Kindergarten, 1960. The author stands third from the right near the table
What remains in my memory: winter, huge snowdrifts, and my father is taking me on a sled to kindergarten, we are already near the house 17A, it remains to go through it, and I will be there, and my father still has to run to the educational building, where classes begin. In the off-season, when there was no snow, my father carried me in his arms “to the pipe”, which was behind the 30th school.
It was pretty good in the kindergarten, only the sleep after dinner was tiring (in the end, of course, everyone fell asleep, but they still didn’t like him). The chandeliers in the hall were exactly like in this photo, they seem to be from the same series of the early 50s, if not earlier. I remembered them because I looked at them during the obligatory sleep and suffered from the need to fall asleep instead of wasting time more usefully.
Chandeliers of this type were in our kindergarten
A couple of times he took me to classes after kindergarten - in the audience there was a navigational cabin with an Il-28 (its glass nose), where I played with great pleasure during the lecture. I remember that the bomb release lever was chipped off, a sharp needle was sticking out. There was a whole IL-28 in front of the school, once my father put me there, in the pilot's cabin, where there were huge pedals and a very interesting steering wheel.
IL-28
In front of the entrance to the school, to the right and left of it, there were two dug-in black bombs with red stabilizers. I kept asking my father whether they would be thrown at the enemy, and calmed down only after the answer that they would throw it, but in the last place, when all the others were over. These paintings refer to the period of my residence in a classic one-room communal apartment on Pushkinskaya 20, where there was a long corridor (it was good to kick the ball there), and there were about 10-12 neighbors in the kitchen.
So, at the end of 1959, my father received a warrant for two rooms in apartment No. 6 at 17A on Chelyuskintsev Street. Why do I remember that at the end of the year - shortly before the move, I saw in the newspaper a photograph of the far side of the Moon, transmitted to Earth from our automatic station Luna-3, and this is October 1959.
We celebrated New Year 1960 in a new place, in apartment No. 6. In order not to drag it with us, the former tenants sold us a large sideboard, a sofa with side bolsters, a glass jug and a vase with a thin stem. Together with the sofa, we became the owners of hordes of bedbugs, but at that time (before the advent of chlorophos) this was a ubiquitous phenomenon. By our departure from apartment No. 6 (1967), only the sideboard remained alive from the furniture, which was left to the new tenants.
1962, start of the Tour de France at the corner of 17A. The author is wearing a light coat (instead of the leader's yellow jersey). Top left of the picture - the door to the store
This is what our apartment No. 6, located on the fourth floor, was like, if the lower semi-basement is considered a floor (I liked to consider it a floor, then our house turned out to be six-story, that is, the most multi-story in Orenburg at that time). Immediately opposite the entrance there is a huge kitchen with a large stove, to the right of the entrance to the kitchen there is a corridor, from which there was an entrance to one room to the left, straight ahead - the entrance to two adjacent rooms, which, in fact, we received, and to the right - the entrance to the other two adjoining rooms.
To the right, closer to the front door, there was a door to the bathroom (there was never a bath itself), passing through which one could get into the toilet. The bathroom was used by all residents as a storage room. The kitchen had a washbasin and three kitchen tables, according to the number of owners. There was a geographical map of the world on the wall to the left of our kitchen table, my place was near Antarctica. Drake Passage, Queen Maud Land, Weddell Sea, were carefully studied by me in the process of eating food. The huge window of the kitchen overlooked the flight school, two of its buildings were visible, which were soon connected by a passage on the second or third floors - this was very unusual.
Below, at the very brick fence on the territory of the school, there was a one-story building. There was a buffet where my father once bought me a chocolate bar (after the Khrushchev monetary reform of 1961, it cost 33 kopecks, but I don’t know how much before the reform).
When we entered our rooms, our neighbors were: on the right - the railway worker Olga Pavlovna Aprosimova with her daughter, her daughter Natalya was three years older than me, on the left of us one room was occupied by the family of the mustachioed major Kuptsov, consisting of himself with his wife and daughter Irka , she was 5 years older than me. Kuptsov became famous for the fact that one night he went into the kitchen to drink water and drank a live cockroach resting in a mug along with the water. The major was very dissatisfied, as a result of which the whole apartment was awakened. The cockroach, I believe, was also indignant, but his voice was ignored.
Then the Kuptsov family moved out, and the family of Major Degtyarev moved into the room, also in the amount of three people: him, his wife, the Hungarian Piri Farkas, and their little son Valerka, three years old. Previously, the major served in Hungary, from where he brought his wife. A couple of Magyar bad words that sounded during family squabbles, I took from them.
Later, in the year 1966, Captain Nikolai Ivanovich Aperyonov settled in the place of the Degtyarevs with his wife Raisa and his son, I forgot what his name was, but he was a couple of years younger than me. Nikolai Ivanovich helped me a lot in radio engineering when I took it up in the 5th grade. Then, in 1970, they moved to Malo-Melnichnaya Street, not far from Bolnichny Proezd, where we lived then, where I also went to him for radio components and for consultations.
Olga Pavlovna all these years (1960-1967) lived in her rooms.
According to tradition, the whole apartment was supposed to have a shed where fuel for the kitchen stove (wood, coal) was to be stored. During the described period, not fuel was stored in the barn, but the junk of the residents of the sixth apartment. There was also a cellar in our barn. There, my father kept potatoes, a barrel of pickled tomatoes, and sauerkraut.
The lid of the cellar in winter was covered with an elk skin brought from the Far East, where my father used to serve. Elk was killed on the Shantar Islands by my mother's brother Oleg, who loved hunting. In the same place, at the mouth of the Amur, for more than 60 years, there has been his father's trophy parabellum, which his father gave Oleg for the duration of the hunt. The skin was already 60 years old in the 15s, and it climbed terribly.
The sheds stood in a whole formation, 50 meters from the fence of the kindergarten to the brick garage, where a beautiful pale blue M-21 Volga car with a deer was placed. In the period described, no one heated the stove, it was used as a warehouse for kitchen utensils, and everything was cooked on kerosene stoves, kerosene gas stoves and stoves. A two-burner gas stove with a small cylinder appeared with us only by the winter of 1966-1967, I carried these cylinders on a sled for refueling with gas. The gas station was located opposite the market in a public garden, there is now (2011) a fountain.
Our kitchen kerosene stoves remained in my memory: at the bottom of this device there was a container with kerosene, from there three adjustable wicks rose, on which, in fact, cooking took place. As an addition, there were open-coil electric hotplates and electric ovens. Kerosene for kerosene stoves was brought on horseback and sold to the right of the Children's House.
Opposite our p-shaped house 17A (which had the nickname "Madrid") towards the kindergarten there was a drying area with rickety metal poles for ropes, separate garages and green army trailers (kungs of the first releases) used as sheds. There was a dump in the middle of the garage-shed conglomerate.
To the left of the road to the kindergarten, among the garages and sheds, there was a white transformer box. Just before the kindergarten, the road forked: to the left it went to the dance floor of the school and to the club, to the right along the kindergarten fence there was a narrow, filthy (in the literal sense) passage to the Chilizhnik park. This passage had the unofficial name "Small feces-urinary lane". From house 17A down to the kindergarten, through it and further to the Urals, a stream formed every spring, where we enthusiastically launched boats - whose first one would pass the measured distance. I was engaged in this action up to the second class.
About what was in the garages. There were 401 and 403 "Moskvich", "Victory", several "Volga", a couple of some captured convertible cars (I remember the dark crimson one). But most of all it was Gaz-67, the domestic counterparts of the Willis. There were also motorcycles with a sidecar, unfortunately I don’t remember the types. I continue the description of the house. Since the house had a U-shape in plan, both from the side of the kindergarten (between the legs of the letter “P”), and from the other side, where Chelyuskintsev Street passed, the house had front gardens fenced with a picket fence.
1960, after a subbotnik. Father is still a captain, the author is on my mother's lap
It seems that bushes grew there and there were beds with flowers. Every spring subbotnik, the entire population of the house intensively dug up the front gardens. My attempts to plant poplar branches there with blossoming leaves and already rooted in a bottle of water ended in failure. And once champignons were found in these front gardens, as a result of which the flower beds were badly damaged. But the champignons with potatoes were great.
From the side of Chelyuskintsev Street there was no five-story building with the Polet store, Studencheskaya Street immediately began there. It got its name because of the Agricultural Institute, located opposite the flight school. At the corner of Studencheskaya and Chelyuskintsev, on the territory of the institute, there was a small, extended clay mound. These were the remains of the earthen fortifications of Orenburg, liquidated in 1862 (the so-called "Pugachev Val"), when the Russian border went far into Turkestan, and at one time even Tashkent was part of the Orenburg Governor General. Later, in 1965, a student dormitory was built on the site of the remains of the rampart, and a piece of the relic disappeared.
History with "Pugachev Val" had its continuation. One summer in 1965-1966, Vitka Mishuchkov and I (he lived in a house on the corner of 8 Marta and Leninskaya streets) were attracted by screams from Studencheskaya Street. What turned out: it had just rained heavily, and in a private house on 21 Studencheskaya Street, the owners started repairing the gate. As a result of their actions, one half of the gate fell flat on the ground and failed. They called firefighters, they lowered a wooden ladder into the failure (the ladder, which was inclined on the ground, was the upper end at the level of the chimney of a one-story house, that is, 6–8 meters).
The staircase went entirely into the failure, a fireman climbed down there and upon returning said that there was an underground passage below, running across the Studencheskaya. It was clearly an underground passage of Pugachev's, and perhaps even earlier times, under the fortress wall. No one climbed anywhere, the pit was filled up, and the gates of house 21 had different halves for another 30 years, which reminded of the event.
Unfortunately, in 2011 I discovered that the house at Studencheskaya (now Kovalenko) 21 had been demolished. Chelyuskintsev Street itself was quiet and green, it started from March 8 Street (a one-story white private house with Gothic lancet windows stood on the corner), then after Studencheskaya Street the quarter occupied by the Agricultural Institute began.
At the far corner of this block there was another red-brick agricultural dormitory, next to it was a small Khrushchev five-story building with a dairy store. The store was almost opposite the gates of the flight school. The entire opposite part of Chelyuskintsev Street was occupied by a flight school. The MiG-15 aircraft, on which Gagarin flew, was still absent.
Gagarin's plane in front of the flight school in 1975
Chelyuskintsev Street ran into private houses in Forshtat, where the asphalt ended (and the street continued). There was also a column with artesian forshtat water, which, according to my father, was higher in quality than ordinary tap water from the Urals. When I was young, I didn’t notice any difference, I thought that nothing tastes better than soda.
The complex of houses located between the flight school and March 8 Street, which included house 17A, was called "13 town". Inside the "13th town" there was a small Children's House, where there were children who were abandoned by their mothers in the maternity hospitals of Orenburg. My mother had an internship with students there (she taught at a medical school) and said that until the mid-70s there was not a single Jewish objector in the Orphanage, although all other nationalities of the USSR were present. Later this feature disappeared, and they appeared.
The gaps between the houses of Gorodok 13 were occupied by fences made of metal rods, and the entrance to the inside was through two gates: one was from the side of Chelyuskintsev Street, and the other from the corner of Gorky and March 8 streets. Next to the last entrance was a poster of the repertoire of the flight school club, where films were usually shown.
The club of the school was the center of the cultural life of the 13th town. To get there, you had to turn left in front of the kindergarten, cross the asphalt dance floor and climb the wooden steps. Directly from the entrance there was a corridor with auditoriums, in some of them music school classes were held.
Speech by the choir of students of the music school at the flight school. April 22, 1964 In the first row with the October badge, second from the left - the author
I went to this institution for five years out of the prescribed seven - from the second to the sixth grade inclusive. To the right of the entrance was the cinema. There was also a ticket office in a small nook. On the wall in front of the cinema hall there was a stand on the topic: "the sentry is an inviolable person."
I fully agree with this, but the short stories and illustrations for them, even at that time, seemed to me dull and primitive. They were probably composed in the 20s, since the sentry who noticed the fire at the facility and raised the alarm had a helmet that was completely unlike anything else. There were also stands in the corridor with auditoriums. Immediately at the entrance, a stand dedicated to the astronauts began. The place under it was small, and after the flight of Belyaev and Leonov (Voskhod-2, 1965) it was completely filled. Fortunately, for the person responsible for visual agitation, there was an almost two-year break in our manned flights (1965-1967), and I don’t know how he got out of the situation later, after 1967.
On other sections of the walls there were displays on the theme “Imperialism is war”, examples were from the Korean War (1950-1953), since large-scale actions in Vietnam did not begin until 1965. In the auditorium itself, a couple of paintings hung on the walls: one depicted how the unit was marching through a village, and the inhabitants joyfully greeted them. I don't remember the other one. Here, in the cash hall of the garrison bath, at the end of Gorky Street, there hung a painting by the artist Neprintsev “Rest after the battle”, and what else was in the club just flew out of my head.
The value of our club was that any film that was shown in city cinemas was sure to be shown here, but we never had problems with tickets here. And once, when I was in the 1st grade, the manager of the club, Naum Moiseevich, asked us, about 5 guys who were playing nearby, to remove the cut branches from the dance floor. The reward for the work was a free pass to the cinema. After discussing the situation, we decided that this was a sign of the inevitable impending communism (in the early 60s, after the adoption of the Khrushchev program of the CPSU, where 1980 was declared the year of building communism, this prospect was widely discussed among the entire population of the USSR).
I remember the films first seen in the club: “Three plus two”, “Girl with a guitar”, “Hussar ballad”, “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Bicycle tamers”, “Trace in the ocean”, “Free kick”, “ Scuba at the Bottom”, “Striped Flight”, and “Operation Y” we watched together with Sasha Shvalev right after school, we even had to run – we studied on the second shift. Some of these old films are now on TV.
The club is to the left of the kindergarten. And to the right, after the smelly passage between the kindergarten fence and the sheds, there was an exit to the Urals and the Chilizhnik park. The park was bounded by a steep bank in front and two fences from the sides: on the left - our kindergarten with holes, on the right - high wooden. Only in my student years did I learn that the regional committee authorities lived behind a high fence. The path to the Urals along the kindergarten fence went among the bushes of yellow acacia. Actually, these bushes, which grew in huge numbers in the park, gave the park its name, since chiliga is their local name.
There were two descents to the river from this side (kindergarten side): one is moderately steep, the other is more gentle, a children's railway passed below. From the side of the obkom fence there was another one - the third descent. The slopes of the kindergarten descents were littered with black fragments of plates used by stand-up athletes for training. However, during the period described, there were no more trainings, there were only fragments. Later, in the year 69, a shooting gallery was built on the site of a gentle descent, my friend from the 25th school, Zhenya Samsonenko, studied there.
View of "Gorodok 13" from Zauralnaya Grove in the winter of 1984. The red building is Madrid, to the right of it are the yellow buildings of the flight school. Trees between buildings and a cliff to the Urals - Chilizhnik Park
There were two sports grounds on the territory of the park, right in the center of the park there was a statue of Lenin. There was also a summer cinema in Chilizhnik and a large number of strange architectural forms. One of them is still preserved on the territory of the kindergarten. It was built on the site of a path to the descent and one of the sports grounds in the mid-60s. Immediately to the right of the central path of the park, near the obkom fence, there was a monument dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. Its quality was the same as the statues. He also disappeared quite soon, for the same reason that the destruction was beginning. Probably, it was put either in honor of the 5th anniversary, or the 10th anniversary of the Victory. Opposite the crumbling monument was a great place for children's games - the foundation of an unfinished house.
The house was completed only in the mid-60s - it is already on the picture from the American satellite from 31.05.1965/XNUMX/XNUMX. Probably, it was the house of the flight school, which was erected by the household method, that is, with the school's own forces and means. At least, my father told me that he laid this foundation together with the cadets. The foundation was not made of standard concrete blocks, as is now customary, but of large stones held together with mortar.
In the center of Chilizhnik, closer to the obkom fence, there was a summer cinema. When films were shown there, from the window of our large room one could see some kind of multi-colored stirring on a microscopic screen. It was in this form that I remembered the American film The XNUMXth Voyage of Sinbad.
As I already wrote, there were several sports grounds on the territory of Chilizhnik. I used them not only for their direct sports purpose, but also as a testing ground for aviation and rocket experiments.
In the upper right corner is a spectator running away from a rocket launch. In vain he ran away, this rocket never took off
I had more luck with planes than with rockets, I launched them both directly at house 17A and in Chilizhnik.
1962 The rubber-engine model with a left roll is gaining altitude. Her shadow is especially visible.
Model launch at the entrance to Chilizhnik, 1962
View of the launch site in 2004
In the year 1961-1962, a television center began to operate in the city, and in the summer of 1962 we bought a Verkhovyna TV set made in Lvov. Screen diagonal - 43 cm (kinescope 43LK2B). It cost a huge amount - 300 rubles, almost two of his father's military pensions. We bought it in the Kultovary store on the corner of Sovetskaya and Kirov. For some reason, there was no antenna in the store, and for it we went to Voentorg on Pushkinskaya.
I wanted ice cream, and it was in the evening, close to the closing of the store. My father gave me a choice: either go for ice cream, then the antenna will be bought tomorrow, or change the order of purchase purchases - now the antenna, ice cream tomorrow. With difficulty, I agreed to the priority of spiritual food over material food, the antenna was bought, the TV was installed on the dining table and turned on.
All the neighbors and the family of our friends Kolotilin gathered in front of him, who lived in the next entrance in the basement (only now I understand what a horror it is - a communal apartment in the basement, and even with a crazy neighbor). As I remember now: there was an old film “Walking through the torments” based on the novel by A. N. Tolstoy, Roshchin was played by the artist of the Vakhtangov theater Nikolai Gritsenko.
Orenburg television began work at 19 o'clock and conducted it until 22 o'clock. In the program were, of course, local news, some “news from the fields”, there was even a children's program on teaching English and, of course, a feature film at the end. For the first few months, my neighbors and friends and I watched everything together, then gradually the collective viewing stopped - TVs began to appear in other families.
And in 1966, Orenburg was connected to the Moscow TV channel. The fact is that in the USSR in the early 60s, before the era of satellite television, a cable television line was laid between Moscow and Tashkent. She walked along the railway, and in 1966 Orenburg was connected to it. There has not yet been any shift of the program guide two hours ahead, as was done later for the Ural time zone.
I remember that immediately after connecting, we got to the demonstration of the Polish comedy film “Where is the General?”, It went almost until half past one at night. In the 60s, the Poles released many comedy films about the war, this one was one of them. In films, they fought much better than in life - this is how my father, a participant in the war, spoke about them.
One of our rooms had a beautiful view. I especially liked in this panorama the fact that in front of the window space began, the city ended in front of the Urals, which was 300 meters in a straight line. Above the transural grove a strip of fields could be seen, in autumn it turned yellow.
Sometimes, when there was firing at the Donguz firing range at night, one could admire the routes of shells fired at SABs (luminous air bombs descending on parachutes). Participants of the Great Patriotic War at that time (early 60s) were 35 years old and older. Many officers who worked at the flight school had a huge number of military awards - order strips were located on tunics in 5-6 rows. And despite the fact that there were very few commemorative medals then. I was somewhat offended by my father, whose war awards fit on two bars, although they included two Orders of the Red Star and a medal "For Military Merit". However, compared to younger soldiers who did not participate in the war, my father's military awards were a reason for my pride.
The attitude towards the army at that time was the same as it was shown in the film of the mid-50s "Maxim Perepelitsa". It was the victorious army. No one could have imagined that in our country the former head of the section of Lenmebeltorg (Serdyukov) would become the Minister of Defense, in addition, the so-called “Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers” would work completely legally, ruining our army and existing on foreign money. But it won't be soon.
In April 1967, my father received a two-room apartment on Bolnichny Proezd, and we moved out of the communal apartment at 17 A, where we had lived for more than 7 years.