Categories: Arvid Ratnieks

I don’t know what small kids were doing, but at the time, since I remember myself, well, what were we doing? There was such an interesting small gadget, I don’t know, it must have been made by older boys, it was made from a thread roll in a piece of soap, and then an elastic band was drawn in and then a sort of a small tractor was made. It could be used to level out the mud road on molehills, then, where you drag the tractor, it crept up there. And, if you had a good father, who had good hands, he made for you a scooter, that was called samokats, so that it could be recognized. If it had wooden wheels, then it was simple. But if, instead of the wheels there were ball-bearings, then you could roll on the motorway, too. However, it was not particularly popularized because the motorway was narrow, neither was it very smooth, but I had such a scooter.

When you grew up to the age of Form 4 or 5, then the entertainments were different. For example, in the first half of the summer, in order to boil potatoes for pigs it was necessary to break off potato shoots in the cellar. If I had to break off three buckets of those shoots by the noontime, we cooperated with my neighbour Arvīds, we went at first to one cellar, then to the other. The second entertainment was – to cut or browse grass for rabbits. The third entertainment was – in the morning, the mum left a piece of meat in a saucepan or a pot, you had to kindle fire under it, peel potatoes, cut carrots, so that when she came from work in the kolkhoz, the soup would be ready. Thus, you see, kids had endearing entertainment. 

Researcher: Dr. philol. Valentīns Lukaševičs, Daugavpils Universitāte