Grodno

[The Milk bottle and the Tailor—1901]


He did not know it was a restaurant at first, he was only eight-years old, it was 1901, and his father had taken him to Grodno, a small town close to the boarder of Poland in Russia. But he’d not forget walking through those doors the first time, and his father outwardly being known by all the patrons there. All saying:
“Hi, Yulie, how’s it going?” just nice old fashion greetings, that’s all it was, but they make for lasting memories. It was his first trip to Grodno, and as I mentioned, his first in the restaurant for that matter.
Most of the folks in the restaurant were having soup, a few with a bottle of vodka hidden under their coats, pouring it into their coffee. Mostly they were older men, a few business types, no children; Anatolee was the only child he could see. His Papa pulled out a cigar, and like a few of the others in the eatery, filled it up with smoke. The tables had very solid looking wood to them—hard oak, but his papa didn’t sit at the table, he pulled out a stool for himself and one for Tony, and Tony imitated his father as they both sat down, he putting his elbows on the long stretched out wooden bar.
“Milk and pie for the kid,” Tony’s father told the person behind the bar (in Russian), as the barkeep told the waitress down a ways from the bar, “And for me, just coffee with a shot of vodka on the side, that’ll do.”
Tony noticed the waitress pull the milk from under the counter out, it was warm milk in a bottle; it was how they drank it normally. Then she took the top off and poured it in a glass, and cut the pie in sections, giving him no more or less than the other pieces, pulling out a fork, and then delivered it to the barkeep, and onto the boy. Yulie had already gotten his coffee and vodka.
All of a sudden approached a short fat little man, half balled, cigar in his mouth,
“So Yulie, is this the youngest, the one you told me about, the tailor to be?”
“Sure is Ivan,” said Yulie with a smile, and then introduced his son to him properly. Anatolee was a bit taken back, he didn’t know he was going to be a tailor someday. He thought what a good surprise, ‘Papa was thinking of me.’

It was a trying time for the country, a revolutionary spirit was in the air, and work was not plentiful, and a trade was the best way to insure the boy could make a living and Anatolee would practice at this trade in years to come.
This day would remain in Anatolee’s head all his life for some reason it had taught him if anything, that one had to look at long term goals, instead of short term gains; that is to say, one must not grab, but rather plan.


Note: A Chapter Extract from the story “From the Baltic” written July, 2006, extracted reedited for inclusion, 9-2009.
Anatolee, Tony and Anton, is all to be considered the same person.