Category: 1980s

1980s

DOOR TO THE OLD WORLD, OPENED

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In late summer 1972, my Grandfather Michael passed away and he left it to me to find a letter written in the Lithuanian language hidden among his effects.  In an earlier post, I described how I found it and secreted it away hoping that it was a link to another part of Europe, locked away behind the Iron Curtain at the time.

I first learned the contents when my roommate Saulius Peter Valiunas at Tufts University, bilingual in English and Lithuanian, read me the letter some 6 years later.  It was written by my Grandfather’s niece, Eugenija, (Dad’s cousin) who was writing him cold and out of the blue.  It was a perfect introduction to the lost family.

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1980s

YES DEPOSIT AND YES RETURN

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No matter the routine, things could get crazy.  Fast.

Lunch with Bernard Olcott at Olcott International in 1983 followed a familiar routine.  At around maybe 11:45 AM, after a few hunger pangs had already hit me pretty hard, I would head up to the top floor, the level that actually connected to the street, and ask if he was ready to grab some lunch.  He would typically wave me off for another 10 to 15 minutes while he finished up some correspondence.  Finally, he would call me back upstairs.   We would then spend another 10 to 15 minutes looking for a pack-of-cards sized contraption holding perhaps 50 keys for the car, the house, the office, the boat, and God knew what else.  Oddly they were never in the same place twice.  And if not retrieved, well, that would have been the end of the world, as we knew it.

The next part of the routine would be to drive over to the Shop Rite supermarket on JFK Boulevard in Union City, New Jersey.  This was located in a bustling area with a huge parking lot in front.  However, it was only sensibly approachable from the southbound lane.  This presented an engineering problem to Dad, the kind he loved to solve.

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