Feb. 21, 1981

Dear Marilyn, 

The letters on the large Soviet power insulator (#l) transliterate as follows: SDELANO V SSSR. The three words mean: MADE IN USSR. The long word is pronounced Sdyelana (or Sdyeluhnuh). This insulator was given me by a French woman- friend of mine whose Russian boyfriend found it in a field near Leningrad. 

With the exception of the power glass, I obtained all while in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1978, studying language pedagogy on an exchange grant at Moscow State University. The first insulator I picked up was the little strain (#11) (or secondary breaker); I spied it about ten feet up on a fence near the East Gate, where I passed daily; it was wired to the iron bars of the fence, but not functioning. I made friends with one of the guards at that gate, an old woman. Finally I got up enough nerve to ask her if I could have the insulator. I explained about insulators. She knew all about them, as her husband, now retired, had once worked in a factory that made them. She told me to get the strain insulator later that week on an evening when she was on the night shift. 

I had meanwhile made friends with a graduate student in chemistry who owned a pair of wire cutters. He also thought collecting insulators was a terrific hobby. So one evening at midnight we swarmed up that fence and cut the insulator loose while the guard looked the other way. I also went dump picking and found many treasures, though only a few small spool insulators. Once at a dinner party with some Russians I had not met earlier, I mentioned my hobby. The host roared with laughter. (We had each drunk a whole bottle of vodka by then.) He walked over to the wall, ripped loose the incoming house wires from their spool insulators, wrenched one of the insulators from the wall, and ceremoniously bestowed it upon me. We became friends for life.

I continued talking with the lady guard, got her phone number, called her husband to make an appointment to talk about insulators. I spent an afternoon talking, eating, drinking with both husband and wife (and most of their neighbors) at the dining table in their one-room apartment. Eventually the husband picked up a couple of common small porcelains for me (the small type you already have - #8). The insulators were disappointing, but I met several people I would continue seeing throughout the summer -- my first real entree into Soviet proletarian society.

The largest porcelain insulator that I'm sending you (#5) I obtained while on an informal tour of a 17th-century monastery conducted by three of our women instructors at the university. (The 3 were all about my age -- 48; about fifteen people were in our group.) If I remember, this was the Znamensky Monastery. It was being repaired and refurbished in preparation for the Olympic Games; it was not officially open. We strolled around the grounds. There were tools, ladders, paint buckets everywhere. Suddenly I spotted some dead power lines attached to several insulators about twenty feet up one wall of a huge old church directly over a kind of shed that jutted out of the wall several feet below. And then I spotted a ladder lying on the ground nearby.... I propped the ladder up against the shed and raced up onto the roof. I was prepared to work the wires loose with my hands, but I was lucky -- there was one loose insulator lying on the roof, though unfortunately with a broken skirt. I grabbed it and scuttled down the ladder, put the ladder back where I had found it. Many people saw me do this, but no one raised a squawk. My teachers thought it was a good joke, though the one who was a member of the Communist Party laughed the least. 

The smaller dark green embossed glass (#12), and the two small (#9 & #10) porcelain in the package, I obtained one day in July in the inner city of Baku (in the Azerbaijan Republic, on the Caspian Sea), where we went for a four-day vacation. I had spotted these insulators, unused, about twenty feet up on the walls of buildings, about two days earlier during a bus tour of the city. I made my way back to the location alone. I noticed that the glass insulators could be reached from a kind of courtyard wall. So I went into the yard and made friends with the people who lived there (mostly Muslims who nevertheless spoke Russian).

I showed one man my collection of photos of my insulators that I always carried with me. He was even more impressed that I was an American. He guided me up a rickety stairway to the proper place for scaling the wall, the top being only six feet above the stair landing at that point. He gave me a boost. I perched on the wall and reached around the corner of the house which abutted it at that point. I managed to unscrew two insulators; one was broken inside. I attracted a few glances from the busy street below. Back down in the courtyard, my guide insisted on washing my insulators for me at the well. He also stirred up his whole household to get a clothes-brush for me, which he then used himself to brush my hardly mussed jeans. I thanked him and split.

Two blocks away I spotted a really strange porcelain job high up a wall. (I do believe those two smallest porcelain in the package -- those types -- are unique to the USSR.) It was really up there. But twenty feet away was a parked truck. I went up to the driver, told him I was a crazy American who liked izolyatory -- and would he mind rolling his truck down the hill -- twenty feet and pulling up on the sidewalk right next to the building. No sooner said than done. I skipped up on the roof of the cab, reached for a convenient pipe, moved up four more feet, found a place for my feet, and managed to unscrew that little mother before I fainted from nervousness and exhaustion. A rag had been wrapped around the iron pin be fore the insulator had been screwed on. It was really on there tight.

By now I was beginning to draw a bit of a crowd -- but no cops. Mostly children. I passed out nickels to the children, who rapidly came to adore me by the dozens. (I had been saving two rolls of nickels for just such a day as this.) Like the pied piper of Hamlin, I strolled around the narrow lanes of old Baku with my noisy pack of disciples -- each of them pointing out to me the most likely insulators to steal and inviting me to check out yet another alley that was certain to lead to El Dorado: the mother lode. Some giant purple insulator made 120 years ago by serfs. But no such luck. I could find no more exposed glass of any type. 

Also, time was running out; I had to get back to the hotel to catch a bus for the airport. So I settled on another weird small porcelain, again high up on a wall, unfortunately on a rather busy street. Again I was obliged to pester a truck driver for help. Again I was assisted in my thievery. (All for the sake of brotherhood, hands across the sea.) Now as I climbed up the building, I was much more exposed. And there was a really big crowd. After I got the pieces, I leaped down from the truck nonchalantly and prepared to head for the nearest trolley stop. Then, I saw that a bus had stopped dead in front of me and was blocking traffic. The driver motioned to me to get inside. I figured that I would be taken to the nearest police station and that I would miss my plane besides. But no. All the driver wanted to know (and the passengers as well) was what ... I was doing. I told them -- and again passed around my insulator pictures. Far out. Very strange American. 

The upshot was that we all made friends and the driver insisted on going out of his route to take me to the hotel so that I wouldn't miss my plane. My various specimens of the larger very common porcelain (#6) type, I had also found mostly in Baku -- near a small village in desert terrain some distance from the city, about a mile from the seashore where we went swimming one day. I found a whole line of poles that were down. There were plenty of insulators for the taking, but all that same boring type. I took about 25 back to Moscow with me anyway. It was hot out there getting those insulators, about 110 degrees or more.

At customs they decided to send my bags through some sort of X-ray line. I thought I was dead -- but nobody said a word to me. Owing to delays and changes in Night plan, that handbag was X-rayed in about six different airports before I got home. Not until Cincinnati, at about 11 pm, did one of the many X-ray guards wonder what they were looking at. A young woman there asked me: "What.. you got in there anyway?" I took out the insulators one by one and showed them to her. She shook her head in wonderment. End of story. As for the small Russian glass, I have one embossed green, and one unembossed dark olive. No duplicates. If I get another, I'll save it for you. 

Sincerely, 
Don