Having grown up in Northeast,a fairly wild community in Kansas City in the 60's, I can say that I have always had a healthy appreciation of the police. We were in a community where neighbors knew neighbors and if you were being a pain,someone would tell you to stop it. If you continued on in the community,odds are pretty good that the cops,who knew you,would give you a talking to. I became friends with a few of the cops; in fact I am still friends with some of them 35 years later. The lesson was to avoid jail and I can safely say I have never been in jail. In fact I was a probation officer and case worker,working at the Municipal Correctional Institution in Kansas City and later as a probation officer in Fremont Nebraska.
Today I was talking to someone and they asked me if I had ever been arrested. I replied "Never,but almost" and then I got to thinking I should document my 'near misses'at arrests or death.
In 1982 the US Department of Agriculture asked me to go to Caracas Venezuela to give a speech on eggs,which is my speciality. So off I flew to Caracas,a major trip. When I arrived the US Embassy took me to a meeting where the majority of the local egg industry was at They had translaters who did instant translations via small radios in your ear. Since I didn't speak Spanish I was quite pleased to hear the Venezuela egg people saying things like "We welcome our American colleague" and I was clapping heartily; unbeknowst to me they were actually saying "The blood of the Americans will be in the streets of Caracas before 1 egg will be imported into Venezula". I later learned that every speaker didn't miss an opportunity to wish bad towards me; they were very anti-American. I got up and gave my speech which was "We are the cheapest producers n the world and eventually the US will be supplying eggs to you all" which was a young man's folly,since I didn't understand how goverments prevent free trade. Anyway,after the glares had receded I went back to my room and was asleep when the phone rang and it was the Embassy staff: they had received a death threat against me by the Red Squad,a communist terrorist group who thought I was CIA. They told me to be dressed in 30 minutes; up pulled a staff car accompanied with guys with guns and off I drove to the airport where they put me on a Learjet and off I flew to the safety of Mexico City but enroute they announced that we were low on fuel and were stopping at Panama City. Here is the announcement of the pilot "Well,we're going to stop at Panama City for fuel. They are shooting on the runway right now so I suggest all of you get on the floor,pray,and we'll stay only as long as it takes to fuel up"...I was praying to the God that doesn't take a 33 year old father of 2 small kids for trying to sell eggs in S. America. I was envisioning my kids saying "My dad got killed selling eggs" when questioned as to my absence.
We took off again,with bullets flying and soon we were in the relative safety of Mexico City and I happily checked into a hotel,slept like the dead. The next day I got on a plane and flew to Tucson. When I landed they asked me if I had anything to declare I showed them a small bag of dried egg white powder I had been given to test by the only egg drier in Venezuala. The next thing I knew I was in a room nude with a guy looking up my ass for additional drugs...after they tested the egg whites they seized it and released me. I went home a wiser man,realizing that I had just had one of those peak experiences that only happen a few times in life.
In 1989 I had become aware of the plight of Soviet Jews. These were people who had worked in technical jobs--every Russian I ever met seemed to be an engineer. When they realized that the Soviet Union was a bad place for raising their families due to the overt religious oppression,they applied to move to Israel or the US. Immediately they would be fired and many of them were refused exit visas,citing that they knew state secrets. It was so strange to me that I immediately had to know everything and got involved. I was given the names of a few people who were high profile cases in Kiev and Moscow. Since I was going there,I decided to go also to Warsaw Poland and Praque Czechoslavakia. I took along a dear friend who was also my Rabbi,Maynard Bell and off we flew. I was naive. The old USA 'we can fix thing' mentality was there. We flew first to Warsaw Poland. Going to the death camps,like Auschwitz,makes you realize how fragile life is and how we must stand up for freedom. I could smell death there in the dirt,filled with the ashes of humans who were killed because they were Jews,Gypsys,gays,or disabled or old or young. It humbled me. When we got to Kiev I met a most interesting man and his family,Mark Kotler. He had worked for the Radio Industry and had been waiting 10 years to get out of Kiev. Unable to work,he hustled a life for himself and made a concious decision to speak English at home,watching US videos,and get prepared for the US. We met him at our hotel and video taped his plea for freedom; realizing we were being bugged by the KGB. This brave young man read his statement and I realized he would be my brother forever and he is. Later,Senator DeConcini of Arizona,where I lived,invited him to speak in Finland at a Human Rights Commission meeting and the govt,knowing they had his wife and son captive,let him go. A deal was made and let's just say a bribe was done appropriately where they looked the other way and his wife and son left and the family is now quite successful living in Chino California. When we left Kiev we went to the airport and asked for a flight. They put us in a room. The next thing we knew we were in a private room and approximatey 2 hours later they took us by private car out to the end of the runway; they had stopped an Illushkin jet,the size of a 757,and we were paying $10 to fly to Moscow. We walked up the steps of this giant plane,realizing that it was something weird that they would do this and when we got up to the seats we realized there were 350 Soviets watching us with curiousity. I started wondering who was KGB on this plane but I couldn't tell. I drank my apple juice and munched on the sausage they gave us and realized this was another moment I should remember. When we landed in Moscow they put us off the plane in front of the rest of the group. When we got out of the terminal,we got in a cab and showed the name of the hotel we were going to. From then on,we always saw men in dark hats following us. Our hote was owned by a Finnish company and they gave us a room which was sort of western. We were starving and they told us that there was no food but after we bribed them with cigarettes (Marlboros) they gave us the tail of a sturgeon and ice cream and Coke. We went to bed and shortly thereafter a knock on the door occurred. A beautiful blonde woman was there and she said in fairly good English "Are you lonely? I am here for you." I quickly realized she was a hooker and I didn't want one...but I felt sorry for her so I gave her $10 and told her to go home to her family. I couldn't sleep so I went downstairs and played slot machines in the only casino in Moscow. I put $3 in a machine and it gave me 3 sevens and I won $500....the only problem was that the hotel didn't have $500 US in cash. They assured me that they would give me the money the next day and indeed they did. I met a most interesting guy. He lived under the slot machines and if a coin was dropped he caught it before it hit the ground. I asked him what he was doing and he explained he was a compulsive gambler and the only way he could gamble was to catch coins from drunk foreigners so he could gamble. It was an absolutely amazing story that still sticks in my head.
The next 3 days Rabbi Bell and I visited refuseniks. We taped people who had been held captive for 10 years or more and some had been driven crazy by the experience. We passed out money,held hands with people who needed to be assured life would work out. But the most interesting experience was outrunning the KGB. We had decided to help the people set up a network where they could email out information about people who needed medicine or help. The current system required that information would be sent out physically on the body of tourists who would take the info out but it took too long. When we went to visit a most tragic family,we noticed we were being followed by men in black hats again. So we got on a train and when it got to the next stop,we jumped off at the last moment and jumped on another train. We did this numerous times. We then flagged down a taxi and took it to the house of a family who had little but they fed us and I learned that those who are like that are amazing--they fed us what little they had. But the best was yet to come; we fixed the communication problem almost immediately with an American Express card. We went to the Alphagraphics which had just started on Gorky Street and I went in and with my best American drawl opened an account to allow my "Russian office' to fax using their direct line and charge it to me. They had KGB in their office but they were so desperate to make a profit they 'overlooked' that we were violating the law and they did it for several months until we got some laptop computers smuggled in and set up the network we envisioned and it worked. Now we can tell the story but I now realize we would have been arrested if they had caught us in 1989.
We visited a man in Prague who was doing similiar things to help Jews in Czechoslovakia. We gave him some money to help his project. Mysteriously he died in an accident two weeks later. It could have been us.
In 1993 my wife Yoly and I drove all over Mexico. When we were in Michocan they told us that the bridge was closed,due to a political fight between the governors of the 2 states but since we were in a 4 wheel drive Toyota we could go through the River. So off we drove and excitedly a man waved us to go higher on the river so we did. We learned that the people had dug a hole which was capturing trucks in it but the locals didn't want a gringo to drown his truck. Then we drove through bananna fields where we saw young men with machine guns amazed to see a truck since the bridge had been closed for 4 days. I fell asleep in the truck and Yoly was driving. Approximately 2 hours later a truck was parked across the highway and men with guns ordered us to stop. Yoly spoke to them in Spanish and they demanded that I get out of the car. Yoly told me in English not to,because they might be bandits and they would kill me. Eventually the boss came and explained they were special police looking for guns and drugs. When they realized my wife was from Veracruz they offered us beer and everything was fine but it could have been bandits or I could have been shot by accident.
I have never been in jail or shot. I have been shot at but my life has never been boring. The life of a Northeast boy who became an eggman has been fulfilling so far and who knows---I still could get arrested or shot at again.
