The Defection to a Delicatessen | Eastern NC Now

By:  Bill Lee

 Saturday morning’s things were quiet in my small town, it was nice to walk down to the record store and check things out.  If there was anything in the dollar been worth a darn, I might scrap up the change to buy an album or CD.  Sergei and Tatiana ran a delicatessen right next door to the record store, named Tatiana’s.  I would go in there and purchase a sandwich.  I was holding a couple of blues records under my arm along with a Beatles CD.  Sergei and Tatyana were both working that day.  They commented on the fact that I loved music.  So I asked them.” Do you like rock ‘n roll?” they said, “No, we love it.” 

As I continued to converse with them, I made a comment that they must not have had many musical choices when they were living in Russia.  That is when Sergei and Tatyana told me the story of their defection.  I was all ears and eyes as the story unfolded and the plot thickened.   According to Sergei and Tatyana, they listened to the Beatles all the time.  They were lying in bed thinking of America; thinking of music, listening to the Beatles quietly or they would have been arrested.  As they laid on their bed talking and dreaming of a new life, Sergei and Tatyana reflected on the fact that they wanted to move to America.  They had talked about it many times before.  Every time they thought of a new beginning.  It brought so many mixed emotions; having to leave their homeland, their family and to start a new life in a country with no guarantees only a promise, like one of today’s TV commercials.  They finally decided to defect with the Beatles as their soundtrack.  They defected to America.  And the music was all they needed to catapult them.  After they moved to the United States of America, they had some moderate success. They raised one child who had two more children.   The couple live and work in the United States as citizens to this day. 

The power of art can change the world.  I thought that was a pretentious statement but that statement is true and will forever be true.