The first material of the "notes", as it was supposed, caused a real storm of emotions. What, in fact, was the calculation. Some of the comments made me especially … moved. "You were paid a salary …". Well, you can't measure everything with money. Or in some cases it is possible, but in others it is impossible? Oh, how it is … "in Russian", and in the worst sense of the word. Or another passage - "the boy was getting a good job, but he was not satisfied." Yes, not enough, because I bought jeans "Levi Straus" and "Wrandler" for myself and "Lee-Cooper" for my wife at the market for 250 rubles, and “velvet” for my wife for 180 rubles and boots for 120 … rest at sea and buying furniture after the village - do not bring back all our old stuff. So it was enough end-to-end. No, well, you could buy "trousers" for "ten", but I just really appreciated my youth and the youth of my wife, so we did not wear "rags". Yes, and in the south they usually lived all summer: from July 6 to August 25, returning straight back to the August teachers' council and from there to their own Berezovka. So the costs were enough. However, it hardly makes sense to answer all the comments until the end of the story. In the meantime, it continues …
Before that, I had never lived in a village. For some reason, one of the commentators decided that I was born in a village, but this is not so. Great-grandfather was a city dweller, grandfather, father and mother, so I was already the fourth generation. Well, except that he twice went to agricultural work, while he was studying at the institute, and even when he lectured to the same students through the OK Komsomol. And here everything was different and completely unusual. I remember well that all these three years have passed for me under a kind of "slogan": "While our spaceships plow the vastness of the universe …" Well, that is a sacramental phrase from the movie "Operation Y" and other adventures of Shurik. So I repeated it there all the time. And I also thought that Lenin and Krupskaya were exiled for the cause - they went against the tsar (well, let him alone, and she came to him). And then he seemed to have received an education and … "in the village, to his aunt, in the wilderness to Saratov." Yes, firewood, electricity and housing were free. But … it turned out to be absolutely impossible to buy the same meat, milk and butter in that village! And it was like this: in the summer there are eggs, but no meat. In winter, there are no eggs, but there is meat. It was impossible to write him out on the state farm. Because teachers were prescribed 1 kg per capita for Teacher's Day, New Year and May Day. And that's it! Milk - 0.5 liters per person on the farm from the morning milking. That is, I could write out 1.5 liters per day, but I had to go to the edge of the village at 5 am for morning milking in the dark and through the mud. Naturally, we bought milk from a neighbor, but she still had to be persuaded to sell. The fact is that in this village all the people, in my opinion, were somehow … strange.
It should be noted that life in Pokrovo-Berezovka has changed a lot since then. For example, when I worked there, there was no monument to the participants in the war. And now I open a news site, and there is a message that on Tuesday, June 17, 2014, cultural workers from the village of Pokrovo-Berezovka carried out work on the improvement of the monument to those who died and returned with Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. That is, then, in a centralized planned economy, hands did not reach this point, but they did it now …
The village was buried in dust, but no one had gardens as such! There were huge vegetable gardens where potatoes were grown, grown in dozens of bags, and almost all of them were sold. Milk was distilled for butter and surrendered to the state for … carpets on coupons. If you hand over some kilograms, you get a discount coupon for the carpet. Many houses in that village from the inside resembled Mongolian yurts: carpets on the walls, on the floor - there are carpets everywhere. Therefore, there was no point in selling a kilo of oil to teachers. Those who, by the way, could not change oil for carpets, dyed sheep's wool and made carpets themselves - printed carpets on sackcloth. This was the second passion of the Pokro-Berezovites. There is no cow, but there are sheep, so my whole house will be covered with printed carpets.
The cultural workers of the village of Pokrovo-Berezovka continue to carry out explanatory work among the population about the rules of safety on the water. In my time, no one handed out such leaflets either. It is clear that it is a trifle, but life consists of trifles.
To make them, special needles were needed, and local craftsmen in the workshop turned them out of steel and duralumin on lathes. But I gave them a competition: I began to make "branded" and very light needles from a copper rod and plastic handles for jumpers. My needles cost 4, 50 rubles, and their production and sale were a good help to us. The residents had no other "hobbies", well, except perhaps the consumption of alcohol …
At that time I wrote many articles about the “needles” and “carpets” of the Berezovites and thus glorified them. He wrote to the local Kondolskaya newspaper, wrote to Penza Pravda, Sovetskaya Mordovia, Sovetskaya Rossiya and even Yuniy Tekhnik. By the way, printed carpets are really beautiful and not only carpets, but also pillows and wall panels.
The biology teacher constantly lamented that the boys in her garden were picking strawberries and invited everyone to dilute them with their mustaches. But no! Potatoes! Here is the main vegetable garden product, which berries? The verdict was: "She is greedy!" There were practically no apple trees, except in the old manor's garden. But in this neglected garden, as in the school one, apples were cut off long before ripening, so it was impossible to get them in this village either!
True, there were many more children before. However, in this photo, not all students of the school.
But there was a very strange "division of labor". There were many ponds around the village, so the locals kept ducks and geese. So: only one (!) Woman in a very large village smoked them to order. You bring two ducks - you get one smoked back! Why don't they smoke themselves? "We can't do that!" Well, learn! No … It's easier to give it to her. The wife of the former director of the state farm, or rather his widow, also made compotes to order for the whole village. Since cherries grew in the village and in the master's garden, they were mostly cherry ones. You bring a three-liter jar + berry + sugar and you get a compote. Or you buy with money, which we often did. And again, she was the only one who did them! Well, God knows not what … But … "But we can't!" They probably knew how to drive moonshine from beets in every house, but for compote - that's just for her!
“On Friday, November 16, 2018, the Day of Tolerance was held at the secondary school in the village of Pokrovo-Berezovka. Tolerance is tolerance, kindness, mercy. The event "What is Tolerance?" Was held with students of the 9th grade. There was a poster on the board, where it was written in large letters: "To give joy to people, one must be kind and polite." At the end of the event, the guys concluded: “Man! Be kind everywhere and everywhere! " By the way, the board is new - good! In my day, the boards were just awful.
I remember that I was terribly surprised by the dogs dragging pig and cow intestines around the village. “Why don't you make sausage? - I asked, and received a standard answer: - But we do not know how! When I begged myself for guts and made several types of sausages, including sausage with porridge, onions and lard, people came to watch me. "Nadot, city, but knows how to make sausage!" They threw out the ram's heads … "They're filthy!" And even about eating "a traditional Russian dish - brains with peas" (well, remember, described by Gogol in his immortal "Dead Souls") was out of the question."They don't eat that!" The liver was fried in houses until blackened and they said that it was "tough", but it never even occurred to them to fry it as much as it should be, although many families subscribed to the magazines "Krestyanka", and there were printed advice on what and how to cook for the villagers.
It was very difficult to lead a technical circle at that school. Well … you can't make a lot with an ax and a saw, but … they even managed to make such homemade products. But the boy Sergei Morkovnenkov decided to give his brother an original souvenir: an ashtray in the shape of a hand squeezing a bottle without a bottom! What a fantasy, huh? And to cast the "hand" out of plaster, he poured his own hand … with hot paraffin !!! And he endured !!! And in the end, the souvenir turned out to be excellent, albeit somewhat vulgar in appearance. For a long time I tried to take a picture of him as a souvenir, and then I did not … Will you show it to whom? And what will people say to that? "While our spaceships …" And what are your children doing? "What a bad taste …"
I always imagined the peasants to be skillful, economic, but … here they were somehow “not like that”. They did not know how to stuff sausages (including blood sausages), having a lot of sheep's wool, they only knew printed carpets and how to knit socks, but they did not know how to make felted carpets and rugs - and they are also very beautiful and durable - and did not want to learn. They did not breed rabbits (only the school principal had them!), Did not know how to roll felt boots, although I suggested that they make white felt boots with a black knotted pattern on the bootlegs. Demand and high prices would have been guaranteed, but … "we can't." "I will teach" … - "Nope!" He offered to breed nutria, but where is it - "Is it someone to breed rats?" In a word, the inertia was still the same. So I had to reluctantly repeat to myself all the time: "While our spaceships plow the vastness of the Universe …"
Some moments of life were simply "funny", although what a lot of fun here. The same ducks were sold there only alive. For 6 rubles. You buy and carry it home. And there … you have to cut her head off. I give the duck to my wife, put my head on the "place of execution", take the ax. I'm swinging … And my wife - ra-a-s and removed the duck! "What are you?" "I'm afraid you will fall on my hands!" "??? !!!" I take the duck by the nose, stretch out its neck … and there is no head! And the wife took, and threw the duck on the ground, and she ran … swinging the stump and pouring blood on everyone! The townswoman, what to do, as well as I. But I grew up in my house, where they kept all kinds of animals and where my grandfather, almost at the age of 10, taught me how to slaughter rabbits: "You take your hind legs and head on the corner, and you pull the kuru by the neck and … that's it!" It came in handy when I had to buy chickens. You buy it, and the hostess or the owner says to you - go to the chicken coop and catch it yourself! Oh how! And then how to carry it across the whole village? Once I carried it, and she did all my pants. I had to do it differently. I grope, which one is fatter on the perch, grab the neck, then “pull on yourself” - then it’s the end of it, you throw it over your back and carry it without any problems. True, on the other hand, I had beautiful feathers from the wings of drakes, from which I made excellent panels in the Aztec style. Well, I had a book by Kinzhalov - Belov "The Fall of Tenochtitlan" and there it was about it. I decided to repeat it and it worked. These feather mats hung on the whitewashed walls of our hut and were very adorned, just like the masks of Indians in headdress made of turkey feathers and the same ducks.
Well, the mass entertainment was very specific there. Which of the arts was the most important for a Soviet person in the USSR? Cinema, of course. So in this village there was also a club (a big barn), where every evening this very movie was “played”. They came somehow - well, you have to join the local "culture", and the first thing that surprised us was … "soft floor". It served underfoot! We looked closely, and it is covered with a thick layer of trampled peel from sunflower seeds, which during the session were husked by the Berezovites. The film began, and all the men lit up as one, so that the smoke from the ceiling began to curl up in clubs. But it was also somehow back and forth. Further more! After getting drunk on vodka, all the local hooliganism gathered there, and it began - swearing, whistling, swearing, drunken screams and scuffle. Everything is in the best traditions of Soviet hooligans of the 20s, who just migrated from the city here to the village. Culture has reached the masses, so to speak! As soon as my wife and I took our legs from there, we didn’t go to that club for more than three years.
But this "electronic examiner" was really … a very "serious construction", directly related to the task of "intensifying the learning process and improving its quality." But we will talk about the "intensification" itself next time.
