Social elevator: children of different nations (part one)
Here at the IN, debates are constantly flashing about the “eternal questions” of the present: who are we, where are we from, where are we going, and most importantly, why? Dr. Emmett Brown from “Back to the Future-2” wanted to find out all this, but in the end he was almost not lost in time. Naturally, there are people who apparently believed in the “holy USSR” all their lives, that everyone was equal there, and equal opportunities were opened for the children of different nations and working people to take a place among middle and higher - that is, social groups named in the novel George Orwell "1984". For some reason, these people do not want to admit the obvious: that a child who has suffered a neck injury at the purely medical level will not be able to play basketball. That the victim of a drunken conception, at best, will go to a correction class, and not to a specialized gymnasium, well, but the deaf-blind and dumb (even if very few of them) will have to study in a special school from the very beginning. Plus, poverty. Not everyone could provide a son or daughter who had studied in Moscow even then, and just as everyone cannot today, even if, as a result of the Unified State Exam, a child enters a Moscow university. I know these personally. However, life is such that a variety of social elevators work in it, which lift someone up, and drop someone down. But, developing this topic, I am not going to refer to the figures, scientific data and opinions of various venerable scientists this time, but to “live stories", That is, ordinary memories. In this case, mine. Similar material here on the VO has also been. But ... for a long time did not have to continue. And not because George Soros personally forbade it to me, but simply somehow there was no corresponding mood, but at the hands of some old photos. That is, these are ordinary memoirs that, from a certain age, almost everyone would like to write. So…
It always happens that we remember our childhood years better than what we had just two or three years ago. And so I remember very well both my street, where I was born in 1954, and my playmates, although I “just saw” all this then. Understanding what I saw, it came, of course, much later. For example, I saw how and who lives on this street from my playmates comrades. On the section of Proletarskaya Street, next to my house, there were still 10 houses, although there were much more houses in them. For example, in my house, except for my grandfather, grandmother, mother and me, my grandfather and sister lived behind the wall. We had two rooms and a grandfather, the former head of the city board during the Second World War, who was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Badge of Honor, slept in the hallway at the door leading into the hall, and the grandmother was on the sofa in the hall. Mom and I were placed in a small room, where her desk and wardrobe still stood.
My house, view from the street. That was how it was before 1974. (He promised one of our regulars an article with his own drawings and now he found it. In childhood I did a good job of drawing, but not much remained, unfortunately)
And this is the hall. Left the door to the small room. Where you look from, the whole space is occupied by the Russian stove. The table has not drawn four more chairs. There is no kerosene lamp in the middle of the table, or a pile of newspapers and magazines. The portraits of the chest on the left in the center of the grandfather, on the sides of his sons killed in the war. Downstairs on the dresser is a very expensive Moser watch. In the buffet on the right, the KVVK cognac and a decanter with vodka infused on lemon rinds necessarily stood. But grandfather used it very rarely. The mirror without a table has been preserved and is now hanging in my hallway. Huge palm trees in tubs - date and fan at that time were very fashionable indoor plants, along with ficuses.
So the house was very crowded and I didn’t like to stay there. There was really no place to play. For example, laying out a grooved metro on the table meant removing everything from it, including the huge Matnodor 1886 kerosene lamp of the year in the style of Bernard Palissi. Although you could get on the couch with your feet and so listen to very interesting radio programs: “There are literary heroes in the country”, “Club of famous captains”, “Mail Stagecoach”, COAPS ... There were also large canopy rooms, a closet with banks and pans with candied jam. , three sheds (one with rabbits) and just a huge garden, which my wife still regrets, because he would be better than any summer cottage for us now.
One of the few surviving photos from a "childhood". Then we, the boys from Proletarskaya Street, looked like this in the school camp. The author is the leftmost one. I loved to play chess then.
These 10 houses had 17 households, that is, some houses resembled real burrows. But the children (boys) of my age plus or minus two or three years for these households, there were only six and four more from Mirskaya Street and the end of Proletarskaya. How many guys were on the opposite side I do not know. We were “not led” with them. But about the same. Only in one family of the Mulins there were two children. There were only two girls for all this boyish horde, and it is clear that they did not interest us. And now think about it. The street was working families. The parents of my comrades worked at a nearby plant to them. Frunze. And what a shortage of "frames"!
This is the most extreme house on Proletarskaya Street, where I once lived, because there was a clearing further, although the street itself did not end here. Of my friends the boys lived in it “Sanka-snotty”, who had such a nickname for the green snot constantly flowing from the nose. He was an outcast and therefore differed harmful character. I don't know where he went, but his mother still lives in this house. He was a rabbitcher, as you see, he stayed, but ... modern materials gave him ... a modern look!
That's when the crisis began with the population of our country, and not at all in the 1991 year! The idea is that in all full families, except mine, there should have been at least two children, and all of them had one. That is, let's say, Proletarskaya Street (this piece of it) did not provide self-reproduction of its population. Now she has only one house from my childhood! At the site of my house is a building materials store, the neighboring house was rebuilt, and two cottages were built at the end of the street. The street itself is overgrown with grass. The workers at the plant didn’t walk along it for a long time, and it happened that they were going in a continuous stream, so I woke up from the solid tramp of their shoes - top-top.
This house appeared at the end of 90's ...
I went to my comrades' houses. But it was difficult for them to come to me. It hurt us in the house was clean! Around the carpets on the floor, velvet tablecloth, carpet on the couch and on the back of the sofa, the carpet on my wall by the bed, my mother ... There was nothing like that in their families. I was particularly struck by the conditions in which my friends Mulina live. In their house there were four apartments with five windows facing the street. That is, these were the dwellings of the “carriage layout”. So they had a porch, cold canopy, where in the summer kerosene cooked food, and one long room, divided by a stove into two parts. In the first one with two windows to the street, there was a one-and-a-half parents bed (and how they could fit on it, since neither their mother nor their father had the fragility of addition!), Between the windows there was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe near the wall, a shelf with a dozen books, table and ... everything. Behind the stove were the beds of my comrades Sasha and Eugene with blankets in the style of a patchwork and a chest on which their grandmother slept. Under the wallpaper were found such red bugs. Bugs! And I did not know what it was and told at home. After that, they stopped letting me at all.
Moreover, I saw all this in 1964, when I was already in the second grade. By the way, the first refrigerator and the first TV on our street appeared again in my house, just in 1959, when TV broadcasting began in Penza.
And this one following him too ... But there are no children in them!
Which of the guys on our street lived at about the same level of material wealth? There was another boy - Victor, the son of a pilot at the Penza airport. A full family, all parents worked, and they also had carpets, carpets in the house, and he had cardboard games and Meccano constructors.
Convenience at all, of course, were in the yard. But different "type". We have a spacious restroom, with wallpaper, a chimney and completely odorless. Grandmother there regularly washed the floor and it was even pleasant to be there, looking into the garden through the open door.
But this is already a nostalgia ... The house where my physical education teacher San Sanych lived. In our time, his heirs have besieged it with bricks and made gas heating.
Here is this house close-up.
Not so with the neighbors, including in the toilet with my comrades. There, the “grace of the womb” splashed almost at the very hole and there was a terrible stench. But worse than all was the toilet of one of the village women who lived in the same house in one of the “car apartments”. Ugly there was just indescribable. However, nobody paid attention to this. And then once, playing in my garden, I saw how one of these women, standing on the garden beds, did not even sit down, but lifted up his hem and ... large ... fell from it to the ground like peas, as if from a horse . And then she lowered the hem, pulled the fifth point and ... went to weed the beds further. To say that for me it was a revelation - to say nothing. It was just a shock! I, as I remember myself, were imparted with the skills of personal hygiene and cleanliness; after every meal I had to brush my teeth at the washstand and regularly change my underwear. And here ... I didn’t notice any underwear at this woman, and you can not even mention everything else. In general, I felt a real hatred for her, which people feel, probably, for a snake or a toad. One of her existence next to me seemed offensive and unacceptable to me. And ... he immediately decided to take revenge on her. Just for being so!
We go further along the remnants of the Soviet Proletarian and see a house with a collapsed roof (let's call it “Victor's house”, but not the pilot’s son, that house was demolished!), Which has not changed since 1967, when I was in it the last time. And since then he has not repaired even once! However, a brick extension with a heating system was attached to it.
Pocket money, since I was already at school, was given to me. So I went to the store, bought two packs of yeast - at school we did some kind of experience ... and, mixed with sugar, put it to ferment. And then at night he crept into her yard and poured it all into the hole.
In the morning, having forgotten everything that was done the day before, I go out on the porch and ... smell it ... and also hear screams from the neighbors in the yard and see ... the tilted roof of its toilet! Ran there, and there - a real eruption of Vesuvius. The men arrived at the "cleaning shop", but they refused to clean it, they said that they would break the car if they did. We must wait for the "completion of the process" - then. It is interesting that all the neighbors' boys did not like this woman, and because of the fence, so that she wouldn’t see who and didn’t complain to her parents, they teased her like this: “Oh, you old hag, you gave birth to a cat, laid it on a bed, started kissing her cheeks! "
Here is this house close-up. I always walk past him ... "shivering", as if by a "time machine" arrived in the past.
What I liked about the Mulins was the smell of fried potatoes in the evenings. When father and mother came home from work, the grandmother fed them such potatoes. They invited me too, and our ... "social differences" immediately became clear. It turned out that it was customary for them to fry the potatoes in butter, and half a pouch would be poured into the pan. My amazement was noticed and asked: isn’t it wrong with you? And I told that we have potatoes cut into cubes and the grandmother fries it in vegetable oil, which is why it turns out all fried and crispy. "And you have it kind of soft, everything stuck to the bottom ... and with a bow!" It is clear that they did not invite me to the table anymore. But at home they explained to me that you cannot fry potatoes in butter, because it burns. Whereas the vegetable can withstand a higher temperature, and the potatoes blush correctly.
At the site of this house was the "house of thieves." With the "front porch" All men were thieves and occasionally "sat" ... The house was completely rebuilt, as you see.
I must say that even then I felt that I know more than these of my peers, I can do more, but I was very shy about my upbringing. I remember how relatives came to visit us: my cousin with her son Boris. My mother was already working at the institute, first as a factory worker, and then as an assistant at the department of the history of the CPSU. Well, her sister taught at a music school, and Boris this very one came to us in short pants and with a bow on his shirt. They sat down to lunch and called me, right from the street, with dirty hands, in satin bloomers and in a T-shirt. I somehow washed my hands, sat down at the table, then she’s my brother and asks: “Borya, do you not want to pee?” And he said to her: “No, Mom!” I remember I barely waited for the end of dinner, ran out to my street boys and say: “Roby, to me right now, brother in a girl's shorts came with a bow. His mother is right at the table - if you want the pic ..., and he to her - no mom! He will come out on the street, we will beat him! ”He didn’t come out onto his street, and I just don’t know how we would finish it for this dissimilarity!
On the site of my house there is now this store and on the right a cargo yard. There were six windows on the street!
I went to school not simple, but to a special one, with English from the second grade. But not by special selection, and not by a call “from above”, as is happening now, but simply because it was a school in our district. No one in our district then understood the benefits of such a special school, and all the guys in it were “local”. Not like now. Now this is a gymnasium, where children on Volvo and Mersakh are brought in from all over the city, and there are already five languages to choose from. My daughter also studied there, although, it’s true, things hadn’t come to such “frills”, but her elitism was already felt in everything. But the granddaughter is studying in a regular school. I do not want to deprive her of childhood and to engage in a race for survival from a young age. Yes, and a special role now who has finished what school does not play. Playing the role of who your child was preparing for the exam. And he can learn in the small school of the village of Maly Dunduki. So here the social elevator worked, one might say, by chance. By the way, from among my school comrades from the parallel class, I have completely risen to the top ... Oleg Salyukov, well, the same one that became a general and, together with Shoigu, is now taking parades on Red Square, well, another boy who became the most famous in 90 counterfeiter in Russia. I am proud of my acquaintance with both! By the way, the last son became a candidate of sciences (like my daughter!) And teaches at the university today. Another boy became famous gangster (!) Local scale. But already died.
At the site of this building there were three households at once: the Mulins' house, the "doctor's house" (three windows) and the "Victor-2 house" (the pilot's son).
Studying at this school was ... interesting, although learning for me because of poor performance in math was a lot of trouble. In history, I did not know how to get fours, but in algebra with geometry and a troika I was glad unspeakably. But with English (because I really didn’t understand his particular use at that time!) I started having problems with the 5 class. And in general, problems with studies after the 5 class, it was such an age trend. Today he moved to more advanced classes. And then my mummy told me that “you must meet the level at which your family is in society, and that if you continue to study like this, you will slide down and go to the factory. And there the first pay, “washing”, will come home all dirty and spelled out and I will ... tear you away from my heart and ... you will go and see! ”The threat seemed serious to me, but I already picked up the agitation at school and answered that we all are equal! And then she gave me the Orwellian (although Orwell, of course, did not read and could not read, but she could see that she thought!): “Yes, they are equal, but some are more equal than others!” And it was not here that I could not answer. But he remembered the patchwork blankets of my comrades along the street, and the “red bugs” they had under the wallpaper, and potatoes in butter, green snot from the nose of “Sanka-snotty,” their drunken fathers every Saturday, realized that she was right, and decided That will never look like them. Subdilagged to study and straightened to “excellent” everything except mathematics, well, yes, it was not required at the history department at that time. But when I came to take the English language test at the pedagogical institute, and sat down to answer the desk, I heard in response: “What school did you graduate from? Sixth! So why are you fooling us here! From this and had to start! Five - go! ”So I had this entrance exam, and then later at the institute, up to the fourth year, I rode on the baggage of knowledge gained at school. It was convenient to say that.
The house, which was opposite to mine in Proletarsky passage. It once seemed the highest among the single-story five-wall plants. Now for the 5-9-storey it is not visible. Moreover, it has grown by a meter into the ground, or rather, the level of the surrounding land has increased by a meter. I used to go to him uphill, but now I have to go down the stairs. This is how the relief has changed over the past half century.
And this is my most unloved house on the next street, Dzerzhinskaya, turned out to be right in front of my current housing. Then there was a “fire” in it (now it is empty, people are burning less!) And the only phone in the whole district where I was sent to call my grandfather and grandmother “ambulance”. In any weather, I had to go, crawl into my eyes, explain what and how, then meet the doctors at the gate and escort through the dark yard past the watchdog to the house. Oh, how I did not like it, but what was to be done - debt is debt.
Such preferences were given then by training in the Soviet special school, even in the most ordinary provincial city. In addition to “just language”, they also taught us geography in English, English literature, American literature, technical translation and military translation, and even taught us to disassemble the AK assault rifle and the Bran machine gun ... in English, that is all weapons we had to know the terms in their English version and be able to describe our actions; taught to interrogate prisoners of war and read a map with English inscriptions.
And this is a store opposite the previous house. In 1974, it was a one-story typical Soviet architecture “store-aquarium” - “Cooperator”, where my wife and I went for groceries. The store is here now. But ... how was it built on and how was it finished ?!
By the way, my street friends didn't get to this school, although they could. “Well, who needs this English ?!”, said their parents, sent them to a regular school next door, and our paths diverged forever after that.
And here time seemed to stop a second time. Nothing has changed in this house in 50 years, except that the roofs above the entrance doors on the pillars have been added. That is, there seems to be a lot of changes, yes, but even the old wooden wreck ("Victor's house") on Proletarskaya Street still stands ... It’s time to open a museum: "a typical family house of a Soviet worker who worked in the 60s of the last century at the plant . Frunze.
To be continued ...
It always happens that we remember our childhood years better than what we had just two or three years ago. And so I remember very well both my street, where I was born in 1954, and my playmates, although I “just saw” all this then. Understanding what I saw, it came, of course, much later. For example, I saw how and who lives on this street from my playmates comrades. On the section of Proletarskaya Street, next to my house, there were still 10 houses, although there were much more houses in them. For example, in my house, except for my grandfather, grandmother, mother and me, my grandfather and sister lived behind the wall. We had two rooms and a grandfather, the former head of the city board during the Second World War, who was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Badge of Honor, slept in the hallway at the door leading into the hall, and the grandmother was on the sofa in the hall. Mom and I were placed in a small room, where her desk and wardrobe still stood.
My house, view from the street. That was how it was before 1974. (He promised one of our regulars an article with his own drawings and now he found it. In childhood I did a good job of drawing, but not much remained, unfortunately)
And this is the hall. Left the door to the small room. Where you look from, the whole space is occupied by the Russian stove. The table has not drawn four more chairs. There is no kerosene lamp in the middle of the table, or a pile of newspapers and magazines. The portraits of the chest on the left in the center of the grandfather, on the sides of his sons killed in the war. Downstairs on the dresser is a very expensive Moser watch. In the buffet on the right, the KVVK cognac and a decanter with vodka infused on lemon rinds necessarily stood. But grandfather used it very rarely. The mirror without a table has been preserved and is now hanging in my hallway. Huge palm trees in tubs - date and fan at that time were very fashionable indoor plants, along with ficuses.
So the house was very crowded and I didn’t like to stay there. There was really no place to play. For example, laying out a grooved metro on the table meant removing everything from it, including the huge Matnodor 1886 kerosene lamp of the year in the style of Bernard Palissi. Although you could get on the couch with your feet and so listen to very interesting radio programs: “There are literary heroes in the country”, “Club of famous captains”, “Mail Stagecoach”, COAPS ... There were also large canopy rooms, a closet with banks and pans with candied jam. , three sheds (one with rabbits) and just a huge garden, which my wife still regrets, because he would be better than any summer cottage for us now.
One of the few surviving photos from a "childhood". Then we, the boys from Proletarskaya Street, looked like this in the school camp. The author is the leftmost one. I loved to play chess then.
These 10 houses had 17 households, that is, some houses resembled real burrows. But the children (boys) of my age plus or minus two or three years for these households, there were only six and four more from Mirskaya Street and the end of Proletarskaya. How many guys were on the opposite side I do not know. We were “not led” with them. But about the same. Only in one family of the Mulins there were two children. There were only two girls for all this boyish horde, and it is clear that they did not interest us. And now think about it. The street was working families. The parents of my comrades worked at a nearby plant to them. Frunze. And what a shortage of "frames"!
This is the most extreme house on Proletarskaya Street, where I once lived, because there was a clearing further, although the street itself did not end here. Of my friends the boys lived in it “Sanka-snotty”, who had such a nickname for the green snot constantly flowing from the nose. He was an outcast and therefore differed harmful character. I don't know where he went, but his mother still lives in this house. He was a rabbitcher, as you see, he stayed, but ... modern materials gave him ... a modern look!
That's when the crisis began with the population of our country, and not at all in the 1991 year! The idea is that in all full families, except mine, there should have been at least two children, and all of them had one. That is, let's say, Proletarskaya Street (this piece of it) did not provide self-reproduction of its population. Now she has only one house from my childhood! At the site of my house is a building materials store, the neighboring house was rebuilt, and two cottages were built at the end of the street. The street itself is overgrown with grass. The workers at the plant didn’t walk along it for a long time, and it happened that they were going in a continuous stream, so I woke up from the solid tramp of their shoes - top-top.
This house appeared at the end of 90's ...
I went to my comrades' houses. But it was difficult for them to come to me. It hurt us in the house was clean! Around the carpets on the floor, velvet tablecloth, carpet on the couch and on the back of the sofa, the carpet on my wall by the bed, my mother ... There was nothing like that in their families. I was particularly struck by the conditions in which my friends Mulina live. In their house there were four apartments with five windows facing the street. That is, these were the dwellings of the “carriage layout”. So they had a porch, cold canopy, where in the summer kerosene cooked food, and one long room, divided by a stove into two parts. In the first one with two windows to the street, there was a one-and-a-half parents bed (and how they could fit on it, since neither their mother nor their father had the fragility of addition!), Between the windows there was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe near the wall, a shelf with a dozen books, table and ... everything. Behind the stove were the beds of my comrades Sasha and Eugene with blankets in the style of a patchwork and a chest on which their grandmother slept. Under the wallpaper were found such red bugs. Bugs! And I did not know what it was and told at home. After that, they stopped letting me at all.
Moreover, I saw all this in 1964, when I was already in the second grade. By the way, the first refrigerator and the first TV on our street appeared again in my house, just in 1959, when TV broadcasting began in Penza.
And this one following him too ... But there are no children in them!
Which of the guys on our street lived at about the same level of material wealth? There was another boy - Victor, the son of a pilot at the Penza airport. A full family, all parents worked, and they also had carpets, carpets in the house, and he had cardboard games and Meccano constructors.
Convenience at all, of course, were in the yard. But different "type". We have a spacious restroom, with wallpaper, a chimney and completely odorless. Grandmother there regularly washed the floor and it was even pleasant to be there, looking into the garden through the open door.
But this is already a nostalgia ... The house where my physical education teacher San Sanych lived. In our time, his heirs have besieged it with bricks and made gas heating.
Here is this house close-up.
Not so with the neighbors, including in the toilet with my comrades. There, the “grace of the womb” splashed almost at the very hole and there was a terrible stench. But worse than all was the toilet of one of the village women who lived in the same house in one of the “car apartments”. Ugly there was just indescribable. However, nobody paid attention to this. And then once, playing in my garden, I saw how one of these women, standing on the garden beds, did not even sit down, but lifted up his hem and ... large ... fell from it to the ground like peas, as if from a horse . And then she lowered the hem, pulled the fifth point and ... went to weed the beds further. To say that for me it was a revelation - to say nothing. It was just a shock! I, as I remember myself, were imparted with the skills of personal hygiene and cleanliness; after every meal I had to brush my teeth at the washstand and regularly change my underwear. And here ... I didn’t notice any underwear at this woman, and you can not even mention everything else. In general, I felt a real hatred for her, which people feel, probably, for a snake or a toad. One of her existence next to me seemed offensive and unacceptable to me. And ... he immediately decided to take revenge on her. Just for being so!
We go further along the remnants of the Soviet Proletarian and see a house with a collapsed roof (let's call it “Victor's house”, but not the pilot’s son, that house was demolished!), Which has not changed since 1967, when I was in it the last time. And since then he has not repaired even once! However, a brick extension with a heating system was attached to it.
Pocket money, since I was already at school, was given to me. So I went to the store, bought two packs of yeast - at school we did some kind of experience ... and, mixed with sugar, put it to ferment. And then at night he crept into her yard and poured it all into the hole.
In the morning, having forgotten everything that was done the day before, I go out on the porch and ... smell it ... and also hear screams from the neighbors in the yard and see ... the tilted roof of its toilet! Ran there, and there - a real eruption of Vesuvius. The men arrived at the "cleaning shop", but they refused to clean it, they said that they would break the car if they did. We must wait for the "completion of the process" - then. It is interesting that all the neighbors' boys did not like this woman, and because of the fence, so that she wouldn’t see who and didn’t complain to her parents, they teased her like this: “Oh, you old hag, you gave birth to a cat, laid it on a bed, started kissing her cheeks! "
Here is this house close-up. I always walk past him ... "shivering", as if by a "time machine" arrived in the past.
What I liked about the Mulins was the smell of fried potatoes in the evenings. When father and mother came home from work, the grandmother fed them such potatoes. They invited me too, and our ... "social differences" immediately became clear. It turned out that it was customary for them to fry the potatoes in butter, and half a pouch would be poured into the pan. My amazement was noticed and asked: isn’t it wrong with you? And I told that we have potatoes cut into cubes and the grandmother fries it in vegetable oil, which is why it turns out all fried and crispy. "And you have it kind of soft, everything stuck to the bottom ... and with a bow!" It is clear that they did not invite me to the table anymore. But at home they explained to me that you cannot fry potatoes in butter, because it burns. Whereas the vegetable can withstand a higher temperature, and the potatoes blush correctly.
At the site of this house was the "house of thieves." With the "front porch" All men were thieves and occasionally "sat" ... The house was completely rebuilt, as you see.
I must say that even then I felt that I know more than these of my peers, I can do more, but I was very shy about my upbringing. I remember how relatives came to visit us: my cousin with her son Boris. My mother was already working at the institute, first as a factory worker, and then as an assistant at the department of the history of the CPSU. Well, her sister taught at a music school, and Boris this very one came to us in short pants and with a bow on his shirt. They sat down to lunch and called me, right from the street, with dirty hands, in satin bloomers and in a T-shirt. I somehow washed my hands, sat down at the table, then she’s my brother and asks: “Borya, do you not want to pee?” And he said to her: “No, Mom!” I remember I barely waited for the end of dinner, ran out to my street boys and say: “Roby, to me right now, brother in a girl's shorts came with a bow. His mother is right at the table - if you want the pic ..., and he to her - no mom! He will come out on the street, we will beat him! ”He didn’t come out onto his street, and I just don’t know how we would finish it for this dissimilarity!
On the site of my house there is now this store and on the right a cargo yard. There were six windows on the street!
I went to school not simple, but to a special one, with English from the second grade. But not by special selection, and not by a call “from above”, as is happening now, but simply because it was a school in our district. No one in our district then understood the benefits of such a special school, and all the guys in it were “local”. Not like now. Now this is a gymnasium, where children on Volvo and Mersakh are brought in from all over the city, and there are already five languages to choose from. My daughter also studied there, although, it’s true, things hadn’t come to such “frills”, but her elitism was already felt in everything. But the granddaughter is studying in a regular school. I do not want to deprive her of childhood and to engage in a race for survival from a young age. Yes, and a special role now who has finished what school does not play. Playing the role of who your child was preparing for the exam. And he can learn in the small school of the village of Maly Dunduki. So here the social elevator worked, one might say, by chance. By the way, from among my school comrades from the parallel class, I have completely risen to the top ... Oleg Salyukov, well, the same one that became a general and, together with Shoigu, is now taking parades on Red Square, well, another boy who became the most famous in 90 counterfeiter in Russia. I am proud of my acquaintance with both! By the way, the last son became a candidate of sciences (like my daughter!) And teaches at the university today. Another boy became famous gangster (!) Local scale. But already died.
At the site of this building there were three households at once: the Mulins' house, the "doctor's house" (three windows) and the "Victor-2 house" (the pilot's son).
Studying at this school was ... interesting, although learning for me because of poor performance in math was a lot of trouble. In history, I did not know how to get fours, but in algebra with geometry and a troika I was glad unspeakably. But with English (because I really didn’t understand his particular use at that time!) I started having problems with the 5 class. And in general, problems with studies after the 5 class, it was such an age trend. Today he moved to more advanced classes. And then my mummy told me that “you must meet the level at which your family is in society, and that if you continue to study like this, you will slide down and go to the factory. And there the first pay, “washing”, will come home all dirty and spelled out and I will ... tear you away from my heart and ... you will go and see! ”The threat seemed serious to me, but I already picked up the agitation at school and answered that we all are equal! And then she gave me the Orwellian (although Orwell, of course, did not read and could not read, but she could see that she thought!): “Yes, they are equal, but some are more equal than others!” And it was not here that I could not answer. But he remembered the patchwork blankets of my comrades along the street, and the “red bugs” they had under the wallpaper, and potatoes in butter, green snot from the nose of “Sanka-snotty,” their drunken fathers every Saturday, realized that she was right, and decided That will never look like them. Subdilagged to study and straightened to “excellent” everything except mathematics, well, yes, it was not required at the history department at that time. But when I came to take the English language test at the pedagogical institute, and sat down to answer the desk, I heard in response: “What school did you graduate from? Sixth! So why are you fooling us here! From this and had to start! Five - go! ”So I had this entrance exam, and then later at the institute, up to the fourth year, I rode on the baggage of knowledge gained at school. It was convenient to say that.
The house, which was opposite to mine in Proletarsky passage. It once seemed the highest among the single-story five-wall plants. Now for the 5-9-storey it is not visible. Moreover, it has grown by a meter into the ground, or rather, the level of the surrounding land has increased by a meter. I used to go to him uphill, but now I have to go down the stairs. This is how the relief has changed over the past half century.
And this is my most unloved house on the next street, Dzerzhinskaya, turned out to be right in front of my current housing. Then there was a “fire” in it (now it is empty, people are burning less!) And the only phone in the whole district where I was sent to call my grandfather and grandmother “ambulance”. In any weather, I had to go, crawl into my eyes, explain what and how, then meet the doctors at the gate and escort through the dark yard past the watchdog to the house. Oh, how I did not like it, but what was to be done - debt is debt.
Such preferences were given then by training in the Soviet special school, even in the most ordinary provincial city. In addition to “just language”, they also taught us geography in English, English literature, American literature, technical translation and military translation, and even taught us to disassemble the AK assault rifle and the Bran machine gun ... in English, that is all weapons we had to know the terms in their English version and be able to describe our actions; taught to interrogate prisoners of war and read a map with English inscriptions.
And this is a store opposite the previous house. In 1974, it was a one-story typical Soviet architecture “store-aquarium” - “Cooperator”, where my wife and I went for groceries. The store is here now. But ... how was it built on and how was it finished ?!
By the way, my street friends didn't get to this school, although they could. “Well, who needs this English ?!”, said their parents, sent them to a regular school next door, and our paths diverged forever after that.
And here time seemed to stop a second time. Nothing has changed in this house in 50 years, except that the roofs above the entrance doors on the pillars have been added. That is, there seems to be a lot of changes, yes, but even the old wooden wreck ("Victor's house") on Proletarskaya Street still stands ... It’s time to open a museum: "a typical family house of a Soviet worker who worked in the 60s of the last century at the plant . Frunze.
To be continued ...
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