February 27, 2010

I just want to continue my trip down memory lane that I started yesterday.

Since I wrote yesterday about things that changed and advanced in my lifetime a few more items came to mind.

Going back to ice skating. When I started skating I was about five years old. Yes, we did have ice back then.

My parents took me to a rink that was natural ice even though Budapest had an outdoor rink with artificial ice even back then!

Anyway I wore high top leather shoes and the skates were fixed onto the sides of the soles of my shoes with the help of some special keys that tightened a few clamps. Looking back now it was primitive but that is what we had.

Eventually I "graduated" to skates that were permanently mounted on to the shoes and I thought they were the coolest things in the world.

Back in those early years instead of long pants I think I wore britches. That was the style kids of my age wore than. Looking back now, they looked pretty stupid but, that's what my parents bought me.

In New York City they use adjectives about older apartment buildings as Pre-War, meaning built before World War II.

The apartment building I was born and grew up in was built either in the very early 1900s or the very late 1890s. It was a real old building. But it was very sturdy, with thick brick walls and good solid floors.

Our apartment was large and was on the second floor with no elevator. Actually, we did have an elevator but it was destroyed during bombings and never rebuilt.

There was no central heat, we had specially built wood burning tile stoves in every room that were very comforting in the cold months. There was a cellar in the building where my Father used to go down to collect the heating material for the week and brought it up to the apartment. When I became a teenager I took over that chore.

Our building had a special room in the cellar where all the residents went down whenever there was an air raid during the war. We were in the mistaken belief that if our building were ever hit by a bomb that room was the safest place to be.

Fortunately, we never had the chance to find out how wrong we would have been. We had the opportunity to use that room again in November 1956 when the Russians came in to Budapest after the Hungarian Revolution and were shooting at buildings with the cannons of their tanks.

I never saw television until I came to the US in 1957. I heard about it but never saw one. My relatives had one, black and white though, and I really liked it.

We didn't buy one until 1960 but didn't take long to get used to it. My Mother got her first TV in 1964 and she also liked it a lot even though programming in those days in Hungary was very limited to say the least.

Being ruled by a Soviet type regime the government wanted to make sure that the viewing public is not being corrupted by so called immoral programs.

The happiness of the lathe operator, the joys of sharpening the scythe and similar enlightening programs were the daily norm. And people were watching these things because there was nothing else to watch.

Oh, don't forget the synchronized version of the Soviet movie about the loves of the female tractor operator.

We had no school lunches in my days. My Mother made me a sandwich and I ate that in recess. Sometimes we exchanged sandwiches with each other if we were not very happy with our own foods.

And we still grew up as fairly normal(?) and successful people. Kids here in this country don't realize how lucky they are!

I used to see my Grandfather shave with a straight razor. He didn't know any other way to shave. My Father used safety razors, he never mastered the use of the straight razor. Speaking of my Grandfather, he was so good shaving that he never saw him cut himself.

There is a small shop in one of the shopping centers near us where they provide shaving with straight razors. In reality that is the best shave one can ever get, but it's too much hassle.

Maybe if I get invited to the White House for a state dinner I'll get a shave with a straight razor.

In my early days movie theaters had pre-set show times and tickets were priced according to the location of the seats. Every ticket sold was for a reserved seat and for a particular showtime.

There was a movie theater in Budapest that showed nothing but newsreels continuously all day long. I thought it was very cool that one could see the same thing over and over again.

Due to the darkness of the theater and the non-stop performances and due to to the non existence of hourly rated motel rooms this movie theater became a very popular place among the young and the restless.

In the mid 1950s my Father had a company car which we used sometimes for weekend excursions. I remember the gas stations in those days. They were manually operated. The attendant pumped the gas continuously from one transparent cylindrical container to another and somehow that is how the gas got into the car.

It was extremely primitive but that's what we had back than.

Looking back, those were very primitive days but they were also very uncomplicated.