “evil goons” faced God's judgement. I linked this article on my Facebook page, hoping that folks read it.
ReplyDeleteThank you, M. Fearghail!
DeleteFrom A. J. Cameron:
ReplyDeleteIleana,
It is amazing how much children retain. I'm consistently amazed at what the children remember and ask about when I attend the weekly Rosary and dinner with any number of families that attend.
I doubt most U. S. citizens could relate to your experiences. If I weren't an ENFP (Myers-Briggs personality), I wonder if I could relate to your experiences.
It is difficult to lose a parent, but your dad stood against tyranny, for which he should be admired and loved.
Thank you, A. J., dad was a good and honest man who hated communism.
Delete