I Remember Minsk

A volcano in Iceland creates an ash cloud which cancels jet travel between the U.S. and Europe. A plane crashes in Russia killing the President of Poland and 92 other people. Residents in our retirement community have something to talk about besides how many doctors’ appointments we each have next week.

Old people, including me, have memory problems. Sometimes memory may be accurate but the conclusion based on it may be faulty.

As we sat around the table after lunch I told about the bus trip I took from Moscow and Warsaw. Until I looked at the newspaper map of the plane crash, I forgot that between Russia and Poland lies the nation of Belarus, with its capital at Minsk.

Yes, I remember Minsk. The city was 90% destroyed during World War II. Rebuilt when Belarus was part of the Soviet Union, it is a dull, industrial town with not much to see or do.

To eat breakfast and dinner at the Minsk hotel I had to take the elevator down from my upper story room to the first floor lobby, with its high ceiling, and then climb a long, curving stairway to the dining room. When I complained that the elevator did not stop at the second floor, the desk clerk dismissed me, saying, “The elevator never has stopped at the dining room.” To him the problem was not with the hotel but with us indulged Americans who pampered ourselves with our arthritic knees.

When Lee Harvey Oswald showed up in Moscow with delusions of being an important man in the Communist regime, the Russians sent him to Minsk to get him out of the way. I mentioned this at lunch. The sweet little old lady, sitting across from me at the table, asked in a whispery voice, “Do you think Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy?”

“No doubt about it,” I said. “He was a nut.”

(Any one interested in the assassination should go to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. It lays out the facts and let’s you look out the window. John said, “My God! I could have shot him from here.” However, no exhibit can adequately portray how completely delusional Oswald was. I recommend Hugh Aynesworth’s book.)

I said, “Do you think someone took the rifle from him, said, ‘Let me do it’ and then handed the rifle back to him?”

“I still think he had help,” said M., who is 86 years old and otherwise an extremely sharp lady.

She also wonders if the volcanic eruptions in Iceland foretell the end of the World.