Boris

by Brent Olson

Publication Date  9-23-99

     We have an odd looking wooden structure on the south side of our
garage.  Guests will sometimes ask what it is.

     "A grape arbor," I'll say.

     "I've never seen one quite like that," some of them say.

     "Well,"  I say, " it was built for us by a Russian physicist who
was sorry he wrecked our car."

      It's funny, but even with an explanation as complete as that, some
people are still curious.  I'm tired of telling the story, so pay attention.

     A few years ago we were contacted to see if we were willing to take
part in a farmer exchange program.  The deal was that farmers from the former Soviet Union would come here, live and work with farmers  for about six weeks and then go back to their homes able to share a few tips about the way we do things.  I'm kind of a sucker, so I said, "Why not?"

     Why not, indeed.  Well, one reason why not was that the people who
came weren't really farmers.  They were simply people with good enough connections to get into the program.  None of the people who we met were actual farmers and the one who stayed with us was a physicist who had been at St. Petersburg University and came to the United States to build up business connections.  He knew absolutely nothing about farming and
wasn't sure that being stuck on a pig farm in western Minnesota was the
road to riches, but he was a good worker and we all got along very well.

     He didn't have a driver's license, at least not an American one,
but he said his Russian license was good enough, so every now and then he would borrow our car to pick up a couple of his Russian buddies who lived more or less in this area. They'd go hang out and do whatever it is that Russians do when they're alone, and then Boris would come home late at night, cheerful and ready to spend the next day mucking about in our hog barns.

     One night Boris and his buddies were bombing down the road when a
deer ran across in front of them.  He swerved and just missed hitting it.  They were
still discussing their good fortune when they blew through a stop sign, went into the ditch, mowed down a hedge, and crashed into a tree in someone's back yard.

     Here is the part that always makes me wince.  This happened at
about 11:00 p.m..  I've always wondered what the people in the house thought.   Here they were, just getting ready for bed, when from their back yard comes this horrendous noise, revving engines, a loud crash, silence, and  finally three voices speaking in Russian.

     Boris is the one who knocked on the door.   If we lived in Texas,
New York, or some other slightly less relaxed place, he probably would have been shot.

     He called me and told me what had happened.   I drove over  and
found that they were all okay, except for cuts and bruises.  The hedge looked bad, the tree would survive, but our car was a wreck, complete with a Russian head sized bulge in the windshield.

     It was a couple of days later that he started building the grape
arbor.  It evidently is patterned after ones he'd seen in Siberia.  I don't know about that, but I'm pretty sure it's the only one like it in Big Stone County.

copyright 1999 Brent Olson

Several of Brent Olson's essays on life in the Midwest are collected in his new book: The Lay of the Land; A View from the Prairie, published by J&L lee Co., PO Box 5575, Lincoln NE 68505. ( 888-665-0999).

He enjoys feedback, and if the sows aren't farrowing or the beans don't need to be sprayed he may even respond. He can be reached at: bolson@infolink.morris.mn.us

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