Summer 1964

The complete gallery is here, so that my children and grandchildren will know where to look for photos; I am not going to post all sixty :).

In the summer of 1964, I was one-and-a-half years old, and I spent the summer with my maternal grandparents. 

Deda Fedya (grandpa Fedya) “received” this one-room apartment from the Leningrad Commercial Port, where he worked after returning from his army service.

They lived in one of the houses built in the 1950s’, in Sosnovaya Polyana, the part of Leningrad only from an administrative perspective. I remember that in 1964, the peasant’s houses that surrounded it were freshly demolished. The wooded houses were gone, but the stone chimneys and the fireplaces stayed. Now that I recall this picture, it seems creepy, but I found it extremely funny back then. My grandfather would take me with him on expeditions to checked whether there was something worthy left in the abandoned gardens. He dug out some strawberries and planted them on his balcony, 

 I was there for the summer because of the firm belief, which I mentioned earlier, that children should have some “fresh air” during summer, and adults have to make sacrifices to make it happen. 

It was a one-room apartment, with only one normal bed for my grandparents. Mom slept on the camp bed in the tiny hallway. I slept on the small day bed. Mom walked to the train station every morning (almost 3 miles), and took a train and then a tram from the railway station to her work. My father was there only on the weekends, and I am not even sure whether their issues already started at that time.   

In any case, all these pictures were taken by my father during one of his visits. The most precious thing about these photos is that I can see parts of that apartment, and I can see Baba Ania passing by on some of them. 

The house was originally built with the woodstove only; the gas stove (on the right) was installed later) 

The picture above shows it all. There is mom and I, and a boy whom we just met (he is outside without parents). Behind us is the house were my grandparents lived, three-story brick building. You can also see, that on the other side of the street, there are wooden houses. The demolished houses are on the right of where we stand in that picture.

I remember that day, remember the colors of everybody clothes and the texture of the materials. And the grey sky above.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs, and what was before and after.