Re: Russian rebuilders


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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Friday, February 12, 2010 at 03:28:31 :

In Reply to: Russian rebuilders posted by Jerry in Idaho [64.139.238.43] on Friday, February 12, 2010 at 02:35:15 :

The Russians said that one of their girlfriends or sisters or something had wrecked her nearly-new Honda car and they were going to pull the engine from it and put it in mine and give it to her. Maybe they were or maybe they were going to sell it. Either one would have been okay, and I was happy to get $350 for the car. They towed it away using an old rope attached to a van. I had just put new axles, a clutch and some other stuff in mine, so if they had a free engine it was probably worth doing. No way they could have gotten the top end of mine working, though. The camshaft "bearing" part of the head was all melted and squished out of place.

This was shortly after the collapse of the USSR and there was quite an influx of Russians into Everett. For a while there, the Russian mafia was pretty active, especially in the area of auto theft plus the occasional murder within the family. Some Russians must have been doing something in the bushes in my back yard, too, because there were several times I found Russian money strewn around back there. I took it to the bank to see if it was worth anything and they said it was Soviet money from before the collapse and it wasn't worth anything. I kept it though, just for kicks. I've given some away over the years, but still have a couple pieces somewhere. They're probably collectible nowadays. Their banknotes weren't much bigger than a cigarette paper.

There was even a miserable rust-bucket of a Russian tramp freighter stuck in the harbor for the better part of a year because the owners had disappeared and nobody had any any money to buy fuel to return to Russia. The Port of Everett wouldn't let them tie up to its docks because the ship had no money, and the US Immigration people wouldn't let the sailors off the ship because they figured they'd just disappear into American society somewhere. Personally, I thought America could probably afford to let a dozen destitute Russian sailors disappear into its society, but the INS thought differently. The only thing that kept them alive is a church group that brought them food regularly and visited with them.

Supposedly their owners eventually got some money and the ship was able to return to Russia, but I've always suspected the US government and/or the Port of Everett just refueled them at its expense in order to be rid of them. What exactly is anybody supposed to do when a derelict freighter from a non-existent country ends up in your harbor and the owners are nowhere to be found?



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