As spring training goes on and the new season of baseball approaches, I generally start to reminisce about my days covering the game that I have loved since I was about five years old.

I've already written what I consider the best stories I have about my experiences in and around the game as a sports writer. But, as I watched a Red Sox preseason game on TV over the weekend, a few more interesting (I hope) tales popped into my head.

During my time covering the Cleveland Indians in the late 1970's, I had the opportunity to get to know some of the players on a personal basis. The one I got closest to for a while was a young right-handed pitcher named Len Barker.

He later gained fame by throwing a perfect game in 1981, but I was gone from Cleveland by that time. And his career never quite lived up to his potential.

When Len was traded, along with Bobby Bonds, to the Indians by the Texas Rangers in the fall of 1978, he was considered a future star. I got to know him while taking part in the Indians' preseason public relations tour and we hit it off, despite a 12-year age difference.

I invited Len and his new wife to have dinner with us and the four of us enjoyed a great evening. When it came time to pay the bill, Len said, "I got the big signing bonus. Let me take care of it."

About a week later, Len called to see if we wanted to join he and his wife for another meal, this one at a very fancy and pricey downtown restaurant. I said we'd go, but only if he let me pay our share.

It was a fantastic dinner, but our part of the tab was half a week's salary for me. Add to that the cost of the baby sitter and it was a really expensive evening. Turns out he had very expensive taste and the pocket book to enjoy it.

We went out with the couple several more times until I realized we were just living very different lifestyles. At that point, I told Len that Judy and I needed to rein in our spending and we wouldn't be joining them for dinner any more.

He said he understood, but things were considerably cooler between us at spring training and during the regular season. Then I left for racing and never saw Len again.

In another baseball story, I was scheduled to go to the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal in late September of 1981. I got a call the week before from one of the bosses, who said, "As long as you're going to be in Montreal anyway, how about covering the Expos' final home series. They're playing the Mets and they have a small lead in the division over the Cardinals and it would be good to have a staffer there."

We usually got coverage of Expos home games from Canadian Press since the AP had no sports staffers in Canada. It wasn't very in-depth.

I had to cover practice and qualifying on Friday and Saturday afternoon at the track on Ile du Notre Dame, just outside of downtown Montreal. But I got done each day in plenty of time to make it to the baseball games. And it was an easy subway ride from my hotel to the old, dilapidated Olympic Stadium. I didn't even have to walk outside on the short trip between underground subway stations.

For obvious reasons, I wasn't able to cover the Sunday afternoon game, but the boss was okay with that.

The Expos had a really good team in 1981, beating the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League East division title by a half game in the second half of the strike-interrupted season before eventually losing to the LA Dodgers in the NL Championship Series. The tight pennant race after the 50-game strike made covering  those late season games more fun and definitely more meaningful.

Montreal won the first game 6-3 and there was a lot of music and laughter in the Expos clubhouse after the game. By the time I filed my first lede and got there, Expos manager Dick Williams, who I met in 1976, his last year as manager of Charlie Finley's Oakland A's, was wrapping up the post-game meeting with the writers.

He was sitting behind his desk, smiling and talking with the local sports writers when I walked in.

The moment he saw me, Williams did a double take and began to scowl. He stood up and walked around the desk and stood over me in a menacing manner. I was confused and a little bit scared. I took a couple of steps back.

He was a big man and I had no idea why he would be angry with me.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked gruffly. "You going to ask me more stupid questions?"

The room got quiet as the other writers, most of whom had no idea who I was, stared at us.

I said, "I'm here for the AP to cover your last home games. Did I do something to offend you?"

At that point, he broke into a smile and said, "Just giving you sh.t. Actually, it's good to see you."

I got a handshake _ he had a grip like a bear _ and a bro hug. And everyone relaxed and started to laugh. I didn't feel much like laughing, but I was relieved.

We really didn't know each other that well, although I had told him the story about Charlie O trying to hire me. I guess he was just in a joking mood and I was the one who came in his sights.

Dick and I had a nice talk after the other writers went out to the clubhouse and we chatted again the next night after his Expos beat the Mets 4-2.

The next _ and last _ time I got to cover a baseball game was in the early fall of 1982.

I got called into the office in New York after one of the veteran AP sports staffers fell ill and had to miss a couple of weeks of work.

During the two weeks I spent in New York, I wound up doing a variety of jobs, including writing baseball and basketball roundups, turning handouts into short stories and whatever else needed to be done. It was a nice change-up from the auto racing beat.

I walked into the office for my 4 p.m. to midnight shift one afternoon and the desk supervisor said, "Harris, don't take your coat off. We need you to cover the Yankees tonight. Your credential will be at the will call window and we need pregame and post game notes to go with the game story."

I was excited. I had covered only those two games in Montreal since I left Cleveland after the 1979 season. But I was also a little nervous  because I had never worked a game at Yankee Stadium and I didn't know my way around the place.

Getting there early and finding my way around seemed like a really good idea, so I jumped on the D train in Rockefeller Center and rode it to 161st street, just down the block from the stadium.

It was about 5 p.m. when I got there. That left plenty of time to figure out where everything was and gather some notes before the 7:05 start.

As I made my way to the Yankees' clubhouse, it also occurred to me that I didn't really know any of the current players and none of them knew me. I was hoping that wouldn't be a problem.

I walked into the quiet clubhouse and the first face I saw was Jeff Torborg, the manager of the Cleveland Indians in my last couple of years covering the team and now a coach for the Yankees. He was standing just inside the coaches dressing room.

Jeff saw me as I walked into the room and lit up with a big smile. We  shook hands and began to catch up when I noticed that Joe Altobelli, the former manager of the San Francisco Giants, who I met and interviewed numerous times in my years of covering the Cactus League in spring training, was right behind him.

Joe also gave me a big greeting and turned to Joe Pepitone, who I had interviewed several times on visits to Cleveland Stadium, and said, "You know Mike, don't you?"

Joe Pep got up, shook my hand and said, "What are you doing here. I thought you only haunted Cleveland!"

The three coaches and I continued chatting loudly, with a lot of laughter, when I suddenly noticed that another Yankees coach, Yogi Berra, was sitting quietly at the other end of the room in front of his cubicle.

Yogi, who I had never met one-on-one, was staring at the four of us like we were from outer space.

Finally, I broke off the conversation with Jeff and the two Joes for a moment and said, "Hi Yogi!"

The Hall of Famer and master of the spoonerism shook his head like he was confused, looked at the other three coaches and asked,  "Who the f...k did he used to be?"

Then he couldn't figure out why we were all laughing.

Needless to say, I got some good notes from that group. And I even got a friendly wave from Yogi when I came back to the clubhouse for interviews after the game.

Looking forward to another baseball season.

There were a few times during my career that covering one race or event on a given weekend wasn't enough.

If the circumstances presented themselves, I sometimes was able to double dip.

One year, the Indy Cars were scheduled to race on Saturday in Phoenix and NASCAR was set for a Sunday race in Atlanta. I sat down with an airline schedule (remember those?) and figured out a way to take a red eye out of Phoenix and get to Atlanta in plenty of time to make it to the track for the Sunday race.

It turns out that everybody was pleased with the idea because the Atlanta sports writer who would have had to cover the race was far more interested in working on the NCAA tournament games in Atlanta that Sunday. He had covered the preliminaries at the track but had also been struggling to decide at which event to use a stringer for on Sunday.

I was excited by the idea of covering two feature events and having bylines in the papers from nearly 1,600 miles apart on the same weekend _ and I was young enough that the prospect of almost no sleep for two days didn't bother me much.

The race in Phoenix ran without a hitch and I was able to get some dinner with friends before heading for the airport. The red eye took off on time and I caught a few winks of sleep on the plane before we arrived in Atlanta at around 5 a.m.

I had booked a room at one of the airport hotels and was able to get my rental car and check into the hotel by 6 a.m. I set my alarm for 7:30 and fell soundly asleep.

When the alarm sounded, I got up. But it was like I was sleepwalking. I probably shouldn't have gone to sleep at all. But I was able to struggle out of bed, get dressed, grab a cup of coffee and a croissant at the hotel restaurant and head for Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Again the race went off without a problem. By the time I finished my writing, about 2 1/2 hours after the checkered flag, I was ready to collapse. I hardly remember the drive back to the hotel.

Normally, I would have taken a late flight or even a red eye to get home that night. But I guessed, rightly, that this was not the weekend to race back to New Jersey.

I was proud of myself for what I viewed as a major accomplishment, although no one else even mentioned it.

It was a lot easier the next time I did a weekend double because, this time, the races were a lot closer together geographically.

In those days, NASCAR had a race in Daytona Beach, FL, on the Saturday closest to the Fourth of July. It was known as the Firecracker 400.

Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) scheduled a race on the Sunday of that weekend at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio, my old home town. I couldn't miss that.

The only possible glitch was the forecast of rain in Daytona. A postponement until Sunday would have ended my hopes to cover both races and put the pressure on the Cleveland sports writer to cover that race for me on what was supposed to be his day off.

We were on the phone numerous times until the race in Daytona got past the halfway point, making it official and freeing me to get to Cleveland _ if I made my plane.

The race was slowed by several rain delays before NASCAR officials finally decided everyone had had enough and ended it a few laps short of a complete race. I was the last passenger to board the plane in Daytona before they shut the door.

The rest of the trip went smoothly.

My professional life got a little more complicated when Tony George, the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a member of the family that owned the Hoosier track, decided to start his own Indy car series as a rival to CART.

The Indy Racing League (IRL) was formed to rein in ever-increasing costs, open up the competition to grass roots racers and keep the team owners in the established CART series from dominating Indy car racing and dictating the rules and the schedule.

The split, which began in 1996, also split the already thin fan base and caused a Hatfields and McCoys type of feud, with both sides spitting venom and saying the other side was killing the sport.

It also meant I had more races to cover in person or make arrangements for. And there were plenty of conflicting dates.

CART, which lost the Indy 500 in the split, decided to run a race in East St. Louis, IL, just across the river from St. Louis, MO, on the same weekend as the 500. But, instead of trying to go head-to-head, the CART race was scheduled for the Saturday before the 500.

Although Indy had lost a lot of luster with the split, it was still a big event and drew most of the big names in motorsports journalism. Trying to build up its event, CART offered to fly any of the writers who wanted to cover both events back and forth on a charter.

St. Louis is just a four-hour drive from Indianapolis and it was also the city where my sister Judy and her family lived at the time. I decided to skip the charter flight and drive with Judy and my pal Lewis.

My Indy race advance was written and sent on the wire on Friday, before I left for St. Louis and there was nothing I had to do in Indy on Saturday. Until the CART race was scheduled, that Saturday was always a day for playing in a media golf tournament.

I didn't mind giving up the golf, but the hardest part of the trip was the ride back home after the race.

It was a very long day and we usually made it back to Indy around midnight. That was not a problem except for the fact that we generally got up around 5:30 a.m. on Indy race morning to make sure we were at the track in plenty of time to get parked and be settled in before the 11 a.m. green flag.

We did that trip for several years before the St. Louis race disappeared from the CART schedule.

The eventual end of the CART-IRL split also led to the strangest double I did in my career.

During the 12 years that the two Indy car series ran, there were numerous attempts to heal the conflict and bring them back together.

One year at Indy, I was invited to the motor home of Paul Newman, the Oscar-winning actor, aspiring race car driver and CART team owner.

We were friendly, but that was the first time Newman had asked me to join him in his motor home.

Once we had settled in, Newman looked at me with those famous penetrating blue eyes and said, "Mike, this war is killing us. You need to do something about it."

I was dumbstruck. What the hell was I supposed to do about the CART-IRL split?

"You've got a national pulpit," Newman went on. "Write a story about how we need to get back together. Maybe they'll listen to you."

I shook my head in wonder and said, "Paul, you know I've been writing story after story for years now about how this split is killing Indy car racing. It's about money and power and nobody is listening to me or to anybody else, it seems."

He shrugged and said, "Well, it was worth a try."

Finally, in May of 2008, there were all kinds of signs that the reunification of the rival series was imminent.

I was scheduled to fly to California for a NASCAR race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, when I got word of a press conference at the Indy Speedway that same day.

Phone calls to several sources convinced me that the announcement in Indy was going to be the uniting of the IRL and CART, obviously a very important national story.

I called my boss and said, "Should I change my flight to Indy and cover the press conference before I fly to California? We can get somebody in the LA bureau to cover practice and qualifying at Fontana on Friday."

To my amazement, I was told to stay with my original plans and somebody from the Indianapolis bureau would cover the press conference.

That was a little upsetting. But I was even more put off when I called Indy from the airport before I left Raleigh and found they didn't have anyone to cover the press conference.

"They'll fax us the announcment and we'll write it from the office," the Indy news editor told me.

I was aghast. I had written literally million of words since the formation of the IRL was announced in 1994 about the split, which almost killed one of the most important forms of auto racing in the world. And the AP wasn't even going to have a reporter at the press conference that finally ended the conflict.

Again, I called my boss and said, "We've got to do something about this. I'll cover it myself from California."

After some back and forth, she agreed.

I called the head of PR at the IRL and told him what I had in mind and he agreed to work with me.

After arriving at the track in California, I wrote a quick NASCAR feature for Saturday's papers. Then, at the appointed time, thanks to that PR person,, I listened to the Indy press conference on an open telephone line, writing several leads on the unification before getting some of the principles on the line for added quotes.

The copy flowed to NY sports and onto the wire. It went amazingly smoothly.

Just as I wrapped up that story, it was time to cover NASCAR qualifying. 

I got one quick call from my boss with an "atta boy" and that was it. To this day, I'm amazed at how smoothly it went with so many possible things to go wrong.

Judy has never really loved traveling. She's a stay-at-home type of person. But, somehow, I've managed to drag her all over North America and even to some of the more interesting and beautiful places in other parts of the world.

When I broach the subject of a trip, Judy's reply is usually, "I'd really rather not."

So the way this has worked, especially since my retirement in 2009, is that I make all the travel arrangements and then tell her what day we're leaving, how long we'll be away and the type of clothes she's going to need.

There's griping and grumbling until she is finally packed and ready to go. But the moment we step out the door, the attitude changes and we're ready to have some fun. Once we hit the road, Judy often isn't that crazy about the idea of going back home.

It's a process that I have gotten used to over the years. Grin and bear it and it will all work out.

We've taken some amazing trips since my retirement began. We've been to Hawaii twice, cruised the Caribbean and sailed through the Panama Canal, taken a two-month driving trip that went coast to coast, visiting family and friends and numerous national and state parks along the way, and hit Las Vegas at least a half dozen times for gambling (video poker is my game) and family visits.

But the real adventure was a trip in 2014 that took us to Barcelona, Spain to visit my sister Judy and her husband Stuart, as well as their son Boyd and his family, who were all living there at the time. More to the point, the trip included a long weekend in Paris, France.

I got a great airfare by flying Air Canada with a short flight from Boston to Toronto, a non-stop from there to Barcelona and the reverse on the trip home.

Unfortunately, Logan Airport in Boston was down to one outgoing runway because of construction, and a heavy rain with fog slowed things down so much that our flight to Toronto was 15 minutes too late to make our connection.

Instead of winging off to Spain, we spent the night in a Toronto hotel and had to fly to Montreal the next morning to catch a flight from there to Barcelona since Air Canada had only one flight to Spain from each of the Canadian cities every other day.

At least the airline paid for our room and our meals. But they also managed to misplace Judy's luggage, which we found was missing once we arrived in Spain about 24 hours later than expected.

Judy and Stu had made arrangements for an overnight trip to Girona, a charming, old city about an hour's train ride from Barcelona. So we hardly had any time to settle in before heading for the train station. And Judy was not happy to leave without knowing where her suitcase was.

Girona was fun and interesting, although Judy was fretting about her luggage, which Air Canada kept telling us was on the way and would be delivered to our hotel in Girona.

The next day, we visited a very old synagogue that housed a Jewish Museum, which chronicled the history of the Jewish people in Catalonia and, in particular, Girona, before they were forced to convert or leave Spain in 1492. We were told there were still a very few Jews living in the area. But, somehow the museum survived.

A few nervous hours later, as we were preparing to leave our hotel to head for the train back to Barcelona, Judy's luggage finally arrived. It was a huge relief.

Of course, touring the city of Barcelona, eating in the wonderful restaurants and spending time with family was a joy. But, for me, the highlight of this trip was sneaking in the weekend in Paris in the middle of our two weeks on the road.

We took a high-speed train from Barcelona to Paris. I sat at the window for most of the six-and-a-half-hour trip, just watching the countryside pass by. There wasn't a whole lot to see but trees and farms and water, but I thoroughly enjoy the sights while Judy read.

The train hit 198 mph but was so smooth that it felt much slower, much to Judy's chagrin.

With only Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday to see as much of Paris as possible, I studied some of the tour books closely for weeks before the trip.

My main goal for this bucket list visit was to see the Louvre. I purposely found a hotel within walking distance of the great art museum. Happily, it was also just two blocks from a Metro stop.

We had wifi on the train and I went online to see what time the Louvre opened on Saturday. It was my intention to be there before it opened, to maximize our time there. To my joy and amazement, it turned out that the Louvre is open until 10 p.m. on Friday nights. Our train was scheduled to arrive just after 4 o'clock.

"Judy, are you okay with going to the Louvre tonight after we get settled in our hotel?"

She looked up from her book, smiled and said, "As long as you feed me sometime."

We taxied from the train station to our boutique hotel in St. Germain and checked in. It was everything you expect from a hotel in Paris - dark, heavy furniture, tiny rooms and old world charm. Perfect.

After unpacking, we set off in a light rain to walk to the Louvre. Our stroll took us through the small St. Germain business district and onto one of the many stone bridges traversing the Seine River. Just on the other side was the museum.

There was a short line to get in, mostly because of security precautions. But I had bought a museum pass online back in the states and we were inside in moments.

The place is huge, with massive galleries. But, like most tourists, what I wanted most to see were the portrait of Mona Lisa and the statue of the Venus de Milo. It turns out Friday night is pretty quiet at the Louvre and we were able to see everything up close and personal, including me taking selfies with both of those art treasures.

There is a mall attached to the museum and we wound up eating dinner there before heading back to the galleries until closing.

There was a special exhibit that you had to buy tickets for, but it was sold out for Friday night. I bought tickets for Saturday morning at 10 and we were back in the short line to enter the Louvre at 9:30 after a wonderful hotel breakfast of strong French coffee and some of the best chocolate and almond croissant you could imagine.

The museum was much more crowded on Saturday, but we had seen the most important pieces the night before when we were able to just                                                                                        walk up and enjoy them.                                                                        .

 

The weather had cleared nicely by the time we left the Louvre around noon. We strolled through the Tuileries, the formal gardens that link the Louvre to Place de la Concorde, and headed for the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triomph before heading back along the left bank of the Seine.

It was a long walk and, along the way, we sampled the wares of one of the numerous crepe carts. A real treat.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Musee de Orsay, an art museum housed in a onetime train station and displaying the works of numerous grand masters from 1848 to 1914. As much as I loved the Louvre, I was very taken with the de Orsay - so much so that we did a second visit on Sunday morning.

I asked one of the docents if there was a good place to eat lunch nearby and she gave me a funny look, as if to say, "Hey, buddy, this is Paris."

We wound up eating across the street at a little cafe that features crepe suzette. It was sensational.

We were tired and decided to use our transit pass to take the Metro back to our hotel. We got on the right train, but missed our stop because I was too dumb to realize you had to push the door open yourself. By the time I realized my mistake, the train was heading for the next stop.

We got off, made our way to the platform on the other side and waited for the next train to arrive. When it did, the car was very crowded.

In the middle of the car was a couple with a tiny baby, who seemed to be looking right at me. I waved at the baby and he smiled. I then proceeded to play hide and seek, ducking behind my hands and bobbing up to look at the baby with a big smile.

He began to giggle loudly. Before long, everybody in that car was smiling and laughing. The mother looked at me and mouthed the words "grand pere?" I nodded and she smiled.

This time, I pushed the door open and, as we walked off the car, several people said, "Bonjour!"

That night, we ate dinner at the Le Petit Chaise, one of the oldest restaurants in Paris. It opened in the same spot in 1680 and the decor appears to have changed little in the interim. But the service was  perfect and the food was excellent, particularly the French onion soup and the dessert of vanilla creme brulee.

Sunday, we ate a late breakfast and wandered through some of the shops in St. Germain. I had booked a "Tour of Paris Lights" from home. We were to catch the bus late in the afternoon only a few blocks from our hotel.

But, somehow, I misread the directions and wound up lost as the time of departure got closer.

People in Paris had been unfailingly nice up to then. But the folks I approached to ask directions, including the bellman at a fancy hotel, were downright rude, apparently put off by the fact that I was speaking English.

Between us, Judy and I were able to finally decipher the instructions and found the bus in the nick of time. We were both getting hungry, but I was under the impression that the tour would end at the Eiffel Tower just after dark and we could find a nice place to eat.

The first part of the tour was a drive-by of Paris statues and sights. We were then dropped off for a trip down the Seine on one of the famous bateaux-mouches, the river boats.

It was a warm, pleasant evening and the hour-long cruise that began near the base of the Eiffel Tower was beautiful, floating past people dancing and partying on both sides of the river and seeing some of the great landmarks of Paris, including Cathedral Notre Dame, before the fire.

At that point, it was getting dark and I thought the bus would just drop us off across the road at the Eiffel Tower, where we had tickets to go to the top two floors. Instead, the tour continued - for more than an hour.

I felt like Gilligan. Our two-hour tour had turned into something much different.

Finally, at 930 p.m., we reached the Eiffel Tower. I looked at the prices on the menu of the restaurant in the tower and decided it was a little too pricey for us. We took the elevator up, looked out over Paris for a few minutes and both of us looked at the other and said, "Enough. Let's eat."

We took a taxi back to our hotel. It was nearly 11 p.m. and the cafe at the corner of our street was open and busy. We had stopped in there for coffee the previous evening after our dinner. It was too early for the French dinner crowd, the place was dead and the waiters were pretty uninterested.

But, apparently Sunday night at 11 o'clock is the right time to eat in Paris. The place was hopping.

We were whisked to a table with a smile. It was no fast food place, but the meals came out soon enough as we dined on hamburgers, fries and onion rings that were unusual and delicious.

Finishing dinner after midnight was a bit tough on the stomachs of a couple of old timers like us, but it was also a great experience.

The next morning, we ate one last croissant breakfast before heading to the airport for our flight back to Barcelona, where we spent another week enjoying the sights and the company of my family.

But, as much as I love my sister and her family, and as beautiful as Barcelona is, Paris was the most memorable part of that trip. I'd like to go back some day. But, if I don't, we managed to pack in plenty of good memories in a short time.

I spent very few Friday nights at home during my AP career. So, when I did manage to get a free Friday, Judy and I always tried to find something fun or interesting to do - especially after the kids were grown and doing their own thing.

On one of those rare Fridays at home in 1981, we decided to make one of our infrequent visits to Temple Emanu-El for the Shabbat service. It was a fateful decision.

It was announced that night that the government in the USSR had opened the door for Jews living in the Soviet Union to emigrate to Israel and the United States. Those open periods were few and far between and generally lasted only weeks.

Our temple was one of a number in the U.S. and Canada that was willing to host the emigres and help them settle in.

The temple president asked for volunteers to meet the incoming immigrants at the airport, put them up for a night or two and then help them get through the tasks of getting their green cards, signing up for temporary coverage by Medicaid and getting settled into apartments being provided by Jewish Family Services and other Jewish organizations.

I was just about to start a few weeks of vacation and we had no plans to travel, so Judy and I volunteered.

A few days later, we were given the task of meeting a family named Gelfman at Kennedy Airport. We didn't know how many of them there were, if they spoke any English or had any background at all. What we did know was that their plane from Italy, where they had been living temporarily, was scheduled to land at 1:40 p.m. that Thursday.

I asked Judy how we would figure out who the Gelfmans were? Her eyes lit up and she said, "We'll make a sign."

Not knowing the Cyrillic alphabet _ a deficit she has since filled _ Judy enlisted the help of a Russian speaker at JFS to print out the name for us. She then copied it on a large piece of construction paper.

We headed to the airport on the appointed day not knowing how many people we were picking up or anything else about them, other than their last name.

We had been warned that it often took up to two hours for newcomers to pass through customs and immigration and arrive in the baggage claim area. But, not knowing when they would come out of those double doors, I stood dutifully holding up the sign while Judy sat on the floor next to me reading one of her texts and occasionally looking up to see if I was doing okay.

It was a long two hours before a disheveled woman and a rather large teenage boy walked through the double doors looking tired and a little scared.

By that time, the baggage claim was almost empty and they saw my sign right away.

They walked toward me and I asked, "Gelfman?" The woman looked leery, but nodded yes.

I had no idea if she or her son spoke any English, but I said, "I'm Mike and this is Judy. We're here to pick you up and take you to our home in New Jersey and help you get settled in America."

The woman nodded and said, "I am Rima and this is Eugene."

We managed to get the message across that they needed to get their one suitcase and follow us to our car.

It turned out that Rima spoke only a few words of English and Eugene even less. But, in the car, as I tried to point out a few of the sights to Eugene, sitting with me in the front seat, I heard a constant hum of conversation from the backseat, where Judy talked to Rima in English and Rima spoke to Judy in Russian and the two seemed to somehow understand each other.

Rima, who lived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, grew up dreaming of coming to the U.S. She secretly listened almost every day to Voice of America. She missed one earlier window to leave because her mother was ill.

But, this  time, as soon as she learned the window was open, she applied for an exit visa. That meant she lost her job and her apartment as she waited several months for permission for her and her son to leave.

Finally, she was in America, and it was all a bit too much at first.

Our house in Westfield had a finished basement with a pullout couch and a bathroom. That's where Rima and Eugene stayed for their first two nights in this country. By the third night, they were in their own apartment in Elizabeth, NJ.

From the first day, it was as if Judy and Rima had a real connection. Somehow, they were able to communicate without language until Judy bought each of them a Russian-English dictionary and began to talk page numbers.

Eugene was an affable and smart young man and quickly began to pick up the language.

The two of them quickly became a part of our family.

To this day, we remain close friends with Rima and stay in contact with Eugene, who went on to graduate from college, got married to a Russian-American and has two children.

Through Rima, we met Lyuba and her family. Also immigrants from the USSR, they lived for a while in the same building as the Gelfmans.

Another couple we got to know in New Jersey were Adolph and Priscilla. Adolph ran a limo service and was often my ride to and from Newark Airport. He was a very nice man and a terrible driver, so bad that at times it was scary to ride with him.

But I felt he needed the business and I kept calling him, hoping that maybe this time his son, who worked with him, would show up.

We found out that Adolph and Priscilla also worked the flea market circuit on the weekends, buying odds and ends from wholesalers and reselling them.

One of the perks of covering the racing beat for AP was that I was constantly coming home with baseball caps featuring a wide variety of logos. I rarely wore a hat in those days, but I brought the hats home and tossed them into my closet. Petty soon, I had a huge garbage bag full of them.

I asked Adolph if he would be interested in trying to sell them at the flea markets and he was very pleased - especially when I gave them to him for free.

We lived in Westfield for 15 years and wound up with some very nice friends, including the Russians and Adolph and his wife. It all came to fruition in 1995 when we decided to sell our house in Westfield and move to North Carolina.

We had a decade and a half of accumulation in our house and decided to hold a yard sale to get rid of as much as we could before the move. Of course, we had no experience with doing a yard sale.

Adolph and Priscilla, veterans of the yard sale wars, volunteered to help us get set up and another friend, Elaine Tibbott, came by to help us price everything.

Then Rema and Lyuba announced they too were going to help with the sale.

On the big day, with early rain turning to bright, clear skies, Adolph and Priscilla helped us fend off the early birds ("vultures who try to cherry pick your best stuff before anybody else can see it.")

Once the sale started, I took care of the cash box, Judy circulated and made decisions on lowering prices and the Russians and Adolph and Priscilla worked the crowds, selling like crazy.

I had put three suits into the sale, all of them altered to fit my fire hydrant build and at least five years old. Lyuba walked up and asked me, "How much the suits?"

I shrugged and said, "If they actually fit somebody, just give them away." Lyuba looked at me like I had slapped her in the face and waved at me, dismissively.

Moments later, she came back all smiles and plunked down cash on the table: "Fifteen, fifteen, fifteen," she said proudly.

This may have been the most successful yard sale in New Jersey that year. We came away with over $2,000 without selling any really big ticket items. But, more than the money, the memory of our friends pitching in and all the fun we had that day, is what lingers in the mind.