The life without electricity

Friday, 14 November 2008

What the people can do when they don't have electricity in their homes?

Few days ago because of some technical trouble, we were in that condition at home. I wondered: how could I live without electricity?

So I started a conversation with my parents on the subject. The members of my family have different experiences of education, living conditions and wealth. Here are the childhood memories of three persons with their specific background.


Me

I don't have so much to say. My childhood was the ususal childhood of a usual boy in the late communist age. I remember when my father brought the new multicolor television Electron, which replaced the old black and white apparatus Temp. I remember the accumulating stove - I used it to sit on it during the winter.

In the late eighties there was a regime of the electricity and often we stayed without light in the nights. We did spend our evenings mainly singing songs. Since then I have many Bulgarian renaissance revolutionary songs in my repertoire.

Soon the electicity returned and the communist chief Todor Zhivkov fell down. New times began and then we had electricity but we didn't have much money to pay it.


My mother

She was born in a family of citizens - farmers... a strange combination. My grandfather was a fanner, devoted to his land. The life in the city had many good sides: books from the bookstores and the libraries, theatre, modern medicine and of course - electricity. In the usual evenings my mother and her older brother did read books and the whole family listened folksongs or children shows on the German radio-apparatus Blaupunct. In the rare cases without electricity they used a gas lamp and went earlier to sleep... a wise, healthy and untroubled decision.


My father

my father remembers...

He is the real expert. Dad was born in a mountain village far from here. From a current point of view his early years might be described as poor. The modest village family had low incomes, owned few pieces of land and few animals. Like the other local people, my ancestors lived in distance from the most achievements of the civilization. The water-supplies were an unseen miracle, the only way to get water was the draw-well instead . Electricity was a magical word, both strange and attractive for the child's ears.

The peasants used gas lamps all year and fireplaces during the winter. They didn't have radio or television, the electric cooker was totally unknown stuff, the donkey was the tram's alternative, but in the same time these people led very interesting social life.

Usually almost every evening the young unmarried girls made gatherings called sedyanka or poprelka. Every evening the gathering took place in a different house. The maidens did bring with them some handiwork. On the light of the gas lamp or the flames in the fireplace, some of them knitted, other - spined, other - sewed or arranged tobacco.

The young lads went from gathering to gathering, singing songs and making jokes with the girls.

The romantic side of the country life.

* * *

After that pleasant coversation, I made a conclusion: I'd like to stay without electricity sometimes but only when I choose it... especially I like to take a bath on the light of aromatic candles' ... but I'll not endure for a long time without that weal of the civilization - the electricity.