In 1998 a small band of Soviet emigres began their silent march on the Pocono Mountains. An area that we would lovingly call The Russian Hamptons.
This is the story of how my family became unsuspecting agents in a small town cold war.
At this point I was an elementary school senior with a handful of minor criminal tendencies. I ran multiple 5th grade gambling rings. My collection of Goosebumps books had grown to over a dozen, mostly earned from my enterprise. The Rangers just signed Wayne Gretzky. I even started wearing Old Spice deodorant, the smell of which still reminds me of puberty. And even though my sister was on the way, and my days as an only child were numbered, I was flying high.
Even R Kelly was still flying high, my boombox playing:
…I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away…
Then, our phone rings.
Back then a ringing phone was cause for suspicion. What happens on the home, stays in the home, I was taught from the old country. If a stranger calls the house line, “thank you we are not interested,” is the only sanctioned response.
So the phone rings, a stranger calls, and imagine my shock when dad doesn’t use the line. Instead, he starts divulging his name and other state secrets. I think the call is something about buying property in the countryside. I am confused.
A few Ranger’s losses later and we’re being shuttled in a van with 4 other Russian families, bound for the glorious Pocono mountains.
The van radio plays 4 non blondes:
And I say, hey-ey-ey
Hey-ey-ey
I said “Hey, a-what’s going on?”
I’m sitting quietly as words like дача (dacha) and усадьба (usad’ba) are being tossed around in a buzz of excitement. I later learned that they were nostalgic words for old Russians, referencing small country properties that families would hold outside of the city. A little weekend garden for the proletariat, sometimes with a cottage.
In America such opulence could be possible too!, sang the shuttle salespeople. In fact, for the low price of a 30 year mortgage, you could even have electricity and indoor plumbing. What a country.
We get to the community. A gated woodland with five lakes, three swimming pools and two tennis courts, promised the marketing pamphlet.
Half of the houses are three decades old but the other half are built within the last two years, almost exclusively by Russians. This quiet American development was at the start of a coming culture war. Red Dawn in the Pocono Mountains.
That day, there was one lakefront plot for sale. It cost more than 11 of my dad’s Mercury Grand Marquises. The property was a long wooded hill that eventually opened out to a lake. There was no house on the land, not yet at least. But this was better than buying a finished house, the salespeople promised. They partnered with a contractor that could build anything for us! In fact they could take us to meet him right after this – he’d even treat us to free pizza. What a country.
As we stood on the gravel separating paved road from Dacha dream, the telemarketers had a handshake deal and a deposit. We were now proud American landowners.
It didn’t matter that the property lines were a bit exaggerated, construction costs downplayed and the deed didn’t technically give ownership of the land. In that moment, the Soviet resistance grew by 3.5 people. What a country.
As we were loading up into the van, a local neighborhood boy ran across our property to cut to the lake. My dad ran out and screamed, in his glorious Russian accent, “get the hell off my property!”
A taste of things to come.
Somewhere in the distance Coolio sings,
Keep spendin’ most our lives livin’ in the gangsta’s paradise
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