Save the
Emptiness
We all had childhood. Something was similar to all of us, but some things were different.
When we return to our home towns or villages, we think back about the backyards and garages, and for some of us it’s junkyards, gum wrappers, dolls, a bakery, matchbox cars, the “he” and “cops and robbers” games that come to mind.
Is it possible to come back to the place called “childhood”?
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Why do we adults need to remember friends, games and toys?
What is so valuable that can be stored in this utopian country?
The “Pole” headed over to Vorkuta – one of the depressed and dying small towns of Russia, together with Maksim Polyakov – journalist, who used to live here and now wants to share what the “polar childhood” is.
We’re asking you to send your childhood memories through the Osoka service widgets via the widgets on the page of the project. It is important for us to hear about your childhood even if you did not live in the North.
We will process the collected recordings and make a podcast out of them, in which we will talk about the importance of childhood memories in adult life.
Story about the palms
— If it was cold outside and there was no bus for several minutes, my friends and I would wait in the entrance room of the “youth center”, in the Palace of the Pioneers, where we studied and where the pool was, there was an entrance room before the building - it was a little warmer there. And we would stand there waiting for the bus. But the windows would fog up and it would be hard to see in a severe frost, and we would put our hands, warm the glass with our palms, and a transparent space would appear where you could see whether the bus was moving or not. We would always put our palms like that, and when the bus was arriving, we would run out of the entrance room, run to the bus and go to school.
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Maxim and I are standing in the entrance vestibule of the Art Center for Children and Youth in Vorkuta. This vestibule is the passage between the street and the Art Center, it allows you to retain warmth in the building. The vestibule is not heated, but at least the icy wind does not blow there, and you can warm yourself for a while. In general, everyone says that we were very lucky with the weather: it’s only minus twenty-five centigrade outside.
The "Happy New Year" sign is still hanging above the entrance, a snowman and a Christmas tree are still there. The letters flash and inside the passage temporarily flashes in red, blue, green, purple, yellow. It looks like an unfilmed version of Blade Runner about the world in an ice age. Flashes reveal dozens of prints of children's palms on the frosted glass of the vestibule. “I also stood here,” Maxim says, and begins to make a mark on the glass. At night, the prints in the vestibule will freeze, but in the morning new ones will appear in their place. I ask: "Why did you do this?" Maxim is obviously surprised and he replies: “You just do it because you have nothing to do. You are waiting for the bus." In the children's world, despite the order and schedule of adults, you can have special moments of idleness when you do something, but it does not make much sense. Although, through the print made on the glass, you can see if the bus arrived at the stop.
Story about the bridge
— At the very beginning of the first grade, my classmates and I were taken to the pool and for some reason we all started to swim, it became our daily routine. And by the end of the 5th or 6th grade, there were very few of us left who continued to seriously engage in swimming. And then our coach made us happy – he said that from that moment on we would have two workouts a day. The first one started at 5:30 am. That is, at 5:30 in the morning I had to jump into the pool and start swimming. This meant that my mother woke me up at 4:40 or 4:45, I had a quick breakfast – porridge or sandwiches. Next, I had to get to the swimming pool. Buses did not run at such an early time, and I walked, it took around 20-25 minutes. In winter, when it was very cold, my classmate would go with me. We lived in the same building – his father drove us. His father worked some kind of an auger conveyor - it’s a large snow clearing vehicle that grinds snow and throws it to the side. Early in the morning he would leave for work and could give us a lift. And so you would get up in the morning at five in the morning, go to the pool, there is no one, it’s utter darkness – in winter it was a polar night. And there was one place that I liked the most - it is the bridge over the ravine. I was walking through a ravine, and if there was a strong wind, the bridge suddenly began humming, or singing, and I always thought that it was talking to me at that moment. We had a friendly conversation. “– How are you? Fine? – Fine.” There were cast iron posts on the bridge and fences were fastened between them, and when the wind flew in, there was a humming.
From the Palace of the Pioneers we go to Maxim's house to see children's things and photo albums, to meet his mother and sisters. We pass over the bridge "to Timan" - this is the name of the area on the other side of a coulee. On the bridge, sections of the fence are welded to hollow pipes. They probably throw cigarette butts and ice cream wrappers there in the summer. Maxim says that as a child he would go to the pool across this bridge every morning.
Max would leave the house at 5:10. The trip to the swimming pool was 25 minutes. The wind would sing in the pipes of the bridge, and it seemed to Max that the bridge was talking to him: “I didn’t assume or make things up. At that moment, I think I had the feeling that we were friends. It did not matter how we talked and about what. He kind of was saying “We are friends!”. During the week, while we were in Vorkuta, Maxim, passing over the bridge, listened carefully: what if the bridge sings again. This time, the bridge did not answer. Maybe the wind was weak, or maybe Maxim became quite an adult.
Story about the matchbox cars
— I'm trying to remember the toys I had as a kid, and I can’t remember any except for a semi-RC car, it was a buggy 5. We lived in a shared flat, in a two-floor wooden barracks. Two families lived in our apartment, and in the flat next door, two families lived in the same apartment in a five-room apartment. Our neighbors had a son who unexpectedly offered to make toys and cars on our own. I thought about how it works, how it can be done. He says “look, we have iron balls” - my dad worked at the mine, and and in a locksmith shop, where they repaired equipment for mines, and he brought balls from work, which were obtained after the bearings were squeezed by a press. And my neighbor says “you need to take the ball, a piece of paper, twist it in several layers like this, make a ring like this, then you can decorate all this on the outside, and put the ball inside, and it will be a racing car, and you can roll it along the hallway." I thought "great idea and suddenly, it turns out that the car can be like this." He made these cars and painted them, they were cool, much more interesting than mine. And then we arranged races, that is, you got up at the beginning of the corridor, started this machine and you competed, whose car was faster, which would drive further, it was necessary not to crash into obstacles. And we drove along the hallway, we could spend half the evening like this, and none of the neighbors complained, although when an iron ball rolls on the floor, it is noisy, but we were not scolded. We were passionate: small races in a very narrow hall – it was very cool. I remember it as if it happened yesterday, it's in front of my eyes.
At the Polyakovs' house, we went to the pantry to find video cassettes with funny and touching recordings from the children's world. Maxim says that on one of the recordings, at the age of eleven, by a fire in the tundra, in a squeaky voice, he asks about currants, on the second one, at the age of fifteen, in Gelendzhik, he drinks vodka with friends from Moscow "under the strict supervision of his sister". The pantry is a family archive that stores real treasures - things that exist in the “what if it will eventually come in handy” and “it’s a pity to throw away” mode. Here, every thing makes Maxim remember some story: empty boxes from a blender and a coffee maker, a kids’ toy-hammer, dad's out-of-tune guitar, an old Pele coffee can with all sorts of things, Christmas decorations and fairy lights with a Soviet star, nut bowl and even, similar to closed scoop with comb, harvester for picking berries.
Max does not find the VHS, but finds a large metal bearing ball. His father worked at the mine in the repair shop and brought these home. Maxim lived in a wooden barracks in a shared flat. Together with the boy from the apartment next door, they made cars “on their own” from the metal balls, on which races were arranged along the corridor - who was faster, farther, louder. We ask how to make a car out of a ball? A sheet is pulled out of a school notebook, then it’s folded into several layers. A ring, or a triangle, is made from this strip. The paper case is painted, a car logo is drawn on it. A ball is inserted into this triangle - the car is ready, you can go. “Little races in a very narrow hallway. It was very cool. I remember it like it happened yesterday. It stands before my eyes,” says Maxim.
