DON FIENE TAKES A TRIP TO THE USSR

My column in the July '84 issue of Crown Jewels included a letter from Don Fiene (Knoxville, TN), which said he would be going to Russia in June. When he returned, he wrote me this delightful account of his travels, and, of course, the inevitable insulator finds!

He made good pencil sketches of the insulators for me, which is exactly what we need to make accurate drawings of them. But I did not think these would print too well, so I tried to trace over them with ink. Unfortunately, they don't look as good as his sketches did, but at least you can get the general idea! He encouraged me to share his letter with you.

Dear Marilyn,

I returned from the USSR on June 23 (left NYC June 9). I led a group of 40 people and had little time for really serious insulator searching. Still, I picked up a few items. I never found the mother lode, though, and that's all the more disappointing, as I was able to get the stuff I had through customs with no hassle. I'll comment on what I found in the order they are described on the enclosed sheets.

The only glass piece I obtained came from a small village on the shore of Lake Baikal in far eastern Siberia. This lake is the deepest, coldest, clearest, largest, oldest lake on the planet; it contains 20 percent of the earth's fresh water. It is located 3100 miles east of Moscow and a few hundred miles north of Ulan Bator, the capital of Outer Mongolia. We traveled there four days on the Trans-Siberian Express, which, so far as I could tell, was electrified the entire distance. This means that I saw no fewer than 8 billion insulators en route -- many of them quite exotic looking glass power types in interesting shades of light blue and green. Most were porcelain, of course. We made about 15 stops, most only 5 minutes, but five dragged on for 15 minutes. I hiked into the train yards as far as I dared go, but never saw the first insulator within stealing distance. I might mention, though, for the edification of train buffs, that we passed through two smallish towns where part of the train yards were given over to storage areas for steam locomotives. The only one of these I saw seemed to have at least 100 engines. We saw no working steam engines the entire trip. Probably these have all been replaced -- the last but recently -- by electric and diesel. (But you never know; perhaps a few are still hanging on in the far north.)

Our train let us off at Irkutsk, a major city at the foot of Lake Baikal. I thought the place would have about fifty log cabins and a grocery store, but it turned out to be a large and beautiful metropolis with a population of 550,000. This is at the latitude of Labrador. The people are quite handsome and very tall -- most unusual because Russians are short and Orientals are short, yet, while Russians dominate, pure Mongols are common and people of Eurasian mixture are to be seen everywhere. Whatever the secret of the health and beauty of the Siberian people, they have had 300 years to develop their own style. That's how long ago Irkutsk was founded! Now and then I could see some similarities to Montana -- but Montana is just too new a place. It has no cultural depth and no true sense of racial integration. And it's too far south.

We arrived at Irkutsk around noon, about 8 hours late. (Track repairs held us up.) We were all very tired. Four days of light sleep, no bathing, and too much booze had taken their toll. As one last digression, I think I'll mention that I shared my four bed compartment with a Swede, a Russian worker who helped lay the recent gas pipeline to Europe, and a remarkably beautiful young Russian woman named Julia. (I forget the names of the other jerks.) 

As soon as our late lunch was over, around 3 p.m., I grabbed a "river tram" (hydrofoil boat) and crossed the Angara River to a stop close to a railroad. I then walked the tracks of the main Siberian line for two hours and failed to find one lousy insulator; nor were there any interesting items on the nearby poles. All I had to show for my walk were two types of date nail and four dates: three in the 1950's and 1971. Also, I noticed track maintenance was good; all the spikes were in all their holes, and none were loose.

The next day we toured the lake by boat and returned by bus. The bus stopped at a village. We were given an hour to stroll through the place and check it out. All the houses were built of logs, but they were large and comfortable-looking. Most had TV antennas. There was no running water. Pumps were situated on the unpaved streets about every 300 yards. There was electricity. Standard voltage in the USSR is 220. Lines coming into the houses were tied to very small insulators. One such insulator I spotted in the local store. I thought is was a fence insulator, as it measured only I" high by 3/4" wide. But later I saw one on a house. I bought one as a souvenir. It cost me 3 kopeks (about 4 cents). Most of the poles carried only porcelain insulators (white); but there was some glass -- and some of it looked heart-breakingly old, of a bubbly, translucent cobalt color. But the poles were high and I was afraid to climb anyway. I wandered through several mini-dumps at the edge of the village and found zero. Finally all the teenagers in the village were let out of school and came marching up to us to demand souvenirs. I chatted with about six of them, explained to them (and pointed out to them) what insulators were, and said I wanted a glass one. I would pay. They all collected foreign paper. So I agreed to pay one greenback. They ran off in various directions. After ten minutes none had returned. By now the hour was up. The bus was waiting. It was 1/2 mile away. It would look bad if the leader were to hold the bus up (yet again). On the other hand, the bus would not leave without the leader, either. Finally, I saw one of the little Siberian lads in the distance, running like crazy. He came up to me and said that only one person had found an insulator and he would be along soon. I almost went back to the bus, but finally I saw the Messenger to Garcia raising dust. He handed me the insulator somewhat sheepishly. The whole back of the skirt was broken out. But I gave him the dollar anyway. I was relieved to learn later that the piece would stand by itself. (If you blow on it hard, though, it falls over.) And that's it for glass.

In Moscow I looked constantly for insulators. It is by no means a waste of time to do so. Moscow is not New York. It is not all paved over. Greenery abounds. Footpaths and alleys are everywhere. Once when I went to a bookstore I noticed that in a kind of courtyard across the street some workmen were digging trenches, perhaps for a water line. I poked among the piles of dirt and found first of all (among hundreds of porcelain fragments) a common white porcelain type (U-1654). It was near mint. (Though this is the same U-number as five others I have, the shape and the dimensions, to say nothing of marking, are sufficiently different so that I do not look upon it as a duplicate. Still, I could possibly be talked out of it for an interesting piece of glass.) Poking around further, I found two fairly large pieces from a sizeable brown insulator. Finally, I picked up an elegant strain insulator of white porcelain, with a 1959 date. Unfortunately, it was wrapped about with a double length of 3/16" iron wire that extended a foot or more from either end. It was imperative that the wire be removed right then. (I had little hope of finding a hacksaw at the hotel.) Of course I was running very late, but I walked far back into the courtyard area, looking for the tools I needed. Finally someone showed me the trailer where the workmen kept their tools. I went up to one of the workers, who was eating his lunch, and explained that I was a weird American who collected insulators and I had to have a hacksaw pronto! He and his buddy had had no truck with Americans before. While they sawed my wire (which did not yield easily) they sought my views about the Olympic Games and world peace. And we all agreed that the Games should be free of politics.

We arrived at Leningrad (flying the whole incredible distance from Irkutsk) around 8 p.m. But it was hours before we were ready to hit the streets. And of course we were all hideously fatigued as usual. Our hotel was way out on the outskirts of town, on the Finnish Gulf. It was a nice new hotel, built for the 1980 Olympics. Around 11 p.m. I walked out onto the esplanade at the rear of the hotel. I had the idea that I would just sort of sit on the sea wall, sip my beer, and savor the midnight sun -- and then split for my room and sleep. But as I sat there surveying the scene, I noticed that to the west of the hotel a vast construction project was in progress. I detected a faint aroma of insulators in the offshore breeze. So I set off for the west and hoped for the best.

The construction project was a vast effort to supply sewers many years late for the hotels and new housing in the area. Twenty feet separated the top of the highest dune from the bottom of the lowest trench. It was all land-fill. I cheerfully explored fifty years of Leningrad Middens. I found pieces of large power insulators 3 feet long and 1 foot wide; and little fuses one inch around (one of which I took home). There were plenty of destroyed TV sets. Lots of metal, wire, glass. I picked up numerous bottles, finally kept three smallish ones that I stuffed in my pockets. They were perhaps 20-30 years old, but had the shape of American bottles maybe 70 years old. As I walked along, now dropping down into a trench, now scouting the shore right into the water of the Baltic Sea, I observed one thing above all: in all that breadth and depth there was almost no plastic. Not a Clorox or an All bottle anywhere. Is that good or bad? Who knows? The entire USSR seems to have avoided the plastic age. For them, it's all heavy, expensive glass. Avoiding plastic means no Scotch tape, either. Soviet offices use big pots of glue, usually hot, in which a brush permanently swims. Actually, something like Scotch tape does exist, but it is not common. Neither are staples common. The most common implement for fixing two or three pieces of paper together is a common straight pin. As if that were not enough of a problem, from the American point of view, there is an apparently permanent paper shortage in the USSR. Often packages are wrapped for mailing in thin cloth rather than paper. And in public toilets, including those on trains, paper is almost never provided or else it gets stolen. For an American in the USSR all of this is more or less quaint -- a kind of curious excursion into the past. For many Russians it is an irritation. They see no virtue in being quaint.

But in all that land-fill mess I found only one insulator (see No. 3) -- a type of strain insulator used in anchoring trolley line support wires to poles and buildings. It is of dingy white porcelain, shaped like a beer mug without handle or bottom and with walls 1/2" thick. The inside is filled with gray cement; protruding from each end in the center is a bolt and nut. I found this heavy item right around midnight; the sun was just below the horizon and the sky was very light. It was the longest day of the year -- June 21. I kept on with my dump picking for another hour or so. I finally picked up a green enameled metal chamber pot to hold my loot in.

By the time we went through customs at the airport two days later, I had added three Russian Pepsi Cola bottles to my potty full of glass and crockery. The customs inspector hardly knew what to make of my garbage. When he learned that I actually collect insulators, he rolled his eyes in amazement. He poked around in my suitcase and found a Soviet Army belt and Navy belt which he confiscated. This seemed to make him happy. He waved me on through with all my glass, ceramic and iron junk.

I was vastly disappointed that I found so few insulators in the USSR. I want to go back as soon as possible and see if I can't score a big find. At least I know I will have a good chance of getting the things through customs. When I brought out the earlier batch of 25 pieces (on another trip), my baggage was not searched, so I didn't know if I was getting away with anything or not.

Hope you found some good stuff at the National.
Sincerely,
Don Fiene

Similar to CD 540 though smaller. My piece is broken after the 7-. Obviously this is the date. Opposite on back is the mold no. 50.

PORCELAIN

	Mark on top of white porcelain U-1654 type. Lt. brown underglaze, almost impossible to read. Seems to be symbols rather than letters.
	White Porcelain Strain Insulator Mark is stamped in black on unglazed bottom. The top letters are partly illegible -- don't make sense -- probably an abbreviation.  The next four lines mean: Electro- 1.  Factory Insulator 2. Electro- Factory 3. Insulator 4. 1959-year

White porcelain insulator with brownish gray tint. It was used at the point where support wires for overhead trolley car and trolley bus lines came in to a pole or building. The underglaze marking is in dark green. The letters are probably an abbreviation for "Government Transport". The insulator's interior is filled with gray cement.

Brown porcelain insulator similar to U-1278. It has been reconstructed from two fairly large fragments. Fragment #1 gives virtually full height, shows height of inner skirt and indicates extent of threaded hole, which (even though the top of the insulator is missing) extends up so far that there is almost certainly no cable groove in the top. The diameter of the threads, inner skirt and length of skirt are estimated. Fragment #2 contains 1/3 of the base circle.