My dad promised her that Texas would only be a two-year interlude, a chance to save up some cash before we could move somewhere with a more life-sustaining climate. (Thirty years later, they still live in Texas.)

The comparatively minuscule cost of living did improve certain aspects of our lives. For me, it meant no more sleeping on a pull-out couch in the living room. I lived in water wings and a little blue bathing suit, and I could generally be found submerged in the tepid waters of our apartment complex’s swimming pool. (Including, at one point, for a shallow-end baptism organized by the apartment’s Sunday school.) Little indulgences, like trips to Pizza Hut, were made to gloss over the fact that we had traded palm trees for oil derricks.

Financially, things were better in Midland, but not by much. So when the phone rang with a part-time job offer, my dad was intrigued. It was a woman who said she taught Russian at the local college. The only problem was that she didn’t speak it—or at least, not well enough to teach an hour-long class twice a week. In a moment of leaning in, she had convinced the college administrators that she was practically Pushkin, and they had neglected to verify her skills. Now she was coming to loathe this harsh, toilsome language and the people who wanted to learn it. There were no other Russians in town. Would my dad be interested in taking the class over?

He had never taught before, but he said yes. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, my dad would leave his day job and drive his Mazda to Midland College, a cluster of squat brown buildings across from Tumbleweed Park.

The Russian class was popular, but several people only came to the first lesson. This was before the Internet, so people saw in my father a type of Russian Google. These one-and-done people would, invariably, be most interested in one of three questions:

1. What does Spetsnaz stand for? (“Special Purpose Forces” is the closest English translation.)
2. How easy is it to obtain a Kalashnikov? (the Soviet automatic rifle also known as an AK)
3. Why did the Soviet Union end? (“That moron Gorbachev,” according to my dad)

My dad had his realization: he was weird, and the Texans wanted to demystify him. They wanted to probe this strange creature, who had been swept into their land like a butterfly in a dust storm, and through him, to learn about a side of the world they had never seen. It was convenient that the town weirdo had office hours.

One day, a man with a weather-beaten face raised his hand and asked, “Are there horses in Russia?”

He got his answer (yes, e.g., the Cossacks, Russia’s horse-mounted warriors) and never returned. To this day, we wonder what purpose this knowledge served, and imagine the man living out his days operating a small rodeo near Krasnoyarsk.