Lenin’s bust is something else I took from Grandpa Sam’s
apartment after he died. I never knew he had this, so never asked him when he
got it and what he thought about Lenin. I wonder if it belonged to his second
wife, Gussie Linn, who was much more of a Communist than he was. After they
returned from their trip to the U.S.S.R. in 1972, he told us about flying to
Riga to visit Gussie’s relatives. He mentioned that the flight was a
bit over a couple of hours and the passengers were only given some candy.
Gussie immediately protested that the flight wasn’t that long. Sam replied
mildly, “I’m not criticizing the Soviet Union.”
The hat and
the boa had nothing to do with Sam. The hat was part of a gift for my 50th
birthday party from Meredith Bernstein, a literary agent and college friend of
Ricki Levitt, who was a student of my old friend Gerald when he was TA’ing at
the University of Rochester in the 1960s. The boa? This was from some recent
party, I think—events in the past 10-15 years are, oddly, less sharp in my memory.
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