August 1995

A day i should celebrate. As Yolanda said. Yolanda is a friend of Mart-Maerz-Mârţ family. She and her son came in Oregon just before us. They stayed at the Marts just before us.

With borrwowed money and some little other money i had i went to Tarom with my yellow envelopes with the Green Card Lottery documents to buy two tickets to New York. They only had tickets for a Sunday at the beginning of August. Tarom flight nr. RO13, with a DC10 rented from a Belgium airline replacing the Airbus that crashed at Baloteşti. Captain Michel.

We arrived in New York on August 6. They kept us for 3 hours at the INS. Ron, my new friend from the plane was still waiting for us. With a native american guy. But i already made up my mind. We're still going to Oregon, at my ex-colleague Iulian Mârţ from Bacău. Ron was really disappointed. I still had $600 dollars. (There was a guy in the plane that said he had 100.000 dollars and needed help into smuggling those money through the customs but i refused).

I went to an airline counter in the airport. The price to Oregon, tickets bought on the spot was double of the $600 we had.

So the next day we took the Greyhound, as Iulian told me on the phone. After all i've read the book, Greyhound America. It should have been fun, we're gonna see lots of places. I remember the face of the woman at the counter when i bought the tickets. She gave me a look that in a way defined all that happened later. Bad sign.

Three days, two nights, 8 drivers, 5 buses. And the accident that almost happened that night when i and the guy behind the driver were the only people awake in the bus. The driver fell asleep the bus drifted on the freeway's shoulder and the black guy behind him gently taped him on the shoulder awaking him. He didn't panic and brought the bus back on the second lane. I remember something that really shocked me. He started laughing! Never stopped to catch his breath. Now i know why, the fear of being fired was bigger than his need for a comforting break.

On August 10 there we were, at the Greyhound station in Salem. Veronica was waiting for us, she took a little time from her work at that high tech silicon foundry (i forgot the company name, Wafertech i think), gave me a hug and another bad preview, whispering condescendingly in my ear: Gigi, Gigi... And then she took us directly to the Social Security office in Salem, watched everything we wrote in the applications, went with us at the counter and told the clerk that we're only temporary here... Although we had on the passports the stamp from INS at the airport that said "processed for I551", that is permanent residency... Which i told the clerk in plain English. The Mexican woman at the counter with the passports and applications in her hand looked at me, looked at Veronica, at me again then wrote something on the applications and two weeks later the cards came with the inscription "No right to work" on them. Veronica said something that she had a friend somewhere who's gone help us to get permits for work but the next day under some pretext i secretely went with Angela to Portland (fearing that they wouldn't let us) straight to the downtown Social Security office, i explained them the whole situation, they gave us new applications and in another two weeks new cards arrived, this time the right ones. And i was exercising my signature in English with the first name first on some yellow pieces of papers at the Marts so i could sing the cards...

And since then, daily, hourly and weekly hundreds, or thousands of similar situations... Yesterday i called Oregon State Bar Association asking for a referral. Every once in a while i do so. They asked me what i needed a lawyer for. And i told them, in any area of non-violent crime, i think there is no law that has not been broken in our regards.

And then yesterday at the WinCo store, this younger athletic tall blond guy standing at the other check stand checking in the same time so i could see him, with a 6 inch blade hanging on his waist belt. By the way, for many years after we came here WinCo was called Cub Foods...

And i just remembered while staying at the Marts, one day Veronica received the negative result for her breast cancer test...

And i really made my attempts to work around here... Until August 2000 i had 23 jobs... The longest one year... The shortest one day... Some of them are in the Resume with the link in this blog on the lower left area... But that is another story, hope i will be able to share it here...

08/14/2013:

1996, George's (Hirsovescu) House, Salem, Oregon. Cloe (wife), his daughter, Dan Onu, son-in-law (Boeing), Julian Mart, Angela.

Later i found out he was also associated was Associated with Aristotel Popescu, Iaşi, possibly with Peter Kiss, Portland Oregon.