Šiauliai

The young MP came over, holstered automatic on hip, to inquire what it was I was doing approaching the base entrance, and was unsatisfied with my suggestion that I’d just turn around and be on my way. I ended up having a conversation more thought-provoking than the various sights I’d seen. I’ve no photos to post. I was glad to get to the airfield. M-4s were based here. The guard probed me for what I was looking to find, what it was I was interested in seeing, alert as he was to protect NATO secrets. I’m not sure I could communicate to him, or the extent to which he believed the truth, that I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the NATO presence. I tried to tell him as best I could that when I was a child like other American children I lived to some extent in daily terror of nuclear war with The Soviets. I remember reading Heinlein and Bradbury’s stories, remembered the imagining of the evil behind the iron curtain. Šiauliai was one of the places where death might take off from. This guy not much older than my younger son knew of what I spoke only from the stories of his elders. He complimented me on my Lithuanian, which I thought was sweet, since his English was obviously better. His perspective, that „everybody knew“ about the Soviet presence at this base, when I doubt I could find a San Franciscan who’d heard of the city; when I said I found Vilnius a little small his initial honest surprise with this assessment until he corrected himself, „you are coming from the United States“, are not images I would be able to capture in a photograph. I’m not a photographer.