sputnik signals

…radio waves from a land we once called home…

John Nikolayevich Zebroff – 1957

Zebroff Village, Grand Forks, BC

            ‘Quick Margaret go get the ladder from the kludovka[1],’ John Nikolayevich Zebroff instructed his eldest daughter. ‘Cecil give her a hand.’

            Everybody was excited but nobody was exactly sure why. What did it all mean? Why was everybody talking about this Russian ball in space. Why was it there and what did it do?

            John Nikolayevich had driven his pickup truck to the crest of a knoll that looked out onto the valley. The crest was flat enough for his truck to park flush and it provided a sweeping view of the valley below.  The Koochin and Zebroff villages were cradled on the eastern slopes of Spencer Hill. Below the villages to the south east lay the Sunshine Valley, where the Granby and Kettle River valleys converged. This perch provides a most spectacular view. On this day however, nobody was paying attention to the beautiful vista. Everybody was looking up towards the sky as the sun was beginning to set.

            October 5th 1957 was a clear day in the Grand Forks valley. The news had traveled around the globe faster than 29 000 kilometers per hour. Everybody was talking about the beeping ball in space. It had been two days since the USSR had launched its eighty-three kilograms of polished titanium technology into a low-earth elliptical orbit. As a result, the Canadian skies had just grown a little more scarlet red. Apparently, the reflection of the sun was enough to reveal the object just after sunset and just before sunrise with a mere telescope or even a good pair of binoculars. Its transmitted radio signals that were sufficient enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators on the ground. Beep, beep, beep… as it passed overhead. Sputnik had ushered in the space age.

            Zebroff had mounted his neighbour’s telescope to a tripod which he had setup on the back of his truck. Beside the truck he placed a ladder and had strapped a long antenna to it. The antenna rose three meters into the air and was connected to his Zenith radio, which he brought outside from the house. He ran an extension cord twenty-five meters down to the neighbour’s house to power the radio. Zebroff spent the entire afternoon erecting this make-shift observation post and he had summoned all the kids from the surrounding villages to be ready to monitor the satellite with him at sun down. Sputnik had captured his imagination with its signals from the motherland and he was determined to catch a glimpse of the satellite and tune into the transmissions it emitted. He longed to connect to Russia, now he had his shot.

            The villages on the north east slopes of Spencer Hill were fun places for kids to grow up. They had dogs, cows, horses, chickens, wagon, kitchens, bicycles, radios and some even had a black and white television set. An authentic happiness permeated the village life, yet there was a humble embarrassment when their cousins from town would visit. Life in the villages had not caught up to the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing and readily available electricity. In the village, there were always chores to do, but life had a self-reliance and connection to their traditions that life in the city was beginning to lose. The Great Depression had passed, World War II was over and people were beginning to prosper as they entered the teenage pastures of the baby boom era.

            ‘Margaret get Junkya[2] from the field, it’ll be time to milk her,’ her mother called out as she was finding the ladder for her father’s great evening adventure.

            ‘Ok, I am getting the ladder for dad.’ Margaret found the ladder and lugged it the hundred meters to the knoll. She was ten and the ladder was heavy. She looked around for help, she could see people from the neighbouring villages making their way towards her dad’s makeshift observation post. She was excited and happy to help her dad. She spotted her younger sister outside the steps to the kitchen door.

            ‘Lenda come give me a hand,’ Maggie called out.

            Lenda reluctantly put down the kitten she was playing with and went to go help her older sister.

            ‘Come on Papa needs the ladder.’

            They carried it up the knoll, Lenda was tripping with her end of the ladder as she was smaller and her half of the load was not as easy for her to manage. They brought the ladder to their father, Margaret was smiling always happy to help out.

            ‘Thanks girls,’ Zebroff added with a charmed look on his face. ‘Soon we will see the Sputnik.’ He took the ladder and used it as a secondary access to adjust the antenna attached to the other ladder beside his truck. Margaret was excited as her village friends were gathering around and a few adults were asking John Nikolayevich when they could expect to see it.

            ‘George try tune the radio,’ he instructed as he climbed down from the ladder which the antenna was strapped to. Another man, George Ivanovich Makortoff attended to the radio, he began to rotate the knob, searching for a signal. Static crackled and phased in and out and he jogged through the frequencies.

            ‘What will it sound like?’ Makortoff asked.

            ‘Beeps. Like beep, beep, beep…’ Zebroff replied.

            ‘Dad, mom needs Junkya, I will be back soon,’ Margaret interrupted. ‘Lenda lets go get Junkya from the field.’

            ‘Girls be quick or you’ll miss it,’ Zebroff warned them, too preoccupied with his setup to notice his son John Ivanovich had just arrived and was sitting inside his truck, apparently more interested with his pretend adventure at the wheel of his dad’s truck than some beep, beep, beep in the sky. A few more neighbours had gathered and were chatting. Margaret and Lenda took off running down the knoll across their property and back up the other side of the Spender Hill slope. They ploughed through the tall grasses with ease trying to scan the shadows for sight of Junkya, the beloved family cow.

            ‘Peter try the telescope, look to the eastern horizon down past the sawmill,’ Zebroff instructed to his friend Peter Vasilyevich Koochin.

            ‘Oh, for piss sake John, I don’t know how to use that damn thing,’ Koochin replied.

            John started laughing under his breath. ‘Nobody does.’

            Everybody was having fun trying to make something happen meanwhile not too sure how to make anything happen. Zebroff had invested some energy into the effort and was confident that they’d catch a glimpse or hear a beep.

            Koochin piped up, ‘The sun is going down Vanya, where do I point this thing?’ He then swiveled it across the horizon and pulled his eyes away rubbing them to validate his efforts. ‘Maybe you should try?’

            Zebroff climbed into the back of the truck with Koochin. He trained his eyes on the horizon. The static grew louder as Makortoff turned the volume up a touch on the radio. Crackling, phasing followed by more static and distorted fuzz, then the local radio station would tune into frequency and then back out into the static wastelands of the radio’s soundscape.

            ‘Grisha, go back to the station for a minute, let’s listen to what they say,’ Zebroff instructed Makortoff, who was next to the radio which had been propped up on an old apple box. He too was sitting on an old apple box. He tuned the radio back to the local station.

        ‘…and the Soviet satellite Sputnik will be breaching the eastern horizon in twelve minutes in the eastern part of British Columbia. Well this is really quite the thing Jim, if you are just tuning in now, you will want to get outside with your binoculars as this spectacle is about to reach us here in Western Canada. That’s right Larry, now the satellite will be emitting a signal at 20.002 MHz and also at 40.005 MHz, so we plan to tune into the satellite from our weather station here in Nelson British Columbia to see if we can track this thing as it whizzes overhead us at approximately 19 000 miles per hour…’

            ‘There you go John,’ laughed Makortoff, ‘they’ll find it for you.’ Everybody chuckled, including Zebroff, but he wanted to connect with the object himself. He wanted to reach higher, to a place nobody had previously known of. Meanwhile his son, was still turning the steering wheel an inch in each direction, not enough to move the actual tires on the ground, but just enough to keep his imagination turning. He pretended he was driving to the beach with his cousins, preparing for a sandy adventure under the sun. Zebroff noticed his son inside the cab of his pick up, he smiled at him, knowing his son’s satisfaction was outshining his own.

            ‘Petya, let me see this damn telescope,’ Zebroff insisted.

            The crowd was restless, but still very much engaged in the proposition. People would point at the sky, hoping to see a bright dot. Sometimes they pointed at a bird, sometimes they just pointed to satisfy their desire to be the first to spot the potential. Zebroff began to scan the eastern sky with the telescope, patiently searching.

            Meanwhile Margaret and Lenda were far away on the opposite side of the village calling out for Junkya. Lenda had picked a handful of bluebells and honey suckles. She planned to give them to her mother.

            ‘Junkya, Junkya…’ they both called out, searching and walking further up the side of the hill. They were only fifty meters away from the tree line. Maggie was getting a touch concerned, as she was keen to get back to her father’s side and witness this strange new thing in the sky. Lenda didn’t care and was content to stuff more flowers into her fists. Margaret looked back down behind them and saw their tiny house in the distance, the shed and the people all gathered on the knoll beside her father’s truck. She wanted to join them. Just then she heard the familiar knocking of Junkya’s cowbell. She turned to scan the hillside, there was Junkya, head down immersed in something green and delicious. Margaret ran quickly to her cow, with a smile on her face.

            ‘Come on Junkya, let’s go home, time to give milk,’ she said, satisfied that they had located their target and would soon join her father. Margaret gave Junkya a few pets on the shoulder and tugged on her collar a bit to get her attention. She then gave her a quick snap with the switch to let Junkya know it was time to move on. Junkya and Margaret started to slowly make their way downwards towards the farm. Margaret gave Junkya a few more quick lashes with her switch to tell Junkya not to dally. ‘Come on Lenda lets go home.’

            The troika bobbed their way down the hillside, stumbling and bouncing on the rolling sea of dirt at their feet. Junkya was the most sure footed of the bunch, the familiar knocking from her bell brought gentle comfort as the evening chorus of crickets began to rise. Lenda occasionally stopped to add to her bouquet. Margaret continued to train her eyes on the events below, administering a quick snap of the switch any time she wanted Junkya to pick up the pace.

            Back at the truck everybody was excited. A few of the village boys were flipping pennies in the air, pretending to spot the satellite and fool their friends. The men were transfixed at their stations, turning knobs and adjusting the antenna, scanning, focusing, re-trying and making the odd wise-crack to one another. Walter Vasilyevich Koochin, Peter’s older brother joined the men.

            ‘Hey, it’s the three wise men following that star,’ Walter chimed, ‘I brought you men a gift, I figured all this effort needed some lubricants.’ He approached the truck and looked into the cab and saw Zebroff’s son still at the wheel. ‘Where you driving us Vanyushka, to find the manger where Sputnik is going to land?’

            ‘To snake hole for a swim,’ Johnny answered. ‘Once papa is done with this plane in the sky.’ 

            ‘That’s my boy, keep her steady,’ Walter Vasilyevich added. He passed a snub nose bottle of beer to Zebroff, Makortoff and his brother from the case of beer he brought and put the rest of the case inside the truck so the village boys wouldn’t feel the inspiration to pinch a few. ‘Where is this star of Bethlehem Vanya?’ He couldn’t quite drop the theme of his joking.

            ‘Christ knows.’ Replied Zebroff, holding onto the antenna, he was still a believer but desperate for a sign from above. The static on the radio popped and hissed. The men gathered ranks and took a break from their stations to share a toast. 

            ‘You sure it’s at 40 000 MHz Grisha?’ Zebroff inquired of Makortoff.

            Makortoff checked the radio again. ‘That’s what she says.’

            The Koochin brothers took up opposite sides of the truck, hanging their forearms over the side, gentling holding their beers. Makortoff took a slug and looked to the east. Zebroff was still perched in the back of the truck, focused on the horizon in the same direction.

            ‘Hey Vanya what’s that white dot?’ Makortoff asked.

            ‘Where?’ Zebroff replied.

            ‘Right above the Cascades, off the shoulder of Galina mountain.’

            Zebroff lifted his gaze and appeared to spot it. He moved the telescope and tried again. 

‘I think that’s it boys!’ He exclaimed. ‘I think that’s it!’

            The crowd all focused on the horizon, everybody was abuzz.

            ‘Shhh…’ Zebroff pleaded with the small crowd. ‘Quiet let’s listen.’ The radio crackled and buzzed, then there it was, a faint blip, like a muted wind chime. Again, they heard it.

            ‘That’s no beep.’ Koochin interjected.

            ‘Shhh.’ Zebroff insisted. Again, there it was, a muted blip.

            ‘Did you find it papa?’ Came a voice from behind the truck as Margaret and Lenda raced to join the fun. Zebroff turned to see his daughters approaching.

            ‘Maybe dear,’ he replied. Then he spotted his wife Anne below them near the hay barn walking Junkya into the stall to be milked. He began to laugh with a deep belly roar.

            ‘That’s Junkya!’ He exclaimed. Everybody erupted into a loud roar as the girls reached the truck.

            ‘Well Vanya that’s how it goes,’ announced Koochin, ‘you set up the antenna and the telescope just to find your own cow in the manger.’

            The laughter erupted and took off like a rocket.  Nobody could hold it in any longer.

Above the laughter, in the silent reaches of the night, Sputnik slipped past the Zebroff clan, Junkya the cow and the whole village. They were too busy enjoying themselves to notice. Surely some scientist from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, was picking up all the din of jubilation under Sputnik and wondered what those crazy Canadians were up to in the Kootenays.

[1] Russian word for a roof covered yet open-air work shed. A place to repair shoes, tools, work with metal or leather, not a place to chop wood or store food stuffs.

[2] Junkya was a cow’s name. Cow’s often were born in the Spring, some of the cows’ names on the Zebroff farm were named after the month of their birth, as in Mayka, Junkya, other names such as Hrunkya, Tunkya, Halka evolved from this tradition.