Pioneer Day

How quickly everything disappears from your head. After all, May 19 - and even in modern times - remained the first association - “Pioneer Day”. Well, just a mental stamp.

And now this memory of Pioneer Day exists only in connection with children's history. Then May 19th fell on a Sunday.

And my dad gave me a “Kyiv-Vega” camera. He could take such very small photos. We had a whole darkroom in our house - all these lamps, developers, fixers, ditches, in which, as if by magic, a picture began to appear on the paper. And so I got my own camera. I was 11 years old.

On Sunday I started clicking everything I could find, and then I decided that there were no more objects worthy of my attention. And I told my brother and sister (the youngest, Tanka was 6, Valerka was 9): “Let’s go take pictures of the Neman.” The Neman is 7 km in a straight line, there were 11 roads along those days, many roads were blocked - there were military units everywhere, Western Belarus.

No sooner said than done. Our parents were somewhere, so we didn’t ask them and went. We had a piece of chalk with us; we left drawings on the boulders so as not to get lost. But they still ended up in the forbidden zone. The sentry spent a long time asking us who and what. We kept our heads down - we were going to see our grandmother in Komotovo (we didn’t have any grandmother there). The soldier said: “Take a picture of me.” I said: “No, I don’t have enough footage on film.” He let me go. We reached the Neman, took photographs and went back. Because it was already late in the evening.

Trying to get around the restricted area, we got lost. Then we discovered our own boulders with drawings. When we reached our railway crossing, we met a man on a bike who asked: “Aren’t you Gavrilins, children?” “No,” I lied. “What if the Gavrilins are already looking for you with the police” (in general, I later realized it was a thing - three children disappeared). We came home. The house was open, there were no parents, there was a plate of pancakes on the table. We ate a pancake each and pretended to be asleep.

Because they heard the knocking of doors. If we had not been asleep, we would have received a belt, but by the morning everything was calmer. They questioned us - where were we? “We were walking in the landing” - “Yes, people combed the entire landing!” - “We were walking in the landing.” I didn’t take into account only one thing - I didn’t know how to develop and print photos. When the film ran out, dad started doing it. And on the film - Neman... But I still rested my horn - I don’t know anything, they were walking in the landing.

And then the sponsored soldiers came to the school party, including that sentry. And he recognized me, the head teacher’s daughter. But a lot of time had passed, the belt was of little relevance...

This is what I remember when the date is May 19, and about Pioneer Day - only incidentally.