Svetlana and Boris Ovushkova are battling the State of New Jersey because a recent ruling by the statehouse says that people who came to the USA as orphans, are not allowed to open up a “Mom and Pop” business.
“After the Soviet Union fell I come to USA as an orphan,” said Boris Ovsuhkova as he sat in the Newton, New Jersey paint shop he shares with his teary-eyed wife Svetlana -also a post Soviet orphan.
“When I arrived in the USA I stayed in a Ukrainian church home for orphans where I met Svetlana and worked myself up and went to college. Now we have this small paint business but the state officials came to the shop yesterday and said that it makes no sense for orphans to say that they are operating a Mom and Pop business and that I must call my shop “A paint store owned by orphans.”
Congressman Quincy Host (I) Sussex County District 89, explained the ruling to TheDamienZone.com.
“Historically, if you had no parents, you were called an orphan,” said the congressman as he let off a round at a passing bear.
“Now think about this. How can an orphan open up a Mom and Pop store when there is no Mom and Pop? It’s deception in advertising and these former Soviets are taking advantage of an American idiom. Somebody had to take action and that person was me.
“Of course the Ovushkova’s insist that they are exempt from the law because they had their small Mom and Pop shop before the law was passed and that they should be grandfathered in, but how can they grandfather themselves in when they never had a grandfather?”
Boris and Svetlana blame this all on the influence of Walmart and that the concept of the Mom and Pop business is being squashed by the giant retail chain.
“I can’t do anything with my business like a normal businessman,” lamented Boris. “I wanted to add my store to a franchise like Dutch Boy or Glidden Paints, but they are all owned by a parent company and they said that since I did not have parents I could not join a corporation that had a parent company. I don’t understand the freedoms I was supposed to have in the United States — they do not exist.”
The Congressman is determined to fight the Ovushkova’s all the way to the Supreme Court.
“The Ovushkova’s can have any business they want, but they can’t say, even in casual conversation, that they own a Mom and Pop business. They are orphans — period! My wife was an orphan and one time she baked a pie and said that it tasted ‘just like grandma used to make’ and that really pissed me off. I didn’t talk to my wife for a month.
“I have recently added a new provision to the law for people who are unable to have children. A guy who has had a vasectomy can’t stand at a crap table in Atlantic City and say, ‘Baby needs a new pair of shoes.’ Whose baby is he talking about? That’s a form of child abuse in my book. Also, orphans can’t go to movies that are rated PG because how can they get parental guidance if they are orphans, huh? ”
Another ruling on this law is supposed to be voted on in March but officials at the state house say that it looks like the bill will stay as it is and the the Ovushkova’s will have to call their little Mom and Pop business by it’s real name — Orphan Boris and Orphan Svetlana’s Little Orphan Paint Store.
“Okay. If that’s what we have to do to stay in business, that’s what we will do.
