The Kennedy Family in Poland

     Excerpt from On the Job Training:  Berlin to Vladivostok

     Events in the world at the time of my week with the Kennedy’s included the demise of Colorado, US senator Gary Hart's campaign for President of the United States in 1987. After Hart challenged the press to provide evidence of his infidelities, reporters for the Miami Herald, in a controversial move, staked out Hart's townhouse around the clock, and finally spotted the Senator with Miami model Donna Rice. The ensuing report sent the media into frenzy, and within days photos of Hart and Rice on the opulent yacht, Monkey Business, were flooding international media. Consequently, his shot at the presidency had sunk. Teddy was going through Time and Newsweek articles on the train and among them included those famous photos of Gary Hart on the yacht "Monkey Business".

     “This really pisses me off!” he suddenly blurts out in the compartment. “See what the press is doing to him! This is going to destroy Hart. And why…for no other reason than they are challenged and now they go in for the kill. This really drives me insane!”

     “Please don’t go down this path again, Teddy. Please don’t. We argue about it every time. And besides, Billy is with us and this dirty laundry of ours needn’t come out right now.” Counters Kerry sitting next to the window.

     Teddy goes on in the same direction, “Look at this. Regardless of what it may look like, what he is doing isn’t any different than what most elected officials are doing and he will go down since the media have somehow targeted him for the kill.”

     Kerry takes a deep breath and hits the sour note that causes the rest of the group to cringe, “You always say these things and you forget that this family is still functioning despite common knowledge that both Bobby and John were fucking Marilyn Monroe and probably all three together in bed many times! Don’t go attacking the press too viciously with all they have on us. You need to be thankful, in fact, that things are the way they are in the wake of our legacy and recent history.”

“GEEEEZ!  Sorry Billy. Subject dropped” Teddy conceded.


     ...Teddy didn’t sleep very long and nudged William, “You ready for another hit? Billy! Let’s do another round!”

     William took a long shot and asked Teddy if he was up for messing around in Warsaw when the train arrived. He looked at me and said, “Surely there are few good night clubs or jazz bars in Warsaw we could hit?!” I assured him that there were and I would be happy to arrange things.

     Cousin Kerry spoke up after a long silence following the Marilyn Monroe comment and seemed pretty upset, again,

     “Let’s just get to the hotel and decide from there what we are going to do. There are people there waiting for us and they will be worried if we come traipsing in late. Worse yet will be if we wind up having the Marines scouring the city. Remember, we are in a communist country that is unfriendly to our being here, at all. They’d love the negative press.”


     With the group re-invigorated from another three of four shots of vodka, the train pulled into Warsaw around 8 pm. The Akwarium Jazz Club was a short couple of blocks from the train station. Teddy seemed “jazzed” for going out and wanted to walk. It had been raining for some time and was wet, slick, muddy, but the night air was fresh and we strolled over to the Akwarium that was in full tilt for the evening and very loud.

Teaching English for the British Council - Ramon & Bill

Excerpt from the unedited version of On the Job Training: Berlin to Vladivostok

     Bill was quite a storyteller and, together with Ramon, could fill a day, a night, and part of the next morning with colorful stories of their experiences in Poland. Ramon, about 5’11” in his clogs and quite thin except for a small potbelly, had long black hair streaked with some gray in his early thirties. He had a constant large smile that stretched from ear to ear and he always looked like he was ready to tell you a story or a joke. He often did.

     His nose was proportionately large to accommodate the big smile and his eyes were chronically tired screaming for sleep showing signs of late nights, innumerable female encounters or “events”, that often lasted for days according to his stories. These usually started as sad stories he had to listen to and lead to the bedroom sooner or later. His usual inability to say “no” to female propositions drove Ramon to near exhaustion from what we could tell. Residential courses putting students and teachers together for days on end were no exception.

(One story about Ramon that occurred in the early 90's involved meeting the actor, Ben Kingsley, at a local hotel in the sauna. As Ramon tells it, "Ben was sitting on a low bench enjoying the steam room when I walked in. As I found myself next to him, it was impossible not to notice how well endowed he was and that "it" nearly reached the floor from the bench that he was sitting on. After quite a few exchanges about how things were going during the filming of Schindler's List, I told him that my name, by coincidence, was Schindler. With the ice broken and pleasantries exchanged between us, I asked him while pointing to "it", 'So that must be why you are called Big Ben around here'.

Ben seemed amuzed.)

     Bill had equally raucous, profusely promiscuous, and side-splitting stories alongside Ramon’s. His massive body, 6’3” and around 280 pounds, and physical presence sometimes made Bill the real center of attention when the alcohol was flowing as it could. Ramon was clearly the greater prize in terms of the sexual “hunt” that always occurred during the off-site residential courses. 30-50 students, three to four teachers, and the Boss, Ramon, made up the typical course. All of us, together with the secret police "plant" that usually joined us, hidden in a medieval castle or old Polish estate for 2-3 weeks, made for an intensive English course that was not only tiring, but also made for interesting human chemistry.

Courses that had Ramon and Bill together were sure to be fun and the amount of alcohol that was consumed by all increased by at least a factor of 2-3 times compared to a non-Bill/Ramon course. 

When the official end of the day came and Polish was allowed to be spoken,  the women that were clearly single, unattached, without boyfriends at the course, would begin to signal their interest.  Ramon and Bill were very good at parrying the advances that were constant while selectively signaling their own real interests and intentions. Ramon, the director of the program, was able to orchestrate multiple encounters. Despite this incredible "itinerary" he maintained what seemed to me to be the proper teacher – student distance. I would usually hear about what had really gone on within a month after we had returned from a course.

I was often amazed at how little I knew of what was going on and wondered usually, “Where the hell was I when that was happening?!”

Arranging a Life in Poland

Excerpt from

On the Job Training:  Berlin to Vladivostok    

     Events, places, people, and circumstances in Poland that make up a collective memory of my twenty years in the country are especially vivid as I recall the post Berlin Wall black market and grey market activity that grew throughout Central Europe. Getting caught up and sucked into this tsunami-like wave of anarchic and crazed trading became an obsession that had long lasting repercussions for the rest of my years in Poland.

My family and friends still laugh at the memory of phone calls from me in Poland that may have seemed out of character or almost surreal.

     "Jay! Do you have any takers for three Russian tanks? They'd be great collectors' pieces."

     "John, do you know anything about Osmium? I can get three grams of it out of Russia and they say it's worth a couple million dollars. Don't know what it does though. I am meeting with President Lech Walesa's staff about it tomorrow. Can you help? How about Red Mercury? Got that, too. Two guys were killed on the train in Russia trying to smuggle it out last week. The US Department of Justice sits at the Polish - Lithuanian border waiting for strategic materials that might be leaving the former Soviet Union. Zirc tubes, high grade titanium, you name it...it's all out there for the taking."

     The story of how I got involved in the "trading" and what occurred over the years could itself occupy a generous portion of my story. As I look back at some of these events and my behavior, I am amazed that I am still alive.