Expedition to the ancestors. Games in the yards and on the street
These were my comrades somewhere in 1959-1960. last century. And they rode on such “rumbling” scooters made by their fathers
“What is our life? A game!"
Line from the libretto of the opera by P. I. Tchaikovsky
"The Queen of Spades" based on the novel by A. S. Pushkin
Line from the libretto of the opera by P. I. Tchaikovsky
"The Queen of Spades" based on the novel by A. S. Pushkin
History recent past. We continue our story about our recent past with a reminder that all the houses on Proletarskaya Street in the city of Penza were very cramped. As a rule, three windows faced the street. If more, then it meant only one thing - inside the house there were long narrow rooms, "carriage layout", with a vestibule overlooking the courtyard. That is why in spring, autumn, and also in winter, we, children, almost never went to each other. It was very crowded in all of our houses.
Games in the yards
But as soon as dryness began, we immediately broke free and went to play in the fresh air. However, there were also certain problems with outdoor games. As I already wrote, at first there was no asphalt on the pedestrian part of the street. There were wooden sidewalks. It was impossible to ride a bike on them and even just run. Somehow he ran - fell, skinned his knees to the blood. Then asphalt was laid, but people walked along it in a continuous stream. Only in the evening, when there were few people, we played hide and seek here - and hid behind the trees growing on the lawns and in the dense bushes that framed these lawns.
Only occasionally "on the street" splashed out the game of war. The fact is that adults then did not approve of this game. For example, they approached my mother and said: “We are fighting for peace, and your son is constantly playing war!” Well, these were the adults we had on the street then ... morons. And now all children's games mainly take place in the yards on the playgrounds, visible from the windows of high-rise buildings. That is, in front of everyone, in general. And then the street was for walking, well, to ride a bicycle along it, and so we tried to retire in the yards ...
But not all yards, again, were suitable for our games. At Vitka's (I already wrote about his house that has survived to this day), the yard looked like some nooks and crannies where there was nothing to play and think about. I had a huge garden and a yard where firewood was brought. But it was strictly forbidden to play in the garden. The entrance there was guarded by a huge Siberian husky, Eric Ryzhim, who was even scared to walk past, and God forbid, to run, so he began to bark and break from the chain. So all that remained was a rather large, completely trampled, sun-drenched yard, enclosed on three sides by a fence and buildings.
Some of it was convenient. Quite early, my mother bought me badminton, and we played it there, taking advantage of the almost complete calm and ... a high fence to the street. But that was all I could offer our boyish company. True, there was also a porch to the house, on which we looked at my books and magazines, and also played the games “Cat and Mice” and “Catch a Fish” (they were discussed in the previous article).
In winter, along the streets, in addition to purchased duralumin sleds, they rode on this one ...
"Do not dispose of in your own yard"
Victor's yard was distinguished by a huge pile of sand and ... that's it! But the yard of the Mulin brothers was our everything. Firstly, a large yard just outside the gate, where firewood was also brought, but they did not stay there for long. This yard was separated from the garden by a fence, on which we all sat, and there was also a crooked tree nearby, which we could climb. Behind the fence was a garden where tomatoes grew, but we were allowed to walk along them to a large shed. In the first part they kept chickens and a pig, but the second part and the attic were at our complete disposal. This shed was like from "Timur and his team", it was so great there.
There was an old iron gig - a finished car; pipes from a samovar - guns, and much more that our childhood imagination turned into anything. The barn itself was both a headquarters, a fortress, a restaurant (and what - they played restaurant!), And a prison. While the garden was dug up, they threw clods of earth (grenades) into its wooden roof, which made it impossible to breathe inside, and there was so much dirt on sweaty bodies that they washed us in the yard in a trough every summer. They played football (no more than 5-6 people), gorodki, klyok, "fox-dogs", "monk in blue pants" and some other then, long-standing games, probably from the beginning of the century.
In order to be distributed among the “teams” (who to be with whom in a pair or to lead in a game), they were considered funny counting rhymes, similar to Dunno’s counting rhymes from Nosov’s fairy tale. For example: “A sack rolled from a high hump. There is bread, salt, flour, wheat in it, whoever wants to share with whom, speak quickly, do not detain good and honest people! Or like this: “Tire, tire, tire, tire, a car was driving in the field. The car has five wheels, a shaggy dog came out. Whoever accounted for the "shaggy dog", he drove. That is, here a lot depended on the dexterity of the hands of the one who counted. A lot of the games were "pretend". Here is a “pretend” forest, here is the sea, here are mountains. The food was make-believe, cartridges for rifles from boards with a latch bolt ...
So the author had exactly the same tricycle
There were no other yards that were equally interesting for games at our disposal. Either there was no place, or everything was completely planted. Interestingly, no matter who we played in the yard, there was one general rule: “Do not dispose of it in your own yard.” That is, the owners of the court (and they were most often the Mulin brothers) had a lot of advantages over others. For example, they were always red, and the rest were white or German, and, of course, they always won.
Whatever we played, there were many different rules that had to be followed. So, the game began with the words: “Chur, tra, there is a game!”, And if it was necessary to interrupt the game, they shouted: “Chur, tra, there is no game.” It was impossible, for example, to run after only one person. In this case, they shouted like this: “There is no chase for one, a man is not a five-ton!” If they played hide and seek, then the “caught” drivers actively helped the most dexterous and shouted, warning of the “danger”: “Ax, ax, sit like a thief and do not look out into the yard!”, Or vice versa: “Axe-saw, fly like an arrow !"
street skating
What the new paved street was good for was skiing. What did you ride? I had a tricycle at first, so we all took turns riding it. It was especially cool to roll down Proletarskaya, because it went downhill and the elevation difference was very significant. Then my grandfather put the “bike” on two wheels, but then a large “adult” bike appeared at Vitka’s, and my comrades began to ride it, “from under the frame”.
Around the year 1960, self-made scooters with ball bearings came into vogue. They were made from two boards, two bearings and ... that's it! Naturally, they were not made by the guys themselves, since we were then 6-7 years old, but by the fathers of those who worked at the factory. It is clear that since I didn’t have a father, such a scooter didn’t even shine for me, but then my mother solved this problem, who brought me from Riga a really luxurious metal scooter on rubber inflatable tires. Enamelled in bright blue, with a steering wheel, foot brake and a seat over the rear wheel, it was beautiful, like ... I just don’t know what. As soon as I appeared with him on the street, all my comrades rushed at me with all their might: "Let me roll down."
Bearing scooters made a terrible noise, and this one, on the “dutiks”, raced along the asphalt almost silently, and besides, it steered and braked perfectly. Then I grew out of it, and they bought me a Shkolnik bicycle. By the way, in winter, on the icy asphalt, the guys at that time also rode on such strange “gnuts” made of a metal bar. But they were, of course, only among those children whose fathers worked in factories.
Approximately this scooter the author received in 1960
Travel around the city
After I “went to visit my mother at the institute” at the age of 5, I somehow completely ceased to be afraid to go far from home. And as soon as the warm spring came, he began to "wander". That is, he could easily go alone to the river behind the dam, where my mother and I went swimming in the summer, to some construction site or ... again, behind the same dam into the forest. There I cut myself "logs" for raft models - for some reason I had some kind of special craving for rafts - and also layers of forest moss. I just adored moss, but I needed it as grass for layouts.
The fact is that our housemates "Uncle Volodya" and "Aunt Dina" (grandfather's brother and sister) died one after another by 1961, and we got most of their half of the house - three whole rooms with a Dutch stove. Now we had six windows facing the street at once, and I got a whole room as a living space. After the crampedness of the old two rooms, it was simply delightful. Two large tables, as well as a children's round table, immediately inspired me to be creative, and it somehow suddenly manifested itself. After visiting the local history museum and seeing the local dioramas, I started making the same ones, and just on them I used moss instead of grass. “Tyrannosaurus eats a stegosaurus”, “Iguanodons eat a palm tree”, “Primitive people throw stones at a cave bear that crawled out of a cave” - these are my favorite dioramas that I managed to make already at the age of seven, that is, even before school.
One of the first high-rise buildings in my area is the house with the Strela store (1963). Then for some reason the area was considered unfavorable. So as soon as someone else's boys somewhere said that you were from Strela, they immediately began to respect you and even feared you. Although personally, I have never met anything “such” here. But, on the contrary, there was a one-story sobering-up station. And we, the boys, sometimes, usually on Saturdays, went to him to watch "how they bring drunkards." But now in its place is a modern school with a swimming pool
All my family liked these dioramas very much, but where did I get such wonderful moss, of course, none of them even suspected! But the most interesting thing is that now I didn’t have to be bored at home at all: in 1959, a TV appeared, which occupied all the evenings. In a large and bright room, sitting at a large table, one could comfortably draw in a barn book, and one could not even talk about games on the floor - now it was a real journey through the rooms. That is, the expansion of living space, plus radio and TV, coupled with a certain growing up, greatly influenced my intellect in a positive way. Well, about the very radio and television of those distant years will be told next time.
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