The rusty old screen door slammed shut behind my older brothers’ noisy footsteps, jarring my little brother and me awake.
It was Friday, February 22, 1980 — a typical winter afternoon in Long Beach, cool, lazy, hazy, and sunny. We’d taken our ritual afternoon nap, basking in the shafts of sunlight that peeked through the transoms of my father’s auto shop.
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Those were hard times, in every sense of the word.
Our mother had drunk herself to death, literally, just over two years before.
Our father LOVED that crazy woman, oh fuck yeah he did. He still wears his wedding ring, to this day, 39 years after she died.
He shouldered the loss well enough in public, but he just broke down at home. Far too many of my early memories of my father — the strongest, most badass man I’ve ever known — involve him practically drowning in his own tears.
Money didn’t grow on trees, nor was it thick on the ground. By the grace of God, we had a roof over our heads, and food in our stomachs, but not much beyond that — and those were the years when even my oldest brothers were still too young to help out in the shop.
As for our country, we weren’t doing much better as a whole. Stagflation, “crisis of confidence”, Iran-Contra, hostage crisis, those were the words that drifted into my consciousness from the talking heads when I was a little girl.
1980 was hard times.
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“Where’s daddy? Why’s the door closed?”
The big overhead door was rolled down, and the dusty main floor was dark and empty — at a little after 3:00 in the afternoon. Taking my little bro by the hand, I followed my older brothers into the kitchenette on the other side of the shop.
I found my father huddled around the old VHF television, with the two men with whom he shared the business.
They were watching … hockey.
I was 5 years old. I didn’t understand hockey. Neither I nor my own father — a Mexican desert rat — had seen a snowflake in our entire lives. Ice was something that rusty old machines dispensed into fountain drinks. The players came from surreal places like Madison, Duluth, and Bowling Green — which I recognized from my road atlases, but which might as well have been the North Pole.
But, I knew right away who the good guys were.
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My father’s colleagues — one originally from Armenia, the other from Azerbaijan — had been Soviet Air Force cadets.
Both of them had lost uncles to the Purge — and neither of them would ever forget it, or let each other forget it.
One day, they finally got a trainer aircraft all to themselves. They suited up, said their goodbyes, flew into international waters, crash-landed into the sea, drifted helplessly between life and death… and clambered aboard a US Coast Guard vessel.
Two weeks later, they were on dry land at the port of Long Beach. Shaken, destitute, with nothing and with nobody but each other… but alive.
And FREE.
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There was no fucking way we were going to win that game.
The Soviets had won all the previous games in the tournament, by scores like 17-4 and 16-0.
The odds against the Americans were, literally, a thousand to one.
Literally.
Any fool who’d been fool enough to bet a straight dollar on the Yanks would win $1000 if we could pull this one out.
Our team was a bunch of wide-eyed college kids. We’d gotten smacked 9-2 by the same Soviet squad just a couple weeks prior, in an exhibition match.
And yet… when I opened my bleary eyes up, it was the middle of the third period, and the game was tied.
3-3.
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My brothers and I were a noisy, riotous, irreverent bunch. Always were. Still are. But, that day, we knew not to say a word.
We knew we were seeing… something.
Something that brought people together.
Something bigger than petty differences.
Something bigger than yo’ mama jokes, bigger than old family rivalries.
Armenia and Azerbaijan were — and still are — bitter blood rivals.
Back in the old country, under other circumstances, my father’s partners might have tried to kill each other over a few square feet of land in Nagorno-Karabakh.
And here they were — holding hands, with my father.
Three illegal immigrants, to the land of opportunity.
Watching a hockey game.
I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, except fuck this and fuck that.
Fuck the Russians.
Those two definitely hated the Russians.
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And, suddenly, we were WINNING. The impossible was possible.
My father was happy… and at ease.
He looked free of worry.
For the first time, he seemed — at least momentarily — relieved of the pain of his loss.
Tears ran down his cheeks again, for the thousandth time, but for once they were tears of joy.
His partners lifted me and my brothers off the ground, whirled us around, and planted kisses on our foreheads with vodka-soaked mouths.
“Do you believe in miracles?”
Hell yeah I do.
In that one room alone, there were enough miracles to make a believer out of anyone.
Three men who’d overcome immeasurable tragedy, and cheated death, to come to this country — with nothing — and build successful new lives.
Five kids, in the ‘hood, with a single father, who raised all of us to be upstanding, productive, good people.
Oh, and…
You could just call up and order new car parts, when old ones broke down.
For the two ex-Soviet boys, THAT was a miracle, in and of itself.
The fact that you could simply pick up a phone and order stuff.
Without government intrusion.
And without waiting 16 months.
Was a MIRACLE.
Capitalism works, people.
Do NOT take it for granted.
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I’ve watched these highlights at least ten thousand times, and, they still make me tear up, every time.
Some things NEVER get old. #AmericaFuckYeah
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