Wings Over Buffalo

By Charles Ribakoff

Note from Charles: Many of my friends (and some not for the first time) thought it was a little over the top, if not flat frigging nuts, when I went to Buffalo for the night for the last show on the Springsteen tour. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. This is, more or less, the truth.

While a bad idea is an orphan, a good idea always has many proud parents. But this good idea could only come from my friend, Crazy Harry. Crazy Harry is the most rabid Springsteen fan I know, and my money’s on him for All World.

This rock fan stuff can take you towards the obsessive, and on through to the other side. Nick Hornby just wrote a terrifically funny novel, Juliet Naked, about Duncan, a depressed middle aged man living in the north of England who has devoted himself to the brief and obscure career of Tucker Crowe. Tucker, whose publicity was such as posters proclaiming “Cohen x Dylan x Simon= Crowe”), made a few cult records in the 70s, and then pretty much disappeared after a disasterous affair (with a woman named Juliet, naturally).

Duncan travels from England to a bar in Minneapolis to visit the urinal where Crowe, it is said, decided to give it all up. He goes to LA to stand outside the house where, it is thought, Juliet now lives, 30+ years later. He posts wildly on a message board, where fellow Crowe fanatics post their ‘discoveries’ daily, even though no one has seen Crowe in more than 20 years.

Of course, everything the Crowologists know is wrong, and real life is real different out there in Tuckerland.

It helped me to have a well developed sense of self-irony while reading this book. But I digress.

As Springsteen fans go, I would like to think I’m above average. I’ve been to maybe 30 shows since 1974, have all the records, even the fiddle and banjo crap one (in multiple formats, of course), know most of the words to all the songs. I can tell you when Mad Dog Lopez, the original drummer, was replaced by Mad Max Weinberg. I know when that change was made uptown, and The Big Man joined the band. I know that Born in the USA was originally a downbeat acoustic song, recorded during the Nebraska sessions, when it seemed Bruce had locked himself in his house all winter, thrown away the antidepressants, and sat with his dog by the fireplace recording sad songs until the dog got bored and died (ok, I made up the dog part). In short, I am a garden variety Spingsteen fan.

Crazy Harry, on the other hand, is as much of an overachiever at Springsteen fandom as he is at pretty much everything else. He can tell you the set list from the Hammersmith Odeon show in London in 1975, or from that show in Chicago in 1982 when the electricity went off. He claims to have once blown off a final exam in Philadelphia to drive all night to see the opening night of the Tunnel of Love tour in Worcester (ok, I was at that show, too, but I simply had to roll down from my office, where, in those days, I had a pull out couch). Harry doesn’t know how many Springtseen shows he’s been to – he doesn’t think 200, but would bet strong on the over on 150. In short, you don’t mess around with Springsteen facts with him.

So we were talking one night last summer about the current Springsteen tour, which had been going on for nearly 2 years, more than 150 shows in 11 countries. We noted that Danny Federici in the band had died last July, that Clarence Clemmons has had more knee and hip replacements than wives (he admits to 5 of those) and can hardly walk, that Mad Max has been banging drums for so long he can hardly hold the sticks. They’ve been doing this as a band for more than 35 people years, and a rock and roll year, like a dog year or a car dealer year, is far more than just a people year.

You didn’t have to be Crazy Harry to process this information and figure out – Holy Stratocasters, Batman – that this could be the last tour. The tour was to end in Buffalo (where, we later learned, their first tour had ended) on November 22. It was clear to Harry that he had to be there, and I had to go with him. It does not occur to either of us that we have both thought the same thing at the end of every tour for maybe the last 13 years.

Now, unlike Duncan (remember Duncan?) we have real lives and families and careers and stuff. To shuffle off to Buffalo for a night to hear a concert is so…well… so 1980s. Further, Crazy Harry had a small family complication – it was his daughter’s 4th birthday. As for me, I’ve spent enough time away on allegedly business related things lately that I’ve nearly taken to wearing one of those smiley faced name badges that say, “Hello. My name is Daddy,” when I see my kids. Clearly, this has to be a strategic, stealth mission – in and out before we are missed.

Which leads to the private airplane thing. Private planes are crazy, illogical, and have no economic justification. So Crazy Harry does the only possible logical thing. He charters one. Quickly, this is turning into Ferris Bueller’s night out.

(Note to varioius creditors and ex-wives: I am only a guest on this excursion.
He charters a cute little King Air, as it half the price of a Lear (which is only about ten times the GNP of many African nations, combined.

Now, one deserves Life to give one a good, solid smack in the face when one gets the hubris to criticize anyone’s private plane. It is a given that the worst seat on the worst private plane is better than the best seat on any other plane. But, still:

The King Air has cute little propellers that, like the wheels on the bus, go round and round. It has seats that would comfortably seat almost any midget, with headroom to match. It is, as they would say, mission perfect for this trip. Ask any double amputee. But they rarely crash and burn, and ours will get us to Buffalo, the Promised Land.

We arrive at Logan in time to see the late Sen. Kennedy’s dogs get off their plane for their van to Hyannis (I swear I’m not making this up; bet you didn’t know that one of Sen. Kennedy’s dogs is the father of the Obama kids’ dog. More than you want to know? Me, too). They, I should point out, are on a bigger plane than ours. Power to the (correct) people, and their dogs. But I digress.

Also on this mission is Crazy Harry’s and my doctor (making me feel almost as cool as Hunter Thompson, who, famously, travelled with his lawyer, the Giant Samoan), and an investment banker friend of Harry’s, another Springsteen fan, this one in the top quartile, a veteran with Crazy Harry of many road trips, and many, many shows.

Now, about all I know about Buffalo I learned in the 5th grade, in that song about the Erie Canal, where you’ll always know your neighbor and you’ll always know your pal on your way from Albany to you know where. The song, naturally, is on Bruce’s fiddle and banjo crap album. Small town, small world.

When we land in Buffalo, we fall into the International Airport Universal Caste System, where the little bitty planes get parked way out on the ramp, and the Great Big Mothers get parked right by the door. So we do the propellar set walk of shame past the larger jets of A, B and C list celebrities to a Great Big Blue Mother Jumbo, the travelling home of the star attractions. I resist the urge to stow away, but stipulate I might have just fondled the landing gear, just a little.

We have arrived a couple of hours before the show, and see there is less happening in Buffalo than in heaven on a Saturday night. Fortunately, The Doctor remembers that we are in the home of Buffalo wings. This leads us to The Anchor Bar and Grill, which claims to have invented the buffalo win in 1934 (we ignore that there are 57 places on the North Shore that claim to have invented the fried clam; we’re on a roll).

The wings, about the same size as the wings on our King Air, crispy and of potency from mild to nuclear, are no less than delicious, with a legend (and accompanying heartburn) that could last a lunch time, if not a lifetime.

It’s at about this time my middle aged back speaks up to let me know it has had about enough of that week’s train to the plane to the bus routine. Seems like a good excuse for another adult beverage to me.

The Arena, the ABCXYZ Financial Centre and Ice Palace, or some such, is a great scale for a show – smaller, than the Garden, good sight lines, really good sound. We randomly bet the under / over on when the 7:30 show will actually start. Whoever had 8:20 in the pool was the winner.

The lights go down, but not so far down that you can’t see Clarence Clemmons has to be put on stage on a lift, and not so far that you can’t feel the place come alive.

I go to stand up with the rest of the crowd, and find out…I can’t. My previously mentioned middle aged back chooses this moment to lock up tighter thanmy high school sweetheart. The person in front of me, a big, rotund, ugly fat person, is able to stand just fine (giving new meaning to the term Buffalo Butt, which I had previously reserved for Hillary Clinton). He doesn’t dance, doesn’t move, he…stands. I…sit.

So we won’t dwell here that Bruce and the band played non-stop for almost 4 hours, more than 40 songs, that they played their first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, non-stop in its entirety for the first time, that it was Little Stephen’s 60th birthday, that they play with the same energy and enthusiasm that I remember from more than 30 years ago, that they still sound great.

Enough about them. Let’s talk about my back. Let’s talk about the fallacy of the healing power of rock and roll. Let’s talk about a highly evolved view of Hell (if not a view that will garner much sympathy) is being in Buffalo on a Sunday night, listening to great music, and staring at a Buffalo butt.

The Doctor is in, right next to me, prescription pad in his pocket, but he clearly isn’t leaving to get me assistyance unless I die, in which case I don’t much care if he leaves or not. I feel like I’d have to get better to die, anyway. I settle on the adult beverage cure, for medicinal purposes only, of course, and am finally able to haul myself up. It is not pretty. I still can’t see over or around Fatso, but at least I get a better view of the wide screen.

The show ends, and we wind up the propellers on the King Air. The Big Blue Jumbo Mother, containing Our Heroes, gets priority clearance to Florida, and cuts in front of us. We limp on back to Boston, landing at the properly rocking and rolling hour of quarter to three. The Doctor hands me a prescription, and, as I try to remember where an all night drug store is, my 8 o’clock meeting starts to seem pretty unlikely

As I hobble my way down the air stair to the tarmac, I announce for all to hear that Bruce and the Band can do whatever they want. This is my last tour.

by Charles K. Ribakoff

No, this is not another Springsteen column.

Writing about how great The Boss is, much as I love him, is kinda like shooting poodles in a barrel. (OK, just wanted to see if you were paying attention). Not all that obvious, but there’s not all you can say that’s new. And it’s been…done. Enough.

For today’s music fable, boys and girls, we’re going to have to return to the great folk music scare of the ‘60s, when all that fiddle and banjo crap nearly caught on. It was powered by the beginning of the singer / songwriter phenomina, the hip to be miserable scene. The old, “I’ve suffered for my music, and now it’s your turn,” routine.

In that group, which likely was propelled by some guy named Dylan (who, in truth, had his moments), there was a singularly depressed and depressing Canadian (no redundancy intended) named Leonard Cohen.

You’ve likely never heard of him, and there’s not a lot of reason why you should. He had the voice of a man who gargled regularly with razor blades, and he had mastered, I think, 3 whole chords he could play on his acoustic guitar. He never liked to perform, and not without some cause. Concert footage of that era, which you can track down on You Tube, shows a close to totally self absorbed, inanimate performer with no… affect, never acknowledging the players in his band, or the audience

And yet he wrote some achingly beautiful songs, covered by the hot folk girls of the day, and had a seriously nasty sense of humor, which is what attracted me to him. He wrote a song, “Chelsea Hotel #2,” about a brief…ummm… encounter he had with Janis Joplin (you can look her up), in which, after singing (as it were) her praises, he concludes, “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel. That’s all, I really don’t think of you that often.” Or, as he croaks out in the lyric to “Tower of Song, “I asked Hank Williams how lonely does it get / Hank Williams hasn’t answered me yet / but I hear him coughing, all night long. He’s a hundred floors above me in the tower of song.” Or, in the same song, “I was born like this, I didn’t have any choice, I was born with the gift of the golden voice…”

So, another Tragedy of Rock story: a couple of obscure albums, a volume or two of incoherent but really dirty poetry and then…vanish.

It turns out that Leonard got tired of being…semi famous…and went off to India to live as a Buddhist monk (I swear I’m not making this up) on Mount Boobie. This is years before the Maharishi and The Beatles made India part of the Must See To Have a Life Tour. Cohen could have well vanished into (or stayed in) obscurity.

So, what, you are wondering, as so often happens when I make the turn at 500 words, is all this about, and what does it have to do with anything?

As is so often the case, relevance is always where you find it (like Silver is always under The Lone Ranger, but I digress).

So it turns out that, for whatever reason, the Monk gig got tired after 40 years or so, and Cohen returned home. Where he found that his Manager had stolen all his money (another car story), and that he was a man in his mid-seventies, with no marketable skills and…nothing. I respect the Dalai Llama when he says all he wants is…nothing…but that’s not a way of life for everyone.

Rather than hanging himself in his closet, or coming to some other suitably artistic tragic end, Cohen puts together a concert tour, a few dates in major cities where enough people might remember, and want to visit the memory museum. Kind of brave for a man who showed his audiences of 40 years ago pretty complete disdain, and…nothing…since, whose books and records are pretty much out of print, a kind of footnote to a long ago time remembered by few except music trivia nut cases, and people like me, if that is not redundant. Sounds like a recipe for a disaster, 20 minutes of off key singing, then call the Hotline.

But because we live in the age where the cocoanut telegraph is powered by Facebook, Twitter, old fashioned e-mail and such, word got out immediately, and it was everywhere at once. People have better memories than you would think. The first show, in London in March, was moved several times to accommodate ticket demand, and finally opened to about 8000 people.

Dates, including Boston, were added, and I got to see the show in May.

Surrounded by mostly older musicians, Cohen showed he had learned something about graciousness in all those years on Mt. Booby. He looks truly…old, with that turkey thing going on on his neck, liver spots on his hands, dressed in a dark suit. He acknowledged each musician by removing his hat – an old Hamburg—at each solo, bowing gracefully, and thanking them by name. Songs were re-arranged from Way Back When, and played with emotion that seemed real. He might have even been having a good time.

He pointed out that it’d probably been 15 or 20 years since he had been in Boston, “A kid of 60 with a wild and crazy dream.” He apologized for not being dead, and thanked us for keeping his music alive. He played and played and played – nearly 3 hours worth.
It was remarkably better than I had dared to expect – an all time great evening.

So the point is that life can have you wind up in a different place than you thought you’d be. The thought of a 9,000,000 a year new car industry in America? That’s so…1960s. GM and Chrysler bankrupt? Impossible. Severe restrictions on individual and business credit? Couldn’t be – that’s what makes everything work, doesn’t it? Municipal cutbacks? Couldn’t happen – those budgets just keep getting bigger.

It’s not the stuff that you don’t expect that gets you – it’s how you deal with it. Harr and MHQ are very different companies than they were just a year ago, and they are very much better. We have adapted to a market that, frankly, I didn’t expect. We have worked ourselves into a position that is sustainable, and stand to benefit when things get better.

So what I learned from the Man With The Golden Voice is to keep going forward, adapt to whatever you have to, keep going forward. And I didn’t have to spend 40 years on Mt. Booby to learn it.

This is what you’re always told to say when you’re at a Secret Military Base, a quaint custom that predates this time when you can probably find out what they are serving for dinner at the base using Google Maps and an iPhone.

This Secret Location is Secreter than most, located as it is next to the Really Secret Nuclear Reactor, which officially does not exist, despite the road signs in the city of Dimona that point, in Hebrew and English, to the Nuclear Research Facility. Go figure.

But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Whether you’re a Guns or Butter guy, if the military here wasn’t what it is, there is little practical argument that we would be here at all. If you read that sentence enough times, slowly, I think it may make sense

The military is a huge part of the fabric of society. It brings almost every 18 year old from all parts of the society together, shakes and stirs them really hard, and turns them out no sooner than 3 years later, a little more blended together. Then everyone goes back for reserve duty at least 30 days a year until they are 49, to keep the recipe fresh. So while there is still more…stuff…going on than a Fair and Balanced Reporter might want to admit, there is still a mosaic of shared experience that gives most some common ground.

The motivation is pretty simple – when people all around have been shouting for the past 60+ years that they are going to push you into the ocean, even if it seems sometimes that those guys are at least one fry short of a Happy Meal, at some point there is reason to think you gotta at least be ready to push back. Hard.

If I am not exactly a child of the ‘60s, I did live through them. This whole military power concept remains puzzling to me. I agreed with John Lennon and whatshername when they sang about giving peace a chance, except in this part of the world where, too often, they’ve had to give war a chance.

Maybe this is because the Ribakoff family military history is a bit…limited, not counting, of course, General Beauregard Ribakoff, the Confederate general famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But I digress.

One of my strongest memories of my January trip here, towards the end of the Gaza action, was seeing a line of helicopter gunships, hovering in place. They (and I) were facing south, while the missiles from Gaza were coming north. It turns out that This Somewhere in Israel is where those helicopters are based.

Helicopters have always fascinated me, maybe because of their sheer….implausibility. Whenever I think that all that holds a Real Airplane up in the air is….suction…I want to check that life vest is really under my seat, and that my tray table is in the full upright position. And helicopters are these…weird…looking things that sometimes resemble what Dr. Wizard did with erector sets. Let’s see here, you want me to get into this thing that goes straight up in the air and…hovers? Right.

The choppers we see today are hardly state of the art – they are Cobras, a ship that first flew in 1965. The avionics, at least of the ones they let us see, resemble those in a Piper Cub more than a modern airplane – what pilots call steam gauges. More than ungainly, these things are butt ugly.

This does not mean that you want to mess with one (or call it butt ugly to its face); my guess is it would make you very dead, very fast.

We hang out with some of the pilots, men and women who don’t look old enough to drive. (OK – 1 political observation: there are, it is my guess, exactly 0 Iranian women helicopter pilots, if only because women in that society are generally not allowed to be taught to read. But I digress). I am struck by their calmness, and by how different they are from most American kids their ages, like getting one of these old things and going up in the air to get shot at, and to shoot back, is just another day at the office.

I suspect I might not look at these guys and gals with quite the same awe if I was living on the ground in Gaza. I have previously said that I don’t want to get into the politics of any of this, except to assure you at the top of my voice that, like everybody else in the Middle East, I am Right and Everybody Else is Wrong. But if Chairman Mao (now there’s a name that doesn’t get thrown around much anymore) was right that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, I’m looking at lots of political power here. I, personally, prefer it to the political power I saw when the Qassam missiles from Gaza were flying north over me while I was driving south to visit some Bedouin kids last January.

So this has wandered off in a direction I didn’t anticipate, something that happens some days when my computer takes me out for a run. My parting thoughts as we drive away is that I was happy to have seen this Somewhere in Israel, if only because lots of other Somewhere’s In Israel to exist. And, maybe, prosper.

By Charles Ribakoff

“You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by
And so become your dreams, because the past is just a good-bye
Teach your children well…”
–Graham Nash

I will never look at a salad the same way again, but I am getting ahead of myself.

I am in Israel, traveling this time with Patty and our girls, and good friends, and friends of friends to celebrate a bat mitzvah here in Jerusalem. It is Nicki’s (age 7) and Corky’s (age 10) first time in Israel. While all my trips here over the last 40 years have been special, this one is even more so, as I get to see it through their eyes.

There are about 40 of us, half kids, half at least chronologically grown ups. It is not true that we are all bozos on this bus, but we are bus-bound all over.

So one of the things that’s different about this trip for me is we are doing lots of touring, visiting lots of sites I have been too blasé or lazy to revisit. After all, one could think that a place with 5000 years of history wouldn’t change much over only 40 years. One would be wrong.

It is said the state bird of Israel is the crane, and cranes are everywhere, with buildings going up around them. Even the YMCA across the street from where I stay here, a magnificent building of old Moorish architecture, has a condo tower under construction in its backyard, a former soccer pitch. (And, no I’m not getting sucked into talking about building in the settlements, which, since you asked, I think should fall into the ocean. But I digress).

But the history of Israel, for all these millennia, was built around farming, immigrants eventually building collective farms –eventually the legendry kibbutz movement, where all work, responsibility and results were divided, and shared—evenly. Making the desert bloom, and so on, which, on a helicopter at an altitude of only 500 feet, you can clearly see, one of those legendary things that is actually true.

OK, there were lots of sheep and sheep herders and traders on camels and stuff, too. No offense meant. But the first thing anyone had to do was eat, so let’s stick with the farming angle. Besides, it fits this story.

I suspect it’s been a lot of years since a Ribakoff tilled the land (not counting my apple picking career, which lasted an entire week, when I was a teen living here). Not much is known of the fields of Slutsk, the city in Belarus from which at least some Ribakoffs embarked to America, but I suspect working the fields in Brooklyn, where at least some of them ended up, was not productive. The market for used cars in Worcester has been far better than the market for, say, rutabagas, for the past 60+ years, and so whatever agriculture there may have been in our blood generations back has turned to gasoline.

Jews are taught that we each have an obligation called tikkin olam, repairing the world, and we are further taught that, even though there is no way we are going to complete this work in our lifetimes (it is hard enough, after all, to repair an oil leak in 2006 Taurus), that is no excuse for us not to start.

The start of this journey is often around the ceremony of bar mitzvah (for boys), or bat mitzvah (for girls), at age 13, deemed in biblical times old enough to join the community. Part of this process includes the performing good deed (a good deed is called a mitzvah). While many 13 year olds today seem as interested in joining Facebook as anything else, the good deeds part has survived.

Which starts to explain what I am doing here in a tomato field, sweating like a pig (maybe not the most appropriate thing to sweat like here).

It turns out the bible teaches that one is to do something called gleaning. I always thought gleaning was some kind of tooth paste. The bible obviously tried to teach this to me on of those days I skipped Sunday school, so it has to be explained to me, slowly. Gleaning is when you go back over a field that has already been harvested, to gather whatever hasn’t already been picked for whatever reason, and gather them to give to the poor.

We are joining our young celebrants as we look for, in effect, used tomatoes. We are being organized (although organize is a difficult word to ascribe to any travelling group, which is more like herding cats) by a group called Table to Table, which finds volunteers to do stuff like this to deliver, literally, tons of fresh food to shelters for Israelis and Arabs.

The instructions are simple enough: bend over, find a tomato that hasn’t been spoiled and is properly ripe, pick it, place in basket, repeat until done.

This, if I may say so, oversimplifies the task. Among the first things I learn is that a tomato that has ducked one of the super-efficient harvesting machines that work these fields, has probably has made a conscious decision not to get harvested. The little sucker has hidden itself from, what, for a tomato, is the grim reaper for sure. They hide under cover of steel wool-like leaves, in among the undesirable yellow tomatoes (even John Kerry couldn’t mooch off yellow catsup), and, worse, the rotten ones.

When you grab hold of a rotten tomato, harvesting fool that I am, you learn quickly that what you get is a handful of rotten, gooshy, gucky, stinking red gook. The yellow ones are like a broken promise – firm, healthy looking, but rejects. The few good red ones left are like hitting a jackpot.

I am happy Corky and Nicki are out in the fields with me. For one thing, someone has to complain more than I do. For another, it is one thing to talk in theory about the doing good things, another to lead by example, and a glowing good time to do it all together.

Maybe as important, they are city kids. It is important that they learn that hamburgers come from something before McDonalds, and salad doesn’t grow in a case at Shaws. They turn out to have more zest for this than I – faint praise, indeed, but still – they, bend easier than I, and are not handicapped by trying to keep a cigar lit while picking. That they understand they are putting food on the table of a hungry person a pretty good bonus, too.

We dig right in, rotten tomatoes and all. We are all knee deep in guck in no time, giggling like fools. Patty, the best camper of us all, has the most discerning eye. Occasionally, we even find a real tomato.

Well, the minutes go by like hours, but the baskets somehow fill up, and the time goes by. Even all bad things must come to an end – sorry, General Motors — and at some point we are called in from the fields. We have enough tomatoes for a mile long salad bar, and enough of their remnants on us that we should probably all walk through a car wash.

A person wiser than I once said that it is a fundamental error to assume that a family vacation is supposed to be fun. Family vacations can be a lot of things, and if we didn’t remember them, eventually, as fun, no one would ever go to Thanksgiving again, like, I am reliably told, no woman would ever have more than one child if she remembered what it was like.

But here we are, a long way from home, making memories, memories that will last more, if not a lifetime, at least more than a lunch time. Even many lunch times, and a shower.

Seems like a win to me.

By Charles Ribakoff

Note from Charles: Once again, this is one that was written for the Harr / MHQ newsletter. Even a challenging business environment can be overcome by the healing power of rock and roll.

I don’t know if he ever seriously considered this as a career choice, but Bruce Springsteen would have been one hell of a car guy. Probably even better than I’d be as a rock star. And herein maybe lies a story.

I have had this eccentric fear (moi?) since I first saw Springsteen live in the early ‘70s and became a fan, that next time he came around, it wouldn’t matter to me so much. Maybe he’d have changed, or I would have, but I was worried that he wouldn’t hit me in the same way. But that hasn’t happened in almost 40 years, during which time I have put the children of many scalpers through college.

Now, I’ll stipulate that it might not have been what Bruce had in mind when I would hold my older daughter as a new born in the front of the airplane, and sing to her that tramps like us, baby we were born to run. (It is true that, among Corky’s first words, were “Daddy, please stop singing,” but that’s another story).

I think Bruce has an unspoken contract with his audience, which, if it were to be spoken, would be something like, “I’ll give it everything I have and tell you all the things I think are important, and you’ll keep listening.”

By and large, if you forgive that fiddle and banjo crap album, we’ve both kept our end of the bargain. (I’ll forgive Bruce that, and he’ll forgive me Charles Chevrolet). Probably another 100,000,000 people feel the same way, even though I know that the contract is just with me.

So when he and the E Street Band played in Boston a few weeks ago, even though I had the same apprehensions, I went to the show. Now, I’ve probably seen Bruce play live 30 times (clear proof that I need to get a life), from about every kind of seat from the third balcony to backstage. My seats this time were even with side of the stage, a few rows up, so I could watch all the choreography that goes on –the right guitars getting to the right person in time for the right song, and so on.

Bruce and the band have changed over the years. The Boss now has streaks of gray in his 60 year old hair. Patty, his wife, had allegedly fallen off a horse, and was not there, although there was some chance that it had something to do with Bruce falling off his girlfriend, whose husband named him that week in a divorce action. Danny Federici, the man who brought the accordion from the circus to rock and roll, is dead (from melanoma, of all things, beating all odds that the early death of a rocker is always more chemically than organically related). Clarence Clemmons, the Big Man, is sick enough with something that he looks like Little Big Man; the huge tenor sax he plays was held in a stand all night, and he has to sit down a lot. Max Weinberg’s son – the son of Mad Max, Jay, all of 19, fills in on some songs, and will cover for his dad when the band goes to Europe this summer, as Daddy has a TV gig. (Bleeping 19 and Playing the Drums With The Band. Can you imagine? Let’s not go there). Not the band of my youth, for sure.

It’s only my assumption, but, I think, a safe one, that these guys don’t do it any more for the money. Selling out 20,000 seat halls every night at $75 or so an average ticket pays even better than buying a used car for $1000, spending $200 on recon, and selling it for $1100 a couple of times a day.

But after playing ‘Born to Run’ live for maybe the five thousandth time, one would be shocked (but not surprised) if they just decided to phone in a performance every now and again, to emerge Rolling Stone-like as if they’ve just been let out of their wheel chairs and walkers for just a short time, and need to stumble around for a couple of hours to justify a night of clubbing, or at least soft food.

Not these guys. While they can no longer describe themselves as death defying (as in the rap ‘pants droppin’,’ house shockin’ hard rockin’, love makin’, heart breakin’, soul cryin’ death defyin’ E Street Band), from the first note, they are giving it all they got. Bruce hits (almost) every note, and the show flows with an energy as though they’re all playing it for the first time. They go non stop for more than two and a half hours. Everybody leaves happy.

So what, you may be wondering, does have to do with Bruce being a good car guy here in the post miracle age? I thought you’d never ask.

Here are just some of the reasons:

1. He works as hard as he can every show.
2. His work has changed over time, but remains fresh.
3. While all rock is a variance of a simple 4/4 beat, he finds ways to work off that in ways no one else does.
4. He sure acts like he’s having fun, even when there’s a miscue.
5. His enthusiasm brings the rest of the band along with him.

Well, gosh, these are all things that work in car world. At Harr, we were doing these things, literally, since before he was born. It’s served us well on our journey so far.

Not to gloss over that being in a band has some differences from working in the world of cars (you have to stay up later, for one thing, and your hearing winds up getting blown out), as our journey hits some bumps in the road, there are these similarities to keep in mind.

We have to keep doing the things we know work. We have to remember that we’re on the right road. We have to work harder than anyone else. And we have to have fun.

Or as someone once said, “No retreat, baby, no surrender.”

by Charles Ribakoff

(Note from Charles: If this column stops suddenly, it’s probably because I have been struck by lightning. Remember me kindly).

Hold the presses.

Back in February, I posted an article called The Future of Chrysler. I thought it was only a matter of time before the bible was revised to rename the prophets Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Charles.

What a great gig that could have been. Not quite the same poetry as, say, John, Paul, George and Ringo (or even as Dirk, Stig, Leppo, and Nasty, the pre-fab four), but, still, think of the sales potential: one in every hotel room, plus door to door summer sales. And the residuals…. But I digress.

Turns out I may not have been prophetic enough to qualify for my own biblical edition, although I got it pretty close to right. Now that Chrysler has been Obamaed and inepted into Chapter 11, this is a good time to revisit the future of Chrysler. The intent here is to make the point this is a great time to buy one (this is, after all, a social media attempt by a purveyor of autos), and the lay out, at least for my own benefit, where all this goes.

Chrysler, and its dealers, have been fighting the good fight. Even with all the uncertainty, Chrysler’s market share has actually been going up. Their management team has let the pressure get to them a bit – Jim Press, the co-president of whom I have written glowingly, now sometimes sounds like a cross between a crack crazed Craig’s List patron and a snapping turtle when trying to convince us to buy additional inventory– but have kept aggressive sales and marketing strategies, and provided both leadership and hand holding. Dealers like me (I refer to us, with some pride, as the cockroaches of retail – we figure out how to survive almost any situation from nuclear winter to wearing a Red Sox hat in Yankee Stadium) have made draconian cuts and adjustments, and tried to figure out survival strategies. The federal government gave a shot at reassuring customers when they announced they would back Chrysler warranties (although the thought of Joe Biden coming over to change my oil does not exactly fill me with confidence).

In the end, there were too many things to fix, and not enough time, and we didn’t get it done. So yesterday, Chrysler filed Chapter 11.

I was trying to explain what this Chapter 11 stuff means in an employee meeting yesterday, in terms even Boris, the official hat of winter, could understand. I came up with this analogy. My daughter Nicki, who is 7, likes to play poker with me. She cheats, and makes me play my Euros against her dollars, but that’s a whole different discussion. When she makes a really bad move, like drawing a 2 to try to make a pair, she asks for a do-over. Then she tries to do it right.

I could have also described Chrysler’s Chapter 11 as the financial equivalent of a high colonic, but I’m not sure Nicki would have understood as well.

If you think of Chapter 11 as your 7 year old asking for a do-over, you will, without doubt, be tossed out of law school, but you’ll have the basic concept.

In Chrysler’s intergalactic do-over, they get to flush all those evil bankers who thought a reasonable expectation of lending money is that you might actually get paid back. Near as I can figure, tens of thousands of retirees who had kind of had their lives set up with certain income and health care expectations woke up this morning to figure out a different set of expectations. Lots of Chrysler dealers probably didn’t sleep very well last night, although there’s nothing new about that. There are generations of mistakes and inefficiencies that…presto…go away.

In the do-over, in my version that I use to explain it to my hat, Chrysler (actually, the bankruptcy court judge, but let’s not let too many facts get in the way here), gets to figure out what they want to do with these nuisances, and other ones too numerable and mind numbing to consider.

After all these things go through the grinder, what will come out will be a sausage (which, given the Fiat connection, you can make mine pepperoni) where, one hopes equitably (but hires high powered council just in case), a new company sans baggage emerges.

There will be many fewer dealers, which, for those of us left, will be a good thing. It will increase the number of customers who come to us for service, and, ultimately, sales.

Harr will, by any metric I can think of, be one of those surviving dealers. We sell more Chryslers, Jeeps and Dodges than anyone else in our market, have superior customer satisfaction scores in both sales and service, and, through our municipal vehicle operation, offer the opportunity for large numbers of fleet sales. We further have a prime location on the busiest street in Worcester, and 61 years of continuous, hands on family ownership (ok, only 29 of those are with Chrysler).

So why should you buy one? Chrysler’s incentives remain the most generous in the industry (because, frankly, they have to be), and the products remain world class. The post-bankruptcy company will be competitive on the world stage, and the warranties are backed by the U.S. government. It is indeed a good day to buy one.

Although if Joe Biden comes over to fix yours, make sure he didn’t come by subway.

In the first of these columns I wrote several years ago, I wrote about the importance of our having fun at what we do.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not having as much fun at the office as I’d like to lately, and I bet neither are many of you. Probably the hardest part of my job these days is to walk around our places with a smile, and, if I am lacking anything inspirational to say, at least not saying anything that expediting someone’s jumping into a grease pit..

So I’ve been thinking about ways to put some fun things back into our business. The idea of putting on a clown suit was pretty much of a non starter, and I didn’t think bringing in someone to do magic tricks during coffee breaks would help much, either.

But I think I can replicate an experience that I would say is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and make it available to one of you. I’ve been able to do some pretty cool things, so to put this into some kind of context, let me brag about some of those other things.

I freely admit that I am probably the luckiest person I know.

Along with that has come the opportunity to do some pretty neat things, like go to some Super Bowls or watch the Celtics win many of their championships. I was at the old Boston Garden at a hockey game the night all the lights blew out. I was there when the Red Sox finally won a championship. I’ve been backstage with Sting, and got to have Springsteen autograph a guitar for me. I once had a chance to play rhythm guitar in Theo Epstein’s band, Trauser (which was hindered primarily by my inability to play the guitar). I met the late King Hussein at his palace in Jordan and had lunch once with the President of Rwanda. I had my picture taken and a lobster roll with President Clinton (I think he was looking down Patty’s dress).

(Even I find all this bragging thoroughly repulsive, but hang in there – it may go somewhere good).

But this was the coolest thing I ever did: last year, I got to throw out the first pitch at Fenway for a Red Sox game.

Part of what it was like was this: They let me and the several guests I was allowed to invite into the ballpark before the gates opened – it was just us and the players and the beer vendors setting up. We hung around the field to watch the player’s pre-game stretching routines and batting practice, and got a tour all over the ballpark. I think an autograph or two was involved (remarkably, no one asked for mine).

There was a dinner for us in there someplace, and then we were invited back down onto the field.

Now, I had known I was going to do this for some time, and so was pretty determined not to make a complete fool of myself in front of 34,327 people. I had probably last thrown a baseball back when I was coaching Jack in Little League 15 years ago. So I upped my gym routine, probably to twice a month, and worked on shoulder excercises – I was determined not to wind up on the DL from this experience.

When the PA announcer announced my name, I was escorted onto the field. I’m not sure all 34,327 fans were paying rapt attention — many had actually come to watch a baseball game, not to see me, but when you look around the park from the pitcher’s mound, there sure are a lot of folks looking at you. It turns out I later heard from maybe a dozen people hadn’t heard from in years, who aid they were there (kind of an extreme form of social networking, this. My name was up on the scoreboard (although I believe they may have deleted the Harr commercial I asked them to include).

I tried to spend a moment to take it all in, but the excitement is overwhelming. I pounded my old Rawlings glove, reared back, sort of, and threw a perfect strike. On about two bounces. Someone gave me back the ball, and I went back to my seat to watch the game. Later, I was sent a series of photos the Red Sox photographer took of the whole thing.

For reasons too complicated to go into, I was offered the opportunity to do this again this year. But I want to give it to one of you.

The way it’s going to work is this: Over the next week or so, each department head is going to set up individual goals for each of you. It might be based on cost savings in the office, on sales improvement in dealership sales, on new accounts brought in a MHQ. Each department will have a winner. The criteria will be based on specific metrics, so, much as the thought has some appeal to me, the winner will not be the team member who sucks up to me the most.

Late this summer, we’ll have a company event at which the names of each department winner will be placed in a drum. I’ll draw the wining name., and, on September 6, one of us will throw out the first pitch at Fenway.

The package comes with 4 seats that belong to one of the owners right behind the dugout, as well as most of the things I described above. I’ll probably come up with a couple of more enhancements as the season goes along.

This is a perk not many companies get to offer, and probably fewer do.

I hope the competition will inject some fun back into our business as spring and summer go along.

I wish you all good luck.

Note from Charles: This is the column I write for members of the Harr / MHQ Team on a monthly basis. The column is invariably late, and, occasionally, makes no sense whatsoever, even to me. I used to think I would know I was truly wealthy when I could hire someone to play golf for me. I have lowered my goals. Now I just want someone to write this bleeping column for me. In any event, here goes….

Enough of this %&#@. Let’s Have Some Fun.

In the first of these columns I wrote several years ago, I wrote about the importance of our having fun at what we do.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not having as much fun at the office as I’d like to lately, and I bet neither are many of you. Probably the hardest part of my job these days is to walk around our places with a smile, and, if I am lacking anything inspirational to say, at least not saying anything that expediting someone’s jumping into a grease pit..

So I’ve been thinking about ways to put some fun things back into our business. The idea of putting on a clown suit was pretty much of a non starter, and I didn’t think bringing in someone to do magic tricks during coffee breaks would help much, either.

But I think I can replicate an experience that I would say is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and make it available to one of you. I’ve been able to do some pretty cool things, so to put this into some kind of context, let me brag about some of those other things.

I freely admit that I am probably the luckiest person I know.

Along with that has come the opportunity to do some pretty neat things, like go to some Super Bowls or watch the Celtics win many of their championships. I was at the old Boston Garden at a hockey game the night all the lights blew out. I was there when the Red Sox finally won a championship. I’ve been backstage with Sting, and got to have Springsteen autograph a guitar for me. I once had a chance to play rhythm guitar in Theo Epstein’s band, Trauser (which was hindered primarily by my inability to play the guitar). I met the late King Hussein at his palace in Jordan and had lunch once with the President of Rwanda. I had my picture taken and a lobster roll with President Clinton (I think he was looking down Patty’s dress).

(Even I find all this bragging thoroughly repulsive, but hang in there – it may go somewhere good).

But this was the coolest thing I ever did: last year, I got to throw out the first pitch at Fenway for a Red Sox game.

Part of what it was like was this: They let me and the several guests I was allowed to invite into the ballpark before the gates opened – it was just us and the players and the beer vendors setting up. We hung around the field to watch the player’s pre-game stretching routines and batting practice, and got a tour all over the ballpark. I think an autograph or two was involved (remarkably, no one asked for mine).

There was a dinner for us in there someplace, and then we were invited back down onto the field.

Now, I had known I was going to do this for some time, and so was pretty determined not to make a complete fool of myself in front of 34,327 people. I had probably last thrown a baseball back when I was coaching Jack in Little League 15 years ago. So I upped my gym routine, probably to twice a month, and worked on shoulder excercises – I was determined not to wind up on the DL from this experience.

When the PA announcer announced my name, I was escorted onto the field. I’m not sure all 34,327 fans were paying rapt attention — many had actually come to watch a baseball game, not to see me, but when you look around the park from the pitcher’s mound, there sure are a lot of folks looking at you. It turns out I later heard from maybe a dozen people hadn’t heard from in years, who aid they were there (kind of an extreme form of social networking, this. My name was up on the scoreboard (although I believe they may have deleted the Harr commercial I asked them to include).

I tried to spend a moment to take it all in, but the excitement is overwhelming. I pounded my old Rawlings glove, reared back, sort of, and threw a perfect strike. On about two bounces. Someone gave me back the ball, and I went back to my seat to watch the game. Later, I was sent a series of photos the Red Sox photographer took of the whole thing.

For reasons too complicated to go into, I was offered the opportunity to do this again this year. But I want to give it to one of you.

The way it’s going to work is this: Over the next week or so, each department head is going to set up individual goals for each of you. It might be based on cost savings in the office, on sales improvement in dealership sales, on new accounts brought in a MHQ. Each department will have a winner. The criteria will be based on specific metrics, so, much as the thought has some appeal to me, the winner will not be the team member who sucks up to me the most.

Late this summer, we’ll have a company event at which the names of each department winner will be placed in a drum. I’ll draw the wining name., and, on September 6, one of us will throw out the first pitch at Fenway.

The package comes with 4 seats that belong to one of the owners right behind the dugout, as well as most of the things I described above. I’ll probably come up with a couple of more enhancements as the season goes along.

This is a perk not many companies get to offer, and probably fewer do.

I hope the competition will inject some fun back into our business as spring and summer go along.

I wish you all good luck.

By Boris

Note from Charles: There is probably something in this story to offend practically everybody. This should not put you off buying a new Toyota, Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep from the Harr team. It was, after all, written by a hat.

Charles write post about me, Boris, the Official Hat of Winter. Sometimes, Charles speak with forked tongue. Boris write this to set record straight.

Is hard life being hat in Ukraine.

Like job of Quixote Don is to reach unreachable star, is job of Ukrainian hat to heat unheatable head. Is just harder to set to music.

Is even harder life being mink in Ukraine. Mink sleep outside on snow, eat food unfit for dog, grow up, and then farmer put you in dog food business. On supply side. What’s left becomes hat, or coat of grandmother. Not exactly growth industry for minks. There little concern about stability of social security trust fund for retirement of minks in Ukraine.

On other hand, being unemployed mink hat in Ukraine not so bad. Everybody else unemployed, too, so little risk of being put to work as hat. Like lucky old sun, got nothing to do but hang around the hat rack all day.

I, Boris Hat (or, as we say in Ukraine, Hat Boris,) is owned by Boris Hatseller, or as we say in Ukraine, Hatseller Boris. Hatseller Boris name self after me. This no Pinocchio / Geppetto deal. I Hat Boris, he Hatseller Boris, but no capitalist pig Disney Walt come along to make us famous like he did stealing 1883 story of pervert woodcarver. Hatseller Boris no make Hat Boris in own image. After all, Hatseller Boris have 3 teeth, 7 hairs, bad breath and hasn’t had bath since hot water shortage during Great Patriotic War. I, Boris, am high rolling mink hat.

Hatseller Boris, like everybody else in Ukraine, inform to KGB. KGB figure anybody who can afford mink hat must be rich. Anybody who be rich must be thief. Anybody who thief must be punished. In America, this is called democrat tax policy. In Ukraine, is way of life. Old Ukrainian proverb: this is same monkey in different dress.

Boris wonder why cold war necessary with great existing cultural similarities, although Cold War good for hat business, keeping cold heads warm (Boris make bad joke).

Hatseller Boris job is to make sure no comrade buy hat from any other hatseller because everybody know Boris inform. Every other hatseller make sure no comrade buy hat from Hatseller Boris for same reason. Is, as we say, Ukrainian standoff. Nobody buy nothing. Is ok: nobody can afford nothing. Anybody who have anything afraid to show it or he won’t have it any more.

So Boris and Boris have easy life: hang around all day. Nobody buy Boris, nobody sell Boris. Boris and Boris make sure nobody else buy or sell anything either. They say this is like life in America in 2009.

Is bad economic model. But Boris think it no worse than, say, economic model of Obama Barrack where is said everybody get free hat, except those who already have hats. They have hat taken away.

Is old Ukrainian proverb that if farmer own healthy chicken and also own sick chicken, he no kill healthy chicken to make chicken soup for sick chicken.
Boris has no idea what this proverb has to do with either this story or economic theory. He just like proverb.

So, one day in Dnepropretrovsk, is day in market like every other day. Boris make sure Hatseller Igor no make sale (except for bootleg Madonna videos that Hatseller Boris like to go off an watch by himself). Igor make sure Boris sell nothing. Is fine day in Ukraine.

Along come great commotion. Comrade Ignatz the guide and translator who speaks 7 languages, none of them well, is chasing American spy through market. Ignatz, of course, is KGB, too. American must be spy. Who else come to Ukraine in November?

American spy say he want hat. Boris is not impressed; Boris wants new Bentley. Everybody in Ukraine want something; that be life in Ukraine.

Ignatz is afraid if American spy buy hat, somebody else might buy something, too. Ignatz fears chain reaction (is good thing to fear in city where nuclear bombs were made): One American spy can screw up whole country. This not good for career of Ignatz, who no want to retire on ice flow.

Poor Ignatz the spy has tit caught in wringer (this is American phrase every Ukrainian school child learns as quote of famous President Nixon Richard talking about famous American newspaper publisher). Ignatz is supposed to be official host (and make sure American spy does not steal secret Ukraine potato growing secrets). But whole country is at risk.

American spy is very good. He acts like he just wants to buy hat. Boris has never seen someone act like he wants to buy hat before. Boris, Boris and Ignatz all confused. We believe American spy really want hot Madonna tapes, but can’t understand diversion of hat. He even claim Ukrainian cover name Ribakoff Charles. Ribakoff in Ukraine mean ‘fisherman;’ is as bad alias as Doe John, but at least he no claim to be distant relative of Czarina. No one believe that.

American spy Ribakoff Charles pulls out roll of American monies and tries to bribe Hatseller Boris to sell hat. Minks never see so much money; Tovarich, on grave of Stalin, all of Minsk never see so much money (Boris make good pun).

Comrade Ignatz see chance for big score: take American monies from American spy, give some to Hatseller Boris. Comrade Ignatz invest in vodka futures, Hatseller Boris buy 250,000 matches on Ukraine Match Exchange. Is mutually assured destruction. No one dare tell. Comrade Ignatz hustle American spy out of market before further damage done.

American spy put on hat. Now, Boris no fashion critic; Dnepropretrovsk is to Milan what military music is to music. But Boris rarely see anything look sillier than American spy in Ukrainian hat. American spy go off to buy food for old people; they too polite to laugh at him.

Comrade Ignatz not able to figure out angle of American spy. He try to find truth in Vodka, and finds killer hangover instead. He figure American spy pull what Fleming Ian call triple reverse butterfly in famous spy novels, even though Comrade Ignatz have no idea what mean.

Boris go to America, and have to go to work keeping head of American warm. American spy turns out to be more duplicitous than spy. He is car dealer.

Is hard work for Boris in brutal winter of Boston, but Boris learn hard work not bad. Boris even wind up on hood of Bentley. As Ribakoff Charles often say, ‘Is this a cool world or what?’

Boris obviously go through political reeducation, and now make conclusion. Even in age of Yobama, is no longer sin to remain rich. Is more like miracle.

I been gone a long time.

Outrunning the Bear.

So this is what it feels like in our business, the wonderful world of cars, in March, 2009: Every morning, you get up, get dressed, come to work, and feel like you are being chased by a bear. A big hungry mother of a bear. Even if you’ve never been caught by a bear, you know if he catches you, it won’t be pretty; it’ll be a bunch worse for you than it will be for the bear. So you run.

Every night, you go home, decompress, sample an adult beverage or two, towel off and rest up. The next morning, you get up and do it all over again.

This may not be the reason anyone choose to get into our business, in my case nearly 40 years ago, but that’s the way the game is being played right now. We can bitch, moan and complain to our heart’s desire, but that doesn’t much affect the bear.

We are not without resources to outrun the bear. There is in our organization many hundreds of years combined experience in bear outrunning. At Harr, we continue to have the best products and services in the industry. Gold Star Boulevard remains the best location in the market. We are not having the financial issues that are plaguing our competitors. At MHQ, we have proprietary expertise unmatched in the country. Over the years, there have been lots of other bears. This bear acts a little hungrier, and maybe a little meaner, but it’s still just another bear. And the fundamentals of outrunning the bear have not changed.

So here are some reminders and thoughts to keep you company while you’re running:

First, don’t panic. It’s only a bear. Bears are big and mean, but they’re not real smart. I mean, they’re bears. What kind of way is that to make a living? You can outsmart it. Remember that age and guile beat youth, innocence and a bad haircut every time. You maybe can’t outmuscle this guy, but there are other choices.

Second, remember the bear can’t eat everyone. It’ll become a fat and lazy bear, and wind up as a rug in someone’s ski lodge, or served as bear flambé in some fashonista restaurant. Too bad, bear, although I hope the bear will forgive me if I don’t feel all that bad about it.

A long time ago, I won a dealer trip to Kenya on a wild animal camera safari (we were shooting Kodachrome, not bullets, a better solution for both the animals and the guests). There were many unforgettable sights, but one in particular stays with me. Millions of dog-like animals called wildebeests spend their days running along the plain of the Serengeti. The wildebeests seem kind of cute and cuddly, but, in a certain season, all they do is run all day. The Serengeti being the precursor of the car business in 2009, they are chased all day by lions. Like our getting caught by a bear, a wildebeest caught by a lion suffers certain immediate complications in his life, none of which are good for the wildebeest. I got to watch this bit of natural drama at sunrise one morning, up in a hot air balloon drifting over the plains. And what I realized was that a wildebeest didn’t have to run faster than the lions, just faster than the next slowest wildebeest. There are lots of people trying to do what we do, who are even more freaked out than we are. Let them be the lion’s lunch, or the bear’s dinner.

Third, remember why you came into the woods in the first place. This is a business that is not for everyone, the proof of which is in the high employee turnover we and every other automotive organization has. You can admit that many of your friends and neighbors think what we do is pretty brainless and easy. I remember my mom describing what my dad and his compatriots did was like playing with electric trains. With all respect, we know that is wrong; there is nothing all that easy about how we spend our days. There are lots of frustrations, lots of hours, lots of kookaberries that we get to deal with. On the other hand, there are few other (legal) ways to make the kinds of livings we are able to. People join our industry because it’s a way to make a pretty good living, not so they can cure fatal diseases. It’s likely you did, too. And we still can, and will. That part didn’t change, either.

Finally, remember that this won’t last forever. The rate of cars being scrapped now exceeds the number of cars being sold by about 2,000,000 units a year. I don’t know how many of you have ridden the RTA lately, but I can promise you (or, if you’ve taken a ride, you can promise me) that public transportation is not the wave of the future for anyone who has any other alternative. Further, as much better as cars are now than the day I tried to open the door of a 1971 Honda 600 and it came off in my hand (hence, no Honda dealership; nice move, Charles), we all know those suckers still break. And when they break, owners have to fix them. And when they fix them, many will come see us. A police car with 200,000 miles on it has about the same utility as a grocery cart – it’ll go as fast as you can push it. Faced with a choice of patrol cars or grocery carts, municipal vehicles will continue to be replaced on a regular basis. And they will come from us, too.

So, while there is no room here for false confidence, there is no need to give up, and give in to the bear, at least without one mother of a fight.

My advice is pretty simple: rest well tonight, and get up tomorrow to run as fast and as smart as you can.

I should be easy enough to recognize. I’ll be that cranky old guy running as hard as I can to stay at least two steps ahead.

Note: The article below contains the occasional disparaging comment about Ukraine. But the Ukraine I write about is a 1990s version of the modern Ukraine of today that I love (where there is no gas, the banks are closed so you can’t get a check cashed, and the doctors haven’t been paid in three months.). Any resemblance is coincidental
So: No offense intended. Of Course.

When a man starts to name his hats, it is possible that, as they say in Canada, there are Labatts in la belfry (note the obscure beer reference). Or maybe the snow in March has gone to the head. Which is, fortunately, covered by a hat.

But Boris isn’t just any hat. Boris joined the family on my first trip to Dnepropretrovsk, Ukraine, many years ago. And therein lies a story.

Dnepropretrovsk (pronounced…well, let’s just call it Dnep) is a city of about 1,000,000 people in central Ukraine. You may be surprised, that, having pulled out your pre-1992 Ukraine atlas (I keep mine in my Sunday pajamas) to find no mention of such a city, 1,000,000 brave souls or not. This is genuine Cloak and Dagger stuff, not just bad geography.

Dnep was an official Secret City. Back in the bad old days of the (first) cold war, Mother Russia in effect sublet the manufacture of all their nuclear bombs and missiles –those nasty things those of us of a certain age can recall being told not to worry about, just to hide under our school desks during bomb alerts – that were pointed, well, at us. So while the city was chock full of scientists and researchers and people who could screw a bomb together to go bang in the night, it officially Did Not Exist. Like the Roach Motel, you could get in, but you couldn’t get out.

When the wall fell in 1992, and all those godless Commies became our new best friends…Eureka, guess what we found? All those people (and all those bombs, and all those missiles). The people were maybe were lacking a few basic things, starting with food. Also, because Dnep sits astride the Dnieper River, which flows on down past Chernobyl, where some really bad stuff happened, and then past Kiev, where all the sewage gets dumped in the river, and then down to Dnep, where the local delicacy is glow in the dark two headed brown fish stew, there are statistical anomalies: The incidence of cervical cancer is about a million times the world average, every other nasty disease seems to grow on trees, people turn grey and die young, and that’s the good news.

The bad news came if you went to see a doctor. Now, I’ll stipulate to being a medical snob— I get to hang out with the docs at Mass General, and it’s not…well, nuclear science, to me to expect them to do stuff like…wash their hands between patients. Skipping ahead here, I once scrubbed for surgery in Dnep – me, who gets queasy when my kids get a mosquito bite or a splinter – and watched well-meaning surgeons work on two patients in the same OR, passing instruments back and forth. Lose a scalpel – whoops, sorry, must have left it in poor Igor here… But I digress.

Among the million or so people who pop up in this place that does not officially exist, it turns out that there are maybe 70,000 Jews who have been hanging out, in their own way, since the last rabbi, in a chain that went back hundreds of years, got himself shipped off for a winter vacation in Siberia, guest of a Mr. Stalin, in 1952 on a ticket that turned out to be one way.

So Rule #1 about Ukraine: There are no coincidences. Rule # 2: There is no truth in Ukraine , except multiple versions the truth you really want to believe.

JDC, the coolest philanthropic and social action group in the world, about whom and with who I write and serve with admiration and appreciation, and CJP, a close # 2 in all of the above, in the world of Jewish alphabet soup, put the first boots on the ground in Dnep when the city, like Lana Turner, got discovered. We brought food, books and medicine. Everyone thought we were spies. Go figure.

How I got there is yet another long and winding story, maybe for another day, but there I was one November, in a place that can truly be called colder than my high school sweetheart. I was trying to learn about the delivery of health care to women and children, which was not hard to learn about since there pretty hadn’t been any before we got there.

I had spent the morning in a new clinic for women. It was doing radical things like keeping files on patients, teaching the docs to wash their hands between patients, and discouraging vodka toasts before noon. The clinic later became the Corky Ribakoff Woman’s Clinic and the Children’s Clinic, where we now treat about 600 women and children there every day, free, and is now affiliated with the Harvard Medical School. But that’s yet another story.

Now, you can say what you want about Ukrainian medicine, or the glow in the dark two headed fish stew. But there is one thing you cannot deny: Ukraine is a country that knows its hats. In a place so cold your tongue can freeze to a pump handle, even if the pump is in the next oblast, they have figured out ways to stave off the cold. It isn’t elegant – kind of Jackie Kenney’s pillbox hats on steroids – but they do keep you warm, and they are worn ubiquitously. There is a pecking order in the Ukrainian hat world, from cloth, to some kind of fur that looks like unborn poodle, a domestic rat of some sort, and so on. At the top of the food chain, hatwise, is the mink. Sorry ‘bout that, PETA. Go freeze.

All of which, finally, leads us to Boris, the Official Had of Winter. You may recall that this started out being a story about Boris.

We were driving somewhere in our state of the art 1990s Russian Llada (imagine an evil Soviet spy had stolen all the plans for the 1960 Ford Falcon (probably, he shoplifted a copy of Popular Mechanics), but gotten them all crinkled and mixed up, so when the Llada got built from them, there wasn’t a single straight line on it), when I saw a street market. I asked my guide/minder (who referred to me in Russian as The Inspector) to please pull over.

A Ukrainian street market makes a Cape Cod yard sale look like Tiffany’s on Christmas Eve. To steal an old joke, put 32 Ukrainian street vendors together, and what you have is a full set of teeth.

There was an old woman with what might have once in a prior life been a sturgeon mounted on a grocery cart, selling handfuls of what might have been fish eggs from the fish’s open belly, vendors with still-like barrels selling home made vodka that would surely cure your need for glasses, since you would no doubt go blind), bootleg copies of every Microsoft program and Madonna CD you can think of, requisite T-shirt stands (“My parents joined all the pogroms, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”)…and the hat stand. I assumed the seller must be named Boris, because about everyone was a Boris or an Igor, and, like all world class designers, I was certain he named his hats after himself. I was a cold man in need of a hat, and Boris was a warm hat in need of a home.

Nothing in Ukraine, of course, is that easy.

With the use of many hand signals and my translator’s broken English (imagine Larry, Curly and Moe buying a hat), we established that this was a very special hat, the organic free range chicken of minks, a mink that had never worked a day in its life. I had always thought Ukrainians got minks the same way minks get minks, but this mink was beyond mere barter.

Meanwhile, I’m standing there with my teeth chattering, and all I want to know is how many filthy American dollars I have to give this guy to a/ shut up and b/ give me the damn hat.

Finally, he made known, that, at great personal sacrifice, and because of my obvious culture and taste, (not to mention my being the only customer in the whole market) he would consider sacrificing the hat for, maybe, $50.

Sold American, as we used to hear in the Lucky Strike commercials. I pulled $50 bucks out of my pocket (probably 3 months pay in the months the guy got paid, which were likely not consecutive), put on the hat, and started to walk away.

Big mistake.

The hat seller looked like I’d insulted his mother. Even my translator was horrified. Vendors in the market stopped and pointed. It is apparently a serious cultural violation not to bargain. Silly me. I had the $50 bucks, I wanted the hat, and I had a couple of other things to do that day.

The gesticulating got a bit wilder, and, in the manner of people speaking different languages everywhere, we compensated by talking louder. But talking louder doesn’t make you any warmer, and I wanted the damn hat.

“Offer the 3 toothed moron $1,” I hope I thought rather than said. But it didn’t make Boris the hat seller any kinder or gentler. Sometimes you wonder how you wind up in certain situations, like what in the world am I doing participating in close to full contact barter in a third world country.

Just prior to my participating in yet another international incident, the translator grabbed the $50, gave $30 to Boris, put the other $20 in his pocket, and, voila, Boris the hat had a new home.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.