I spent the 1987-1988 school year on sabbatical in Moscow. I was with a wonderful group leader, Mrs. Baker, a professor of Russian from Middlebury College, and an equally wonderful group of fellow grad students. Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestoika reached their very height that year, and many exciting things happened to all of us. It was like watching an empire begin to collapse, not over the course of centuries but in one nine month period. I could tell story after story, and I will eventually, but I would like to begin with a tale about empty beer cans discarded in the attic of the American Embassy in Moscow.
By mid-May of 1988, all the snow from a winter that began right on cue during the first week of November had melted, the weather had become sunny and warm, and the smell of spring was in the air all over the city. President Reagan came to town for a summit with Premier Gorbachev, and most of the Americans in our group got jobs with the networks. I got a job with NBC. I was paid a $100.00 a day in cash. The days were long, but I would have done the job for free and worked even longer than the twelve hours or more I often put in. It was that exciting an opportunity for me. I did anything and everything I was asked to do. For a couple of days before the summit, we stocked two rooms at the Rossia Hotel with case after case of beer for the staff. We unloaded thousands and thousands of pounds of television equipment. We did a lot of "gophering" and heavy lifting.
The Today Show set was on the balcony of the Rossia Hotel with Red Square and the Kremlin as its magnificent backdrop. Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley hosted the program at that time, and they shared duties. Mr. Gumbel was in Moscow, and Ms. Pauley anchored the show from New York. I wound up working on the Today Show set for Bryant Gumbel. If a light was in his eye, I would tell the Soviet technician, "The light's bothering Bryant. Could you move it?" If Mr. Gumbel needed a quick cup of coffee, I would get it for him. One day, I was given a few hundred dollars worth of rubles, I went out in the NBC van and waited in a long old-style Soviet line to buy twenty some some table fans for the staff.
On another occasion, NBC needed footage of Muscovites standing in front of glass displays reading Pravda while they were waiting for a bus. Although they did this all the time, we could not find anybody doing it when we were out looking that day. Finally, my boss asked me to run out and ask some Muscovites to go up to the display cases and pretend they were reading the newspaper. I did. Now, when I hear occasional stories about the news being staged, I know that sometimes it is, although what I was asked to do was very innocuous. Later, I was also able to do some more important work when the summit finally began, but this story is about something else.
I spent a lot of time laying a lot of a cable, countless thousands of yards of it, with three great British engineers. We laid cable all over the Rossia Hotel, at Moscow State University, and at the American Embassy. It was hard work, but the engineers made it a lot of fun, and it could also be fascinating. To lay the cable for President Reagan's address to the students of Moscow State University, we had to enter the Dean's office. Over a sofa hung a portrait of Premier Gorbachev. When I moved the sofa to run cable behind it, there were three portraits behind it of the three previous Soviet leaders, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. Out with the old and in with the new! They didn't save the portraits of their beloved leaders. They didn't even bother to throw the portraits out! It was so typical of the old Soviet Union. So 1984-like, so disrespectful, to be sure, but so down right lazy and comical, as well. I asked the Dean if I could take the portraits. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yes." I still have them.
One hot day, we found ourselves on the roof of the American Embassy laying cable and checking for sound. You had to go through the attic to access the roof. The entry way was little bigger than a large window. You had to see that attic to believe it! I am hardly a neat nick, but that attic was one hell of a big mess! Christmas decorations, planks of wood, books and magazines strewn all over the place, turned-over furniture, and every piece of junk imaginable wound up in that attic. It looked as if it hadn't been organized in decades! It was a real obstacle course.
Soon enough, the engineers got thirsty and asked me if I would run down to the kitchen and get them each a beer. I made my way through the obstacle course of an attic, walked down a beautiful flight of stairs and knocked on the open door of the enormous kitchen. No one answered. I knocked again, this time louder and harder. "Excuse me," I said several times. Finally, I walked in. Immediately to my left was a large restaurant style refrigerator. I opened it up and saw two cases of Heineken. I grabbed three cans and made a quick exit.
Immediately, paranoia set in. "My God," I thought, "I've just stolen three cans of beer from my own Embassy! What if I get caught? What kind of trouble could I get into? What if I get thrown out of the country at the end of my stay and by my own government?" It was all absurd, of course. I don't know why I was so scared, but all sorts of crazy notions went through my mind as I walked down the hall and up the stairs. I knew there were cameras all over the building, and that must have had something to do with my great unease. Earlier that day, someone had walked outside and asked us very nicely to wear our press credentials around our necks where they could be easily seen on the monitors. Remember, I was carrying three cans of beer. My backpack was up on the roof. I couldn't put them in my pockets. There was nowhere to hide them. I tried to walk as fast and hold them as inconspicuously as I could, but they were there for any of those cameras to pick up.
I got back up on the roof, but I was still just about as anxious as I had ever been in my life. I will tell you again that it was crazy, but it is the truth. It seemed like an eternity until the last engineer put his empty can down on the roof. The only other time each second had gone by like that in sheer agony for me was during high school gym class!
The very instant the last engineer put his beer can down, I scooped them up without a word and made my way into the attic. In a corner, I found a big, dusty sheet of plywood. I picked it up, and I disposed of the cans right there. I made sure that I put them far enough in the corner so that they would never work their way out from under that big plank of wood. Instant relief set in! I had pulled off The Great Beer Can Caper of May 1988 and was greatly relieved to have that particular adventure behind me.
I have often wondered since then just when and how those cans were finally discovered. I am sure that one day somebody said to a couple of grad students or low level employees at the Embassy, "That attic is a real s**t hole. Would you go up there and clean it out?" I can only imagine what they thought when they picked up that sheet of plywood and saw three crunched, dusty old cans of Heineken underneath it. Every other piece of junk in that attic made sense. There was no mystery as to how it wound up there. But three empty beer cans in some far corner of the place? I don't know. They probably still occasionally wonder how on earth those cans got there. I am sure they figured that there must be a story behind it. They will never know the story, but now you do.
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