Flying Oakland to Burbank meant saving a couple hundred bucks. So headquarters could spring for a cab, instead of the Muni/BART/shuttle journey. A Georgian — not the Atlanta kind — arrived to haul me across the Bay.
The firm I invariably call features a cadre of characters. Leading ethnic origins seem broken down comparably among San Francisco hacks: émigrés from Middle East/Mediterranean; from former Soviet Republics; and from small nations in West Africa which managed to shed shackles of French colonialism.
A Lagos-born driver tipped me to “High Life” music; during a ride with a Jordanian, I found out where to procure the city’s finest falafel; an Irishman maintained that “brogue” is a pejorative term. You can learn a lot in the back seat.
When a Moroccan, Tunisian, or Algerian is at the wheel, my fractured French inevitably makes its incompetent appearance. Snoozed through five years of classes, after all, and the resultant curious patois gets over in Montreal, if not Paris.
What I enjoy most is detecting accents retaining remnants of the dissolved USSR.
Though I’m half Russian (Belarussian, technically, now), my native vocabulary comprises about five inane phrases, bastardized versions of “Hey, how ya doin’?” “Cheers!” “Okay,” “See you later,” and “Thanks.”
That ragged repertoire is usually sufficient to impress countrymen, following which we compare (in English) genealogies.
A surprising number are not from the Big Boy — Russia — but, rather, Ukraine, Estonia, or my maternal grandparents’ turf, Belarus. I’ve even met a couple of legitimate homeboys: folks who fled the same town (Minsk) as my grandfather, though not because any czar put a price on their heads.
Compatriots are dazzled by any half-baked political references to our divorced Socialist Republic, or its blustery, semi-demented leader. They speak of an economy in ruins, virtual anarchy, sorry plights of relatives left behind.
In due time, we assure one another things will improve, agreeing the break-up overall was a positive development, despite this unstable period of marauding Mafia madmen, of hideous deprivation.
Afterward, talk often turns to bread and soup.
“When I was a small boy,” I might mention, “my grandmother would make pots of borscht, and bake loaves of pumpernickel bread.”
“Winter or summer borscht?” one driver asked (winter, heated, usually includes meat stock, while summer, chilled, relies mostly on boiled beets).
“Both.”
“And it was served how?”
“Big squeeze of lemon, chunky salt, almost like rock-salt, plus a spoonful of sour cream.”
He sighed, then inquired about the bread.
“Round loaves, slashed on top, nearly black, shiny. Thick, chewy crust, but tender inside. Even dark rye is very weak by comparison.”
He stared ahead, and I suspected he was recollecting his own childhood meals. I broke the silence.
“Where can I find that in San Francisco?”
“Not possible. What is cooked at home is best.”
“Naturally, but does anyplace you know come close?”
He named two or three obscure outlets in the Richmond District, delivering a shrug, preeminent among patented Slavic gestures. “No reason to waste time searching for what you had as a youth. You will not be given the same again.”
“That’s a disappointment.”
“Perhaps. But remember, there are those who never tasted it, even once.”
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