Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A Short History Of Tractors In Ukraine


Part of this is very funny. Part of it is very sad. Another dysfunctional family. But, I learned some things about Russia and the Ukraine.

An eighty year-old man marries a young 30 something woman from the Ukraine. She needs the marriage to stay in England, he needs someone to look after him and he likes her bosoms. His two fifty-something daughters highly object. Conflict. Broken English conversations.

I actually liked this. I remembered the workers on my old house and perhaps gained a better understanding of their take on the West and Capitalism. Through the old man's memory of Ukraine's history and agriculture, the horrors of Stalin and the corrupt communist government is told. That's some of the sad stuff.

But a plump, platinum blond 30ish Ukrainian woman calling her 80 year old meal-ticket a "meanie husband with squishy-squashy-flippy-floppy" when he won't buy her a Rolls-Royce on his pension is pretty funny.

Not really, but some of the conversations and parenthetical comments are. What I'm taking away from it? A lot of who we are is a product of the times we are raised in. In this story, know-it-all socialist younger sister learns a lot about her fur coat sporting sister who experienced starvation and Stalin's collectivization. I think we'd all be nicer to each other when we understand the circumstances that shaped us.

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