By: David Spangler
As a 501 (c)(3) operation, The RE Store has long had a mutually beneficial opportunity to work with countless agencies and organizations that help people needing job skills or are starting their lives anew. In The RE Store’s infancy, this community relationship was more informal, but today it continues as our CJTP (Community Jobs Training Program), currently headed by The RE Store’s Tyler Detrick. These volunteers, interns, and trainees of all ages and backgrounds have spent days or years with us, depending on the individual. When I think about the constant workload of keeping a salvage retail operation like The RE-Store rolling along since its beginning, I wonder where we would be without them all. I often forget that I, too, started out as a RE Store volunteer.
What follows is my recollection of two RE Store trainees I will always remember.
It was the spring of 1995
When we busy-bees of The RE Store were introduced to two middle-aged Ukrainian brothers, new to the U.S. and assigned to us through a language integration program to improve their limited English (I do not remember the organization or agency). Since I do not have their contact info or permission to print their names, I will call them Dmitry and Yury. Our partnership with them was noteworthy to me from the start.
First, through these two gentlemen, the dissolution of the Soviet Union on the other side of the globe had finally reached our little city of Bellingham and our tiny RE Store. Secondly, I was fascinated that these brothers had experienced their entire lives in the totalitarian Soviet system, a topic of interest for me at that time. Lastly, I imagined what a culture shock their transition into America must have been for them both. They were starting over with their families in a new, strange land after living their entire lives in another world. I imagined their challenges and the extended family and friends they must have left behind. With all of this in mind, I had great compassion for them and an abundance of kindness and patience to offer. I believe that all of us on staff felt similarly towards them.
Though their English was limited, they were eager to learn and a great help to us as we got them going on a laundry list of needs around the store. Moving, cleaning, and denailing merchandise—the list was long. They also joined us on pick-ups and salvage jobs. I remember them as steady and tireless. But, as they tackled all the low-skilled duties that needed to be done, I assumed they had a wealth of higher skills and put myself in their shoes of being directed by someone like me, less experienced and half their age. I wondered what their careers were back in their homeland. I was reminded recently that one of them had been an experienced diesel mechanic. Still, despite our never-ending, entry-level tasks, they came in smiling, ready to work each day. They were the kindest, most gracious folks I had ever had the pleasure to work with.
Since every shift at The RE Store was hell on work clothes and sweaty, I had learned to dress like a trainwreck, arriving at work in tired, toil-stained T-shirts, my old, fishy seafood-plant sweaters, and dingy Carhartt pants with duct-taped holes. There was never a day when my clothing escaped without another snag, rip, or stain. Dmitry, on the other hand, always came to work looking sharp and respectable. After each day of various grungy, jagged duties, he left his shift of hard work with as much dignity as when he arrived, not a hole, rip, or stain anywhere on his attire. How he managed that, I will never know.
When I began working alongside Dmitry and Yury, I was twenty-seven years old, unmarried, and without children. My lack of urgency collided with their cultural values. “No wife??,” they’d ask me, confused. To them, my being in my prime with no wife and no children was not good. But I wanted nothing to do with it. I was not only disinterested in raising a family, but I was also overjoyed to salvage buildings, be creative, hike, bike, and travel. When I think about how much they wanted to steer me into their version of male maturity, I can imagine how consternating this must have been for them. After all, what was I waiting for?
Sometimes, a culturally philosophical discussion on other matters would unfold.
Yury and I were moving used appliances around in our warehouse one day when he, perplexed by America’s obsession with automatic dishwashers, asked me why the appliances existed. I had always taken them for granted, but not Yury. “Ah, yes…Well, you see…” I began, but whatever my answer was, it clearly failed to answer his question. He said, “I don’t know…in Ukraine…we eat, we clean with our hands…dry…put away dishes…no dishwasher. It’s good.” Then, dismissively shaking his head with a wince and a wave of his hand, he said, “No need for a dishwasher…” I smiled. Not only did I wash my few dishes by hand, but I was also aware that, from many cultural perspectives and values, dishwashers could be seen as unnecessary, expensive, resource-intensive machines that only waste valuable kitchen space if, that is, they were even available. So, to him, this “magic box” was utter nonsense. He shook his head in bewilderment, and we returned to our tasks.
About fifteen years later, when my wife, Nicole, and I, both working full-time, began raising two children, making dirty dishes went into full-throttle overdrive. With no extended family to help us cook and clean, we ran that dishwasher day and night. Even today, I still yearn for my once-simpler life of washing by hand. I figure that our dishwasher still has about another 4000 loads of dishes to do before my kids leave home to fill their own kitchen sinks with greasy filth.
Former Store Manager Bruce Odom recently shared another small memory of Dmitry and Yury.
It was summer, and the three were heading back from a rare salvage in Eastern Washington with a load of salvaged school materials when the RE Store truck overheated somewhere in the Cascade Mountains. There they were, an unlikely trio with an unlikely load of goods, the truck hood up, and a cloud of steam rising from the radiator. In the background, the snow-capped peaks of the North Cascades rose to the sky. Yury and Dmitry hopped out to troubleshoot the issue. Once the truck cooled down, they used water from a nearby stream to augment the missing fluids and were back on their merry way. I can only assume that buying a few jugs of coolant as soon as possible was on their minds, and apparently, they made it to Bellingham in one piece.
After two years of tackling the store’s ongoing needs
and salvaging houses with us in the field, Dmitry and Yury’s term with The RE Store concluded. They moved on with their lives, stopping into the store over the years at our newer locations to shop and say hello to those of us still on staff who remembered them, and, as more staff moved on, eventually only to me, the only one left whom they knew from those early times. It was always nice to see them. With each visit, they inquired about my marital status, and the answer was always the same: Unmarried and without kids.
But then that wondrous day arrived when I told them I had finally married a wonderful woman I had been dating. But still no kids??…hmmmm. To them, I was still dangerously adrift. “Children are good,” Yury would say, firmly gripping my shoulder and looking into my eyes with that smile of fatherly concern. I wonder if my not speaking Ukrainian had graciously aborted the rest of what he wanted to say to me. Years later, with tremendous grins, they looked to the sky with the sincerest relief when I informed them I was the father of two children. In their eyes, I had FINALLY reached manhood; I had secured my place among the proud family men of the world.
I wish I could remember more of Dmitry and Yury. While there were many conversations with them as we rode around in our trucks, most of those moments have been lost to time. They must be in their seventies or eighties now. Despite our cultural differences and language barriers, I felt a bond with both of them and believe they have earned their place in the annals of The RE Store. Their help was appreciated, and I dearly hope we aided them in expanding their English vocabulary in our unusual work and made them feel welcome. As the volley of war in Ukraine continues, how even more poignant my long-ago experiences with them have become. I still think about them and how concerned they must be for their communities, culture, and all those they love back in Ukraine.
I salute them both.
