Four-year-old Pavlik quickly jumped out of bed and “dressed himself,” that is, he pulled on a bra with linen buttons back to front and thrust his bare feet into his shoes.
V. Kataev. The lonely sail is whitening
History and documents. We continue the series of publications on the history of the USSR, based on the author's memoirs. This time the memories will be both "very" old and "not very" at the same time. Reason: a new hall opened in the Penza Museum of I. N. Ulyanov and dedicated to the fashion of the late 19th and the entire 20th century. I went there, looked, asked permission from the director to take pictures. So, in fact, this material appeared.
But let's start with memories. At first, that is, how I began to remember myself, I was not aware of what was happening. Children, like animals, give - take, beat them - they cry, and why, what and how, the kids do not know. So I didn’t know why we had such a house: only two rooms and a kitchen, walls that for some reason did not reach the ceiling. A huge stove, which needs to be heated with wood and coal, and even cook on it, and next to the washstand and under it is a disgusting-looking garbage bucket that had to be poured out every day and many times. Water was brought into the house from the street, first by my grandfather, then by my mother and grandmother. Grandfather slept at the very door leading to the vestibule, grandmother - in the hall on the sofa, and only my mother and I had a separate small room, where there was a huge wardrobe, our two beds, a writing desk and another carved oval table on one leg, covered with a knitted lace tablecloth, on which a disgusting-looking kombucha floated in a large pot-bellied glass container, the "sikalki" of which had to be drunk. In the hall there was a round table with a large kerosene lamp, above it, under a yellow fabric shade, an electric lamp. Between the windows there is a huge dressing table under the ceiling, fan palms by the windows, and in the corner there is a black plate of a radio and a Record TV. Well, and also a chest of drawers with a clock, a wardrobe with books, armchairs, chairs, a sideboard … In a word, you can't run. The floor was covered with a huge carpet (the picture shows a carpet, but this is wrong).
Later I learned that my grandfather was the director of the city council during the war, that he had two orders - Lenin and the Badge of Honor, but for some reason he slept at the door in the very entrance. “But he is alive,” he answered me when asked about “improving living conditions,” and that was the end of the conversation. It is interesting that the furniture, although varied in size, was generally very beautiful and of high quality, except perhaps the sideboard, which I had already bought in my memory.
It was among all this that I had to be in the early years, especially when it was impossible to go outside, that is, in autumn, when it was cold and dirty, in winter, when it was snowing and frost, and in spring, when everything was melting and wet. That is, most of the year. After all, we must remember that there was no asphalt on our street then. They had to walk on wooden sidewalks - planks stuffed on transverse logs, and all of this squelched, slipped, drowned in the mud. The courtyards of the neighbors' boys, like mine, were little adapted for games, so little children inevitably had to play the role of "prisoners".
Much later, after reading "The Lonely Sail Is White" by Valentin Kataev and "The Humpbacked Bear" by Yevgeny Permyak, I was surprised at how the childhood of the heroes of these books is described there and how it is similar to my own! The same lamps and rugs on the floor. True, I have a school, they have a gymnasium, but even the uniform, and that looked like a gymnasium until 1963. And the clothes of small children were just one to one!
For example, at the most tender age, I was supposed to have long satin panties in the summer and warm knickers in the winter. T-shirt, and on top of it - well, exactly the same flannel bra as Pavlik's, but I always tried to wear it with buttons in front. He had two straps, walked at the level of the abdomen and chest, and at the bottom were sewn to him four straps with very clever fasteners for stockings. Stockings, brown with a rib, did not have elastic bands at the top and, of course, fell off their feet. They were fastened to these clasps, and the grief was bitter if suddenly in a decent society they unbuttoned. The fact is that when visiting relatives, the children were then dressed in short pants such as shorts, again on the helpers (well, just like in another cult film, "Chuk and Gek"), crossed in the back and straight in front. And the stockings from under them were visible, of course.
Surprisingly, the boys in these shortest pants didn’t at least have the fasteners of the stockings peeking out from under them, but the girls' fashion was simply amazing: short skirts in a spread, under them multicolored panties of delicate color shades, and from under them just these same harnesses with fasteners stuck out, and just enough so that the bare skin between the stocking and the skirt was visible! A modern person can admire this strange fashion in the movie "First Grader" (1948). Especially in the scene where the boy Serezha comes to visit the "first grader", and a crowd of girls meets him in the hallway.
However, the leggings sticking out from under the girls' skirts and bare legs with stockings did not evoke any "such" thoughts in me, and in other boys either. It's just that this strip was a tempting target … for shooting a finger slingshot with a Hungarian rubber band! And the best reward for those who got there was a loud girlish squeal! But there was no need to wear short stockings with fasteners!
The girls also had panties with elastic bands around their legs. Boys were strictly forbidden to wear them … by unwritten street rules. “He's got girly panties! Beat him!" That's how we usually shouted then, it was worth noticing that. Therefore, as I got older, I simply demanded that they do not buy this for me. “But it’s convenient,” my mother told me, “but“underneath”(as in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries they talked about outerwear and underwear) it’s not visible!” But I was adamant, knowing that if they saw this on me, then I would be uncomfortable. The same attitude, however, already when I was in school, for some reason existed in relation to the pants. They were different, again in pastel colors, and warmed, while in adults they were mostly white and canvas. That is, in the winter, in the cold, under uniform school pants, you could put on sweatpants. But not underpants! As soon as someone saw them on someone else in preparation for a physical education lesson (and we then changed clothes right in the classroom), a loud shout immediately rang out: “Long pants! Beat him!" Why everyone, shall we say, who differed in their clothes from others, had to be beaten, I could not understand, but this was the norm of our life.
Adult aunties used belts. Of course, not as erotic as in modern films of the corresponding content, but they fulfilled their function. Or with rubber bands two fingers wide, which were worn over stockings and worn on the hips. Doctors did not recommend giving this to children, they say, they "tighten the blood vessels."
How can men wear socks without elastic bands? For this, "garters" were used, also rubber, but with buckles that blinked to fix them on the leg below the knee. And each such "garter" had a harness with a toe closure. It is about such a man's garter, by the way, that the story of A. Gaidar "The Fate of the Drummer" and the movie of the same name are discussed. They were usually put on over their pants, and this was very uncomfortable, since they sometimes fell off, moreover, with socks, and shamefully crawled out of the trousers. This was immediately called the "garter". Like, watch your toilet!
However, only somewhere before the 8th grade, and there we already became much more tolerant and educated. And before that … Oh, we were all savages, by God! One boy, during a rehearsal of the next litmontage, which our "class" from 1st to 4th grade was obsessed with, described himself … and ran to the toilet, leaving drops behind … So what? The whole class rushed after him, screaming wildly: "Hit him, he pissed!"
It was hard at school for the plump, those who were overweight. (Not like now, as I see. At school, no one pays attention to them. I asked my granddaughter many times.) We used to have offensive nicknames: Zhirtrest, Zhiryaga and the like. And at recess they pushed overweight with shouts: "Squeeze out of fatty fat!" Such was the wonderful Soviet upbringing, which many today regret so much!
Until 1968, children had little clothing. In the summer we ran in T-shirts, shorts and satin trousers, and in the spring and autumn, if it was warm, for example, I was given an old coat called "shake-three-legged", a cap (just like Emil's "caparik" from Lonneberg) very fond of, and old patched pants. The reason for love: in this I was allowed to wallow on the ground anywhere! For example, we lay down on a railroad embankment and rolled down a "log". Naturally, with such wild games, any decent clothes were simply contraindicated for children. Personally, on my return from the street, the view was often worse than that of the current homeless person.
It is interesting, again, that it was possible to run down the street in summer only in shorts, and in swimming trunks, which also did not have elastic bands and were tied with two strings on the sides, in no case. It was called "running naked", and for this we were punished by not being allowed out into the street! Strange fashions, strange customs …
