Chapter 19: REUNIONS

The pigeons come home to roost.

Mr Moses and Johnny return in the same week. Both bring companions with them, so quick introductions before the festivities begin. Johnny is maried and his wife and sister-in-law accompany him, but I’ll get back to them in a minute. First, Moses’ companions.

Sergey and his teenage daughter Yolanda are recent immigrants, Georgians from Turkmenistan. Confusing? Escapees from behind the iron curtain, is that simplified enough? They are not Russians and not communists, they’re desperate. Seeking opportunity in this touted land of opportunity, Sergey is an electrical engineer and Yolanda is beautiful. I welcome them both with open arms, and welcome Yolanda with repeated embraces. She’s exotic. Arabian.

Mr Moses intended temporarily to house them in the mobile office trailer. He isn’t the least perturbed I put it to use as a prop in a bit of melodrama involving the banks. Everyone likes laughing at how I finagled my way out of a tight squeeze. Maybe it’s funny now, but I can still recall the cold sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades, sitting in Mr Lawson’s office, and hoping to impress him. Desperation is becoming my normal state of mind. Amazing what you can become used to, like being in debt.

The ‘CRABBY NOW?’ cart we recently moved to the corner by the north access road, away from where it was on the construction site.

A simple extra move, we push it with help of our many hands, across and down the road, to park it near enough the Waterman’s borrowed lot, for the rubber tired generator to provide electricity for Yolanda’s and Sergey’s temporary residence, as well as ‘CRABBY NOW?’.

Water will have to be trucked in, toted in a barrel. Nearest faucet is at my residence, the former scales office, about two miles distant.

The scale master had a WC with a toilet and a sink, attached in a corner of his office. Since the pavilion roof is the extended roof of the office and a concrete slab runs under both, I erected some walls with windows and a door. Created a bedroom behind the office.

A shower tied into the WC plumbing has an exterior door access. There’s no pass throughs. I have to exit my bedroom and enter and use the shower, or the office to use the toilet, but it’s no great inconvenience. Not to me. Most women might complain, but my little harem doesn’t. Of course they only visit me to fuck here. No one actually lives with me.

Giving Sergey and Yolanda a grand tour, and a standing invitations to come and use my shower whenever they wish, has a hidden agenda. I show Sergey the wall full of electric motors and the three rewinding machines. Of course he knows how to use them.

Why is that an ‘Of Course’?

If you think Mr Moses invited them here to be parasites, you don’t know him. Mr Moses learned of Sergey’s abilities and deliberately recruited him to rewind motors. Remember, we were seeking someone? Sergey is Mr Moses horse-trade for this month’s rent!

Sergey is enthused over the potential for an electric motor repair business, and is re-sorting the motors by type on the shelves already.

Outside, Yolanda is attracted to that huge tangled pile of bicycles peeking out from beneath the truck tarp I use to hide the mess. We begin pulling out and separating bicycles, not my notion of fun.

This is something I’ve put off for a long time but I now have volunteer help, don’t reject it, and besides, Yolanda’s enthusiasm is contagious. She finds hidden treasures in this jungle of rusting parts and frames. Schwinn and Raleigh bikes, she sets reverently to one side. The Western Auto Flyers go in a separate rank. The Sears and Monkey Wards in a different group, and unknown unidentifiable frames and part in another pile.

She asks if I have tools she can borrow? I fetch them from the office.

In half an hour, she has a British Raleigh with twenty eight and a half inch rims, completely assembled. Tires aren’t in good conditin.

It’s a very tall black bike, with 3speed gears in the hub, and the brake system is extraordinary. Rod linkages, not cable operated.

The chain needs oiling, the bike needs cleaning, a new saddle would be an improvement, and it needs new tubes and tires. Yolanda wants it for her Dad, so he can get back and forth quicker between their quarters and the motor shed. It’s a two mile walk. Sure. He’s welcome to it. It was junk before she rebuilt it.

Doesn’t she want one for herself? There’s another Raleigh but she cannibalized it’s parts to complete the one bike. She chooses a twenty-four inch Schwinn, petite like herself. It’s a boys bike, high frame bar. It’s single speed with a coaster brake. She rejects the rear wheel. No three speed hub twenty-four inch rims. Yolanda asks me for a hacksaw. Back to the office to fetch it.

She asks her Dad for a coin, a large foreign coin, a kopeck it sounded like they were saying.

Carving a slot to the center of the coin with the hacksaw, she tests it for fit on a spoke. Worrying the slot a bit wider with the hacksaw held at a pinch angle, eventually she gets it wallowed out to a snug fit.

I like this girl! She just repurposed a useless, in this country, coin into a handmade spoke wrench! Now she’s dissembling rims.

Takes her an hour and a half, a fascinating hour and a half, to install a 3speed hub from a twenty-six inch rim, into her twenty-four inch Schwinn rim. Caliper brakes are the next major project in the conversion. Fortunately, she has many to choose from. The Sears Monkey Ward pile, the largest pile, yields usable tires and tubes. Yolanda changes tires like she’s done it maybe a few times before.