The following events constitute one of the most bizarre events of my life. They occurred while a Czech friend of mine and I were passing through Serbia (in the former Yugoslavia), en route from the Czech Republic to Greece. American forces were fighting in other regions of Yugoslavia at the time, and potentially antagonistic feelings of the locals had been a concern of mine.
It's in the form of the email I sent to my parents after I got back to my home, to tell them what all had happened, though I have since done some editing and filled in some details. The accident happened on Saturday night, August 30, 1997.
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The most exciting part of our trip happened before we ever got to Greece. Honza and I had decided to go through Yugoslavia (including the Serbian region) since there's no war in the part of Serbia we would see, which is not near the Croat or Bosnian borders, and because we just didn't see any good alternate routes.
With any luck at all, I wouldn't need to identify myself in Yugoslavia as an American, except at the borders, and we filled up the tank just before entering so we could make it through to the Bulgarian border without even stopping for gas. We certainly wouldn't spend the night in-country. These concerns for myself, as an American in Serbia while American forces were fighting in parts of the country, turned out to be irrelevant to the actual events.
Our plan was to reach Sofia Bulgaria Saturday night, and worship with the church there on Sunday. We left Prague on Friday afternoon and spent that night with David and Teresa Bunting in Budapest. Spending too much time with Petr in the city center Saturday morning, we got away from Budapest after 1 pm, later than planned, and then crossing the border into Yugoslavia consumed more than an hour and a half of the late afternoon. So it was late Saturday evening when we reached the southeastern Yugoslav city of Nis. Actually just reaching the edge of Nis, we turned off the interstate-like highway onto a smaller road which would lead us southeast to the border, and then to Sofia, Bulgaria, our destination for the night. Honza was at the wheel.
About 15 miles after joining this highway, it had become narrow indeed, twisting through a 5-mile-long mountain pass which would lead from one plain to another, occasionally going through short tunnels where there wasn't room to put a strip of pavement on the side of the mountain. A very light rain had just begun, and it was something like 10:00 at night. I was testing Honza on the order of the OT books. Just getting past a delay (it took him a minute to remember Amos), we came around a right curve, valley on the right, mountain on the left, but there was just enough dirt beyond the guardrail on the right to support some tall bushy plants, just before the ground dropped off into dark oblivion, at the bottom of which runs the Nisava River. Those plants along the guard rail blocked our view of the road ahead until we were completely around the curve. Once around it, we both saw a truck stopped in our lane. I called out "Pozor!", the commonly used Czech equivalent of 'beware' or 'look out'. Honza hit the brakes hard, too hard, and locked the wheels. I could see him turning the steering wheel to the left, but with the car simply sliding on the wet pavement, we continued unwaveringly straight toward the truck. I wanted him to release the brakes so he could steer. I was yelling now, "Off the brakes! Off the brakes! Off the brakes!" Unfortunately, Honza's English isn't so advanced as to catch the meaning of my frantic idiom. He told me later that with each repetition of this phrase, the only part he had really understood was "brakes!" which of course conveyed the exact opposite of my wish.
Finally he must have let up though (or else the warm exhaust of the parked truck had dried the pavement immediately behind it), because suddenly the car lurched left just before reaching the truck, and for a brief one hundredth of a second, both of us thought we just might make it through. But having already turned the wheel all the way left, Honza had no chance to correct the steering, and we crashed into what was on the left side of the road. What was on the left side of the road, in a small pull-off space carved out of the side of the mountain, was a parked car and its owner standing outside of it, right where our car was aimed. The man didn't have time to jump out of the way, and we sandwiched him between our front end and his left front fender. As the moment of impact passed, and the cars separated once again, he was thrown over the hood of his car, but only after smashing our windshield with his extended hand. He was on his feet and hobbling around his car before we could even get out of ours. I'm glad he was a really big man, because I'm sure that's the only reason neither of his legs were broken. In fact, he thought at first that they were; when I asked, with gestures, if that were the case, he nodded yes, with an exasperated look on his face. Honza got out to see if he and his family needed help, while I scrambled to find paper and pen to write down the license number of the truck, whose driver seemed to be preparing to get in and move, away from the scene I thought. As it turned out, he only moved it to another small pull off area some 100 yards down the road. By the time I recorded the tag number and got out of our car, the man's wife in the back seat of the parked car was in shock, crying and wailing. When the force of our car moved theirs several feet sideways, her head had gone through the left rear door window, causing cuts and bruises, and on top off this she had no doubt seen our car hit her husband just before the impact into their car.
A passing car stopped for a moment, then pulled away after apparently agreeing to call police. When the police arrived some length of time later, one of them interviewed all three drivers. I watched as he interviewed the man we hit, and he seemed to be describing the stopped truck at one point. And of course Honza described the stopped truck, although communication was very difficult since none of the locals spoke English or Czech. Serbo-Croatian and Czech are related though, so with accompanied gesturing, we could get the basic idea across. The officer we dealt with actually seemed like a really decent guy. Later, a camera crew came out to document the damage and position of the cars. At first I had been thinking that ours might be drivable, with a little bending of the fender away from the tire, but then noticed that while the left front wheel was pointing straight ahead, the right one was turned sharply to the right. Finally, about two hours after the accident, they were ready to start removing the cars. The truck that had been in the way when we rounded the curve was an "auto shlep", an auto-service truck, the kind that uses a motorized cable to pull disabled cars up onto a tiltable flatbed. So the police directed as they loaded up our car first, onto that very truck, and the police took us into town for more paperwork, with the auto shlep following behind, carrying our car. Bela Palanka is a small town on the plain, with only one main through street that we ever saw, and was maybe eight more miles toward Bulgaria from the accident. The man we hit, his car, and another set of police remained at the scene of the accident.
Maybe around 1 a.m. the police were through with us, except for holding Honza's passport so that we would show up at court Monday morning where fault (and consequences) would be determined. They promised to provide an English speaking translator for the hearing, since they realized that we know English. Outside the police station were waiting the men with our car. They and the police told us that they could take us to a place where they would work on our car that night, maybe even have it drivable in a couple of hours. The police said that if the car was successfully repaired, we should let them know ASAP, since there was a chance, though only a chance, that they could get the judge to stop in the office Sunday morning, and maybe that way we could be on our way. Not knowing where else to take the car that time of night, and with the possibility of being on the road again soon, we agreed and went with them.
So they took us several miles away, to a lonely repair shop on the side of a little highway, far away from town (the next morning I realized it was the same highway we'd traveled on, and that we were right at the exit from the pass, and within a mile or two of the accident location). Upon arrival, they woke up a fellow worker who was sleeping in an old abandoned Mercedes surrounded by overgrown weeds, got a fourth worker from who-knows-where, and started working on the car (I later realized that the garage was only half the building; the other half was a residence, from which this fourth man must have come). Tired and stressed out, I hadn't realized it would be their own shop they were taking us to. I didn't like this too much, as they were the ones whose stopped truck had caused the accident in the first place. We were at least able to see what they were doing though, and saw the damaged parts they worked on. But I was so tired. I don't remember for sure, but I think they stopped for a while, while a couple of them went into town where they could get a certain part (Honza verifies my shady memory). After watching them work until sometime between two and three, I could not stand, or sit, or do anything effectively anymore except fall asleep, so I accepted the offer to sleep in the abandoned Mercedes. After a while they could do no more work until they could get another part, which they could not get until daylight hours, so Honza joined me in the car to sleep.
Around 7 in the morning one of the guys tapped on our windows, told us something about the car which we didn't understand, and that Princess Diana was dead from a car accident. It turns out her accident happened just a couple of hours after ours. When we got up later (this is Sunday morning), it was a cold, drizzly day, and they showed us the part they needed: the steering mechanism that reaches from one wheel to the other. Adding up the cost of parts already involved, now I would be more than out of all the emergency fund Dollars and Deutschemarks I had brought with me in case of "something unexpected," and I remembered the State Department's statement that you can't use credit cards in Yugoslav banks to get money. Honza still had some.
At any rate, they went to get the part, and were gone for at least a couple of hours while Honza and I tried unsuccessfully to stay warm and dry. When they finally returned and got everything assembled, they started the car, and began backing out for a test drive. After just a few feet, there was a horrible grinding noise, followed by more as he pulled it back in out of the rain. Something about or connected to the driveshaft, as best I could understand their Serbo-croation and gestures, though of course a drive shaft in a front wheel drive isn't what I picture in my mind. This part of the repair would have to wait until Monday.
Now I'll need to begin using the names Honza and I made up for various people while we were there. We knew no one's actual names until the day we left, and we have a hard enough time communicating with each other already. So without trying, we began making up names for the various parties for ease of communication. The man we hit became Legman, after frequent referrals to him as "the man with the legs" which actually meant "the man with the hurt legs" (he had trouble walking on those sore legs the whole time we were there).
Sometime during this part of the day (midday Sunday), a car pulled up in front of the repair shop. It was Legman, his two sons, and a friend who drove them. His sons knew a few English words. This was supposed to help. In a combination of languages, they told us that we must pay their father 750 Deutschemarks (German marks; about $425) for the damage to his car. If we refused, he would not testify in court that the truck was stopped there on the highway. It was either pay him now, or surely be found guilty and pay later, plus face high fines from the court. We said we had a lot to think about, and needed to talk to the police first. We had a "zelena karta" (green card) from Prague, which is liability insurance. It should be a simple matter of the local police recording the information from the card, and overseeing the process.
After Legman and his sons talked with us, the worker who had been driving the auto shlep went out and talked with him, to some degree arguing, but we weren't sure about what. Honza thought he understood a little from the truck driver about a flashlight Legman was holding (or waving?) before we hit him, which the auto shlep driver seemed to be arguing warned us about...about what? The stopped truck's presence?
Then with nothing more that could be done to the car on that Sunday afternoon, the car repair guys offered to take us to a hotel, to which we agreed. The same auto shlep driver took us in a second auto shlep back west through the mountain pass (their shop was just outside the east end of the pass), to a three story hotel in Sicevo, in the direction of Nis. Autoshlepguy (our name for him) went in with us, and greeted a very well dressed man who seemed to be in charge at the hotel. They obviously knew each other. I wasn't happy about this. Were there no sources of help in this country which would have no association with the guy whose stopped auto shlep had caused the accident??
After getting our room in this large yet seemingly empty hotel, we went back outside and caught a bus east, back through the pass once again, to Bela Palanka to talk with the police, hoping to find the same, seemingly decent, officer we had dealt with on the highway. He wasn't there, and we had absolutely no success trying to communicate with the ones who were there. We got back to the hotel at around 5:30 pm, got showers, had a time of worship and study, then went down to eat supper in the large dining room. We were the only ones in the dining room, except for three or four very well-dressed middle aged men seated at a single table, who either were employees or friends, but in either case, seemed to have absolutely nothing to do. When we came in and sat down, they dispersed. One took a seat alone at a corner table reading a newspaper, another sat in a different section watching television news, another disappeared... It was just weird. We checked out Monday morning to go to Bela Palanka and court, but never saw another guest or any evidence of such all night or morning. It seemed pretty strange to me.
I had asked at check-in if they would accept Visa. They had said yes. Now on Monday morning, Autoshlepguy was to come pick us up at 8:30 to take us to court. We went down a little earlier, but the man wouldn't check us out until Autoshlepguy got there for us and came inside. This also seemed strange, and made me wonder more just what was going on. I suppose now that he had agreed to make sure we didn't skip town. When Autoshlepguy did arrive, the man at the desk had to get yet a different man who knew how to do the credit card procedure. He got out the little contraption you used to see in stores, in which they place a credit card, a credit slip, and then slide part of it over and back to impress the numbers from the card onto the slip - except he put the card on top of the paper instead of under it. I tried to show him his mistake but he wasn't interested in my advice. After attempting the procedure though, he realized it didn't come out right, and he fiddled around with the materials some (contraption, card, credit slip). I tried again to show him the problem, but he wouldn't listen. He then put it all back the same way again. I had become skeptical of the whole operation, and their connection with the car service guys, and the non-functioning nature of the hotel, so when Honza started to correct him a third time, I pulled at his sleeve to signal him not to. If the man insisted on doing it that way, fine. I wasn't sure yet if they were on the level, if they were in some mafia arrangement with the car shop guys, if we were going to get ripped off by them all, so I figured I'm not going to pay them now if I can get away with it. When it's all over, if it seems they were fair, I can send them the money from home in Budejovice. As it turned out, the number did just barely show up on the slip the last time, and he was satisfied. I remained hopeful that it was not legible enough for the folks at Visa to decipher.
So, with Autoshlepguy, we headed east through the pass again, past the accident scene, past the repair shop, to Bela Palanka and the 9:00 court session. Legman wasn't there yet, so the hearing was delayed. When he arrived, it appeared from everyone that there was no rush to get to the courtroom, so apparently the court session had been postponed for quite a while, though we always had trouble understanding just what was going on. That language problem was driving me crazy.
Outside the building, I tried to talk with Legman about our insurance. He pointed to a little bar across the street that had three or four tables out on the sidewalk, so we went to sit down, but neither Honza nor I could communicate well with him. Czech and Serbo-Croatian are related, but not so closely. It had been much easier to communicate with the policeman, describing with accompanying gestures the physical events of a car accident, than to discuss the finer points of international insurance claims. He asked the waiter if he spoke any English, which he did, but not much.
The waiter wasn't so much help in translating between us and Legman, but he was helpful nevertheless. He was a pro-democracy college student, studying law to become a lawyer in a better Yugoslavia than now exists. Between Honza and me, his name was Advokatman (advokat is the Czech word for lawyer). He told us that the car service guys who were sitting in the highway that night, and who now had our car, were "bad people," and that they cooperate with the police, so that they have business, and so that the police have something to do so that they can keep their jobs. He used the word "mafia" to describe the relationship. Then I realized how the policeman from Saturday night, who had seemed like such a decent guy, was also very cooperative with Autoshlepguy in getting our car into the latter's repair shop. Advokatman also said the court was communist, and that we had little hope for justice, and that we were in danger of being thrown in jail if found guilty and unable to pay. All of this was part English, part Czech, part gesture, part Serbo-croatian. Despite the bad news, it was really good to talk with someone who seemed to be a friend. Advokatman also told us about a woman from Brno, Czech Republic, who was in town, and that maybe she could help us communicate with Legman, since she speaks both Czech and Serbo-croatian.
While waiting for her to happen by, Honza and I were trying to see if we could get money in town (Deutschemarks is what everyone wanted from us, instead of the Yugoslav dinar), and making calls from the Post Office (European Post Offices provide phone service for a fee) to the American Embassy in Belgrade, and to the car rental agency in Prague. What with communist judges and mafia alliances, I had decided by this point that I wanted the embassy to know we were there, and we also needed more detailed info about the insurance. It was impossible to get Deutschemarks with my cards, and the young man at the first bank we went to said I couldn't use my cards at all: "No, No! It's your fault, your fault! Sanctions!" And as for the Embassy, I had trouble contacting the right people since it was Labor Day, and they were in the process of moving the office I needed. This was such a frustrating morning.
In the meantime, Advokatman had spotted the woman from Brno, and he and Legman had explained the situation to her. She spoke fluent Serbo-croatian, and was very helpful and hospitable to us that day and the next, even allowing us to stay overnight in the flat she and a friend of hers share (actually, we later learned, she is Yugoslav, originally from that town, not Czech; she lives in Brno after having married a Czech, and runs an import-export business between the two places, and apparently, she runs it successfully; she was always better dressed than the rest of the population). She helped us communicate with Legman, whom I had begun to regard as less of an enemy, but merely as a dishonest guy who rightfully wanted to be reimbursed for something that was not his fault, and was in fact partly our fault. We explained about the green card liability insurance, but they all, including the woman, said it just doesn't work in Yugoslavia. So, after some calls to Prague that seemed to indicate the likelihood of being reimbursed later by the liability insurance if we paid on the spot, we agreed to pay the man his car damages in exchange for his testimony (if the accident were ruled fully our fault, we had to pay a large deductible on our car).
In between all of this discussion, Honza and I were frequently having to go back to the Post office, where we could make calls. We were trying to get information from the car rental agency (our car was a rental), trying to contact Jindra in Budejovice for his assistance to research some things about insurance, as well as trying to contact the right people at the embassy. Some of these things were only partly accomplished. But I was finally able to speak with the Consul at the embassy, to simply make him aware of our presence there and about our problems.
Helpwoman (as Honza and I began referring to her) took us to the police station, where she talked with a friend of hers. Based on what she found out there, apparently not all the police operate in cooperation with the car service guys. Her officer friend told her that someone in the area has been placing some kind of materials in the road to cause flat tires, hoping to gain car service business from passing motorists; they have suspected the people who have our car, but they weren't sure. He also told her that Legman's testimony on the highway Saturday night included the fact that the reason he was stopped was because of a flat tire, the second one in only a few kilometers; further, that Autoshlepguy had stopped both times to offer his services, while Legman refused the offer both times. It was while he was refusing the offer the second time that we came around the curve.
Just great. If in court we somehow prove Autoshlepguy's activity, and thus escape fault which might then be solely his, we're okay with the government, but this crooked guy has our car and will not be too pleased with us. If we lose in court, the repair shop will finish what so far seems to be a reasonable and fairly reasonably priced repair on our car, but we may be thrown in jail because we have no money to pay for damages, car repairs, and high court fees. A real catch-22. This frustrating morning was becoming pretty worrisome now. This, Dad, is when I called the embassy again, and asked the Consul to call you and ask that you wire money to the embassy for me. Although I hadn't yet figured out a means of getting the money from Belgrade to where we were (I was thinking of catching a bus; I found out the next day it couldn't be wired), it seemed to be the only possibility of having sufficient money.
Helpwoman said we could stay that night at the flat where she was staying with her friend, but that now she needed to go to Nis, the larger city to the west on the other side of the mountain pass, to meet some friends of hers. Nis has a population of probably 100,000 to 200,000. She and the woman with whom she stays had arranged a ride for themselves with Legman and his friend who had brought him to Bela Palanka (Legman, it turned out, lives in Nis). We asked if we could go also, so as to investigate the possibility of using credit cards in the banks there. So we all went to Nis (four of us in the backseat of his mid-sized Opel), first to Legman's flat, whose wife served us tea. Her eyebrow was swollen and ugly from the accident, but she was okay. This was the beginning of a really strange Monday afternoon. Legman's friend then dropped us off downtown, and we found one bank where I could get Yugoslav money on my card, but not Deutschemarks. Helpwoman said she thought we could get Deutschemarks elsewhere, so we didn't get any money yet.
The next stop was the police station, where Helpwoman and her friend looked for the Chief of Police, whom Helpwoman knows. She said that sometimes she can ask him to influence the police in Bela Palanka, and that Bela Palanka usually does as he says. He wasn't there.
After a stop at the Post Office for another call to the embassy, Helpwoman took us to a little restaurant, where she waited for a couple of her friends. A little while after these two friends arrived, one of them took us in his German car to another restaurant, this one small, loud, and smoke-filled, where a larger meeting of friends took place at one of their sidewalk tables out back. One of them was already seriously drunk when we arrived. Another gradually got tipsy. It was apparent that they all had money. We all sat outside for 30 to 45 minutes while a couple of guys with a guitar and an I-don't-know-what played and sang apparently traditional Yugoslav folk songs at our table. The drunk kept handing out 20 dinar bills to the musicians, until it amounted to about US$20. At one point, while they were all drinking and singing, Helpwoman leaned over to us and said with a smirk (in Czech, of course), "These are business men, and this is how they work."
Honza and I were wanting to find out about banks and money, but Helpwoman said she thought one of these men would be able to help us get the Deutschemarks we needed. It was obviously impolite to rush things. It was such a strange situation to be in. Sitting there at a sunny sidewalk table in a Yugoslav city, with people who didn't seem to have a care in the world, listening to them sing their songs and rejoice with each other in their worldly way, and us with our freedom in the balance at the time, and needing to do something about it, but sitting there was somehow necessary for us to endure in order to accomplish what we needed. It really was comically strange.
After sitting so long with these people, we wanted to get up and take a walk, but Helpwoman said we were just about ready to move to a table inside for the meal. This was news to us, and we got treated to large amounts of lamb ribs, bread, and cucumber salad (all very good!), though in not such an enjoyable atmosphere. The drunk finally left, then Helpwoman had to go somewhere with the man she thought could help us get Deutschmarks, and was gone for at least 30 to 40 minutes. Honza and I got up after a while and tried to check prices for Skoda parts at a couple of neighboring car parts places (to compare with the prices the repair shop gave us), but neither place dealt with Skoda parts.
Finally Helpwoman returned, with a different friend, and the 5 of us started back to Bela Palanka in this friend's Yugo (Honza and I, Helpwoman and her friend with whom she stays, and the Yugo owner). Apparently the plan for the one guy to get us Deutschemarks had fallen through.
Court had been postponed until the following morning. That night in Bela Palanka, Helpwoman took us and her friend out walking, looking for a friend who would be able to give advice for court. We found another friend first, a police officer, and Helpwoman talked with him about the situation. He said that he was writing a letter to Belgrade about the situation with someone causing flat tires on the highway, and the suspicions about Autoshlepguy, and that he would be in court with us to tell about this. We also found the man she had been seeking, but I don't know what she found out from her conversation with him. Still, several things now were looking like we just might be able to escape any guilt, placing all of it on Autoshlepguy, which would mean not only escaping court fees and who knows what other consequences, but also that the rental agency would return 10,000 Kc ($330) to us which we had paid as a deposit. But of course we still couldn't decide if this was good or not -- our car was still at the shop where Autoshlepguy works.
The next morning, Tuesday, we were still trying to make calls to Prague, and to Jindra in Ceske Budejovice who was searching information for us, but with everything going on it was impossible to get all the information we wanted about the insurance arrangements. Finally the woman judge was ready for us. Legman went into the 2nd floor room, and we went in, and Helpwoman went in. It was small, maybe 15'x15', with cabinets on one wall, and I think three large desks pushed together in the middle. Twice during the hearing, one of the two women at the other two desks wadded up paper she had been typing on, and threw it, from her seat, out the open second floor window. Make of that what you will.
Legman told about his flat tires, Autoshlepguy's offers, and about the accident, as did Helpwoman on our behalf. So we were three witnesses to the truck's presence stopped on the highway. But the judge irately insisted that there was no evidence as to the truck's presence, that nothing in the police documents mentioned a truck stopped on the highway, and probably (I don't know) that Autoshlepguy said he wasn't there so he wasn't there. Guilt was wholly Honza's and that was that. We would pay the court fines and we could go, and it was over. I didn't know how they do things until it was all over. It certainly hadn't seemed like a court room, and I didn't realize there would be a final decision right then, until the decision was handed down. What about the policeman who had been at the accident scene? What about the policeman who said he would come tell about their suspicions about Autoshlepguy? Where were they? Where was Autoshlepguy for that matter? But it was done.
Later Helpwoman told us that when the others found out it would be this particular judge, that they didn't bother showing up. I don't know if she realized that earlier, and if so why she didn't tell us, and why we had to show up. At any rate, the judge gave us the lowest possible court fines (and the high ones were high indeed), apparently because Legman didn't pursue any claim against us.
So we went back to Helpwoman's flat, and Legman and friends came also. After I confirmed with the embassy that the money you sent there could be returned to the States, Legman and friends prepared to take us to Nis to the bank we had found there where we could get Yugoslav dinars with my Visa card. In the parking lot before we left for Nis, one of Legman's friends pulled out his gun to show me. I suspected at the time that this was to prevent any thoughts of escaping before paying up, since we were now free of the government. Just as a matter of pride, I was glad I wasn't intimidated by it, but rather was simply interested in looking at the gun. I gestured, asking if I could look at it; he removed the clip, which held about 10 rounds, and handed it to me. It was a 9mm, no insignificant handgun. I admired it and handed it back. I hoped he was disappointed in my reaction, even though such would be a very small victory. And really, I now suppose it may have been that he just wanted to show me his gun.
Anyway, we went to Nis and the bank we had found there, seven of us in the car of one of Legman's friends, got 5000 dinars, came back toward Bela Palanka to the repair shop, where they had finished our car, and I test drove it. One fender needed a little more pulling away from the tire, which they immediately took care of. Then I divided the dinars between the repair shop and Legman. Afterward, Legman agreed to do a little more work "gratis" on the front corner of our car so the headlight would aim the right direction (it turned out he runs a little body shop behind his flat), so we followed him back west into Nis, where he spent about an hour (?) disassembling the front end and banging things into shape, and finally then reassembling it all. As darkness fell, we headed back east, through the pass for the last time, to Helpwoman's flat in Bela Palanka for our things. We left on that Tuesday night, about 9 pm, on our way east out of Bela Palanka, into new territory at last, and out of the country, considerably poorer than when we entered. We were not sorry to leave. And Greece awaited.
Clearing Bela Palanka, I asked Honza what comes after Amos.
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The other part of the story was the phone call from the US Consul in Belgrade Yugoslavia, to my Dad, when I thought I was going to have to have his help in wiring me some money. Of course I'm not even sure my Dad knew I was on a trip at all, until he got this phone call:
Dad answers the phone, "Hello?"
Consul: "Is this Dale Smelser?"
Dad: "Yes."
Consul: "My name is (whatever it was), and I am the American Consul in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. First I want you to know that your son Darryl is alright."
Dad: "Okay," but thinking, "If the Consul in Yugoslavia is calling me to tell me Darryl is alright, he may be alive, but he's not alright!"
