

There used to be a saying that if you have relatives in America, you have them in Cleveland. Cleveland was considered the largest Slovenian city for a long time after the WW2. Even more Slovenes lived there than in Ljubljana.
And of course I am no exception. My ancestors on my mother’s side, three aunts and one uncle, fled from Primorska to America in the early 1920s to escape fascist violence. After the WW1, Primorska belonged to Italy and fascism was definitely not in favor of Slovenes.
In any case, the contacts remained. Aid packages were arriving. And some hidden dollar bill in the letter. The first visits took place in the early fifties. Years later, aunt Angela praised my mother’s goat stew.
I remember her telling how she was scared when she saw a black person for the first time in her life on the train ride from New York to Chicago.
I still have aunt Angela’s Easter card dated April 3, 1968.
And so one foggy morning on Tuesday, February 23, 1982, after an all-night Greyhound ride from Chicago, I arrived in Cleveland.
I spoke to aunt Julie the night before and told her when and where I was coming.

And that’s how I met Bud. My cousin in America.
Since he was unemployed, a student, he was assigned to take care of me.
So I’m sitting in the waiting room at the bus station. Besides me, two or three blacks. When the front door opens and a young man with slightly longer hair walks in, he looks around and leaves. Five minutes later, he returns and looks around once more. Something tells me, what if this is Bud. I stand up, wave my hand, and sure enough, it was Bud. For the whole week, the whole family was laughing, how among three blacks and one white man, you couldn’t recognize your cousin from Europe.

And we walked around all week, listening to the sounds from the police car, going to lectures at his college. In the evening at the disco club at the Marriott Hotel. And going to Painesville, where my uncle had an inn.
And my cousin Kris’s ex-husband, who was interested in how things were with us, saying that I was the first person from a communist country he had met.
And the following Friday night I left for New York and Europe, home.
It was in the early eighties. There was no internet, no emails, no Facebook.
After a letter or two, contact was lost.
A good thirty years later, I’m scrolling through Facebook and suddenly come across the name Bud Spofford. Could this be Bud, my cousin? I write him a message and within a quarter of an hour I get a reply – Welcome home, Brane.
And we exchanged emails, ideas, moments of joy.
And moments of sadness.
Shortly after the death of his beloved wife, he disappeared. He was nowhere to be found, no voice, just nothing.
And then a few years ago he resurfaced. This time he looked for me.
And we again had long debates about politics, the meaning of life, about his journey to Vietnam. About our common ancestors, about his children. About what we will do when (if) I come to visit. And about his great desire to come to Europe and Slovenia one day. To see where his ancestors came from on his mother’s side.
And then the bad news came. He died suddenly, still full of plans for the future.
And all I have are the notes of our debates, a few photos taken way back in 1982. And the realization of how fleeting we are.
In memory of Bud 1956 – 2021
And his record on his last name.
In the study of my last name it goes back to the year of 1066. In that year in England there was a battle known as The Battle of Hastings. The victor, a Frenchman, William was very pragmatic. All the lands of conquest were itemized, the horse, cows, sheep, and so forth. This was for taxation. The land of my ancestors was near a natural spring of hot bubble water, known as a spa. To get to the spa was to cross a fjord. Hence the name entered into the inventory of William the Conqueror as the family at the Spa, across the Fjord. Spofford.