Living in the 20th Century Communist Paradise

My husband inquired one day if I would have preferred to have lived in the 19^th century America or 20^th century Romania when communists ruled. I gave him a ‘I’m glad you asked the question’ look and launched into a tirade of what it was like living with my grandparents continuously for the first six years of my life before I went to first grade and then every summer until I was eighteen and able to choose for myself.

Most young Americans, blinded by school indoctrination, don’t realize that, under the socialist republic controlled by the Communist Party, population control and submission to their whim were the most important goals. They did not care about the happiness and health of the citizenry despite the heavy rhetoric to that effect.

A family was not allowed to move from the village to the city without proper permit from the Communists. If caught living in the city, a person would be subjected to fines, imprisonment, or both.

Mom’s parents, like all villagers, did not have electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing in the tiny village six miles outside of the largest metropolitan area in the south.

Natural gas, compressed in small containers called “butelie,” was used for cooking in summer time. In winter most villagers used a wood burning stove with an iron cast top for heat and cooking. Ducts would carry hot air to the next room. The two tiny rooms did not have taper candles for illumination but oil lamps with clear glass fluted covers that gave us the ability to walk in the house without groping in the dark.

When night fell, the stars were brilliant on clear nights, surrounded by the pitch blackness devoid of any ambient light.  It was fun for kids to catch lightning bugs or creep up on older folk sitting on stoops outside the fenced yard and listen to their gossip and tales of old. Younger neighbors, walking in the dark from the latest bus after a long day’s work, would stop and chat before they dragged their tired bodies home to eat and fall asleep with their work clothes on.

The village was compact, demarcations of living space done by communist party organizers with their directives from the top - no waste of agricultural land which needed to be planted with corn and wheat for export and survival rations of food. There was little space between homes, just enough for a wooden fence to separate one small house from the next.

Like 19^th century inhabitants, women did not have much in the vein of health care, save for the village mid-wife who tended to births. Women made do with strips of old clothing or rags to protect themselves during menses.

Toilet paper was either the communist newspaper, Scânteia (The Spark), or România liberă (Free Romania) attached to the wooden wall of the outhouse with a long nail. It gave us great pleasure to use the Communist Party’s propaganda to wipe our arses with. The newspaper, România liberă, communist propaganda rag from cover to cover, was a joke as nobody was free in Romania, we were prisoners of the totalitarian communist state. When far from any outhouse, we used the smooth side of any plant leaves we could find, especially corn ones.

Eventually the communists decided to modernize us and manufactured rough brown toilet paper with large and visible splinters in it. We were already used to splinters in our bums from sitting on the unfinished wood platform over the outhouse hole. But using toilet paper with splinters was a new experience. It would be surprising to learn what you can get used to in order to survive.

It never bothered us that we did not wash our hands or brush our teeth. We washed our faces before church but sported a neckline of dirt where the soap and water had stopped. It never occurred to us that hygiene was important to survival. We climbed in a fruit tree not far from the outhouse, buzzing with fat and hungry flies, and we ate with gusto the unwashed but ripen fruits called “dude.”

We played in the muddy ditches when it rained or when grandpa was watering his corn and garden and open the sluices of irrigation. We bathed in the creek or river when we went fishing. It was such a far walk that, when we came back after frolicking in the crystal-clear water, we were covered again in a serious layer of dust. Grandma told us to wash our feet and hands before we went to bed, but she was often tired and forgot to enforce the cleanliness rules. And nobody had a toothbrush or toothpaste.

Adults traveled to the city bathhouses once or twice a year for a good bath. Cleanliness is next to godliness but there was a shortage of bath soap and water was a precious commodity; we had to pump drinking water out of the ground. Taking a bath meant heating large amounts of water and a large enough tub which nobody owned nor could afford. Villagers who had relatives in the city with tiny cinder block apartments with running water traveled once a month or so to bathe if the water supply was running or was hot. As the 19^th century brethren would have said, they had a bath every so many months whether they needed it or not.

Grandpa had rigged a small tin tank near the outhouse, about five feet in the air. One person at a time could soap first and then rinse with the lukewarm water dripping from the tank; once empty, it had to be refilled; the sun would warm the water a little bit and the first person was the lucky bather. It was an amazing experience to get rid of the mud and dirt even if it was so short-lived.

We went barefoot most of the time in summer, the yard was a mess, covered with geese, chicken, and duck poop which squished between our toes. I have an icky feeling to this day when I go barefoot. I seldom go without shoes except in sand, and I refuse to go camping.

A few of my childhood friends died of untreated hookworms. Those who survived got treated with heavy and nasty-tasting medicinal syrup provided by my mom who made determined trips to the government polyclinic in town.

I suppose we lived a tad better than the 19^th century America as we at least had a rickety bus with holes on the floorboard for transportation or we had rusty trains with steam locomotives that covered us in a decent coating of dark and smelly coal soot. And we did have some drugs and vaccines which increased our chances of survival.

It’s Snowing Again, It Must be Global Warming

Photo: Ileana Johnson

For the fifth time in seven days snow began to fall in large flakes, cold kisses from heaven that built into a 12-inch blanket of pristine white, wet and heavy carpet of global warming that my husband is going to have to shovel multiple times. It would freeze overnight when the temperatures are expected to dip into low single digits.

My friend Joe K., who spent five years in Romania serving our country during Ceausescu’s draconian regime, commented that “every time it would freeze in Bucharest, water in our radiators would freeze up. We never had heat when we needed it.”

His comment was nothing new to me, we froze all the time in our communist-subsidized reinforced steel concrete and drab grey apartments covered with dingy air pollution. We lived on the fifth floor and radiator steam seldom reached that high up. I was never warm in winter except when I went to see my grandparents in the nearby village.

The village was located about 9 km from the outskirts of town. Even though they were so close, they might as well have lived in the 18^th century. They never got electricity until late 70s but they had a wood-burning mud brick stove that kept things toasty warm during the day in the two tiny rooms. Grandpa’s bed was close by the stove which served as a heat source and for cooking over the three eyes with removable and adjustable cast iron covers to fit any size cast iron pot.

Temperatures dropped precipitously at night as the fire died out. We were sleeping snug in sea weed and straw mattresses and heavy wool quilted comforters made by grandma’s hand. We always woke up in the morning flea-bitten to a cold room until grandpa stoked a new fire in the stove and the crackling burning logs warmed us enough to get out of bed and put our warm and scratchy hand-made wool clothes on. The cats came down from the warm attic to be fed; they were the mouse catchers and a constant source of fleas and furry hugs.

We always helped our extended family as we were all equally poor under the boot of communism. The socialist rhetoric was long on failed promises that never materialized and short on providing for the starving and cold proletarian masses.

The arctic air has rolled over our north-eastern area and the Hawk is blowing something fierce. We are snug in the comfort of our homes where we can easily adjust the temperature, have warm water, thick comforters and blankets, and plenty of warm clothes and socks.
I worry about domesticated animals left outdoors to fend for themselves and for our fellow humans who are homeless by no fault of their own and how they are going to protect themselves in these frigid temperatures.

Corrupt politicians on both sides of the isle seem to be more concerned about the welfare of foreign individuals, potential Democrat voters, who are overrunning our borders illegally, than they are about our own poor people, veterans, and the elderly.

I hope there are enough shelters open to protect our homeless population from frigid temperatures. We should provide apartments for them instead of the illegal aliens, who are bussed into our country with non-governmental organizations (NGO) and Democrat taxpayer funding, demanding free housing, healthcare, food, electricity, education, and the right to vote at the expense of Americans.

Poverty exists everywhere and people have a right to seek a better life in a legal way. They also have the responsibility to make their own countries better, especially the men. But they do not have the right to demand welfare from our hard-earned tax dollars.

Benevolent Masters and Controllers of Water

A lot of Americans take water for granted because it is relatively cheap and readily available in most areas. They count on turning on the water spigot and the water flows. They also take for granted their water heaters – few people had to do without hot water in recent memory. Perhaps those who were the victims of tornadoes and hurricanes can better understand having to do without water, hot water, heat, and electricity for days and weeks at a time.

If you ask any Americans like me who grew up under communism and deprivation, we know what it’s like to go the entire summer, every summer, without any hot water and scheduled cold water because that is when the communist leadership decided that it was the best time to clean the cisterns of mineral deposits. At least that is what they told us. We had a few hours of hot water during winter time, 5-7 a.m. and 5-7 p.m. Cold water was also regulated in summer time. During the day, when everyone was assumed to be at work or school, there was no cold water for eight hours. I am not sure they did it out of incompetence, spite, or to make us as miserable as possible.

Anemic heat was delivered by steam heaters. The fact that we lived on the fifth floor of a decrepit high-density concrete apartment did not help with the heat. By the time the steam got to our level, it was approaching lukewarm.  As a child, I would put my hands on the coils to warm my frozen hands. Once in a while, it was hot enough and we would hang clothes to dry over the radiator coils.

The gas oven would help warm the kitchen and we utilized the top stove to boil water to do dishes or bathe in the tub. At least we had a tub. The country folks had it much worse; they got their water from a well, using a chain and bucket to hoist water out. Villages in flat areas could afford iron hand-cranked water pumps; they did not have to dig through rock, making wells more affordable and water easier to find.

I have walked as far as two miles one way to bring back two buckets of water at a time for drinking, cooking, and to flush the commode. Do Americans believe that these are scenarios out of a Depression area movie? Of course, they’ve lived in abundance and luxury their entire lives. Is that likely to change? I am most certainly sure that it is and it will.

Bring in the liberals with their control agenda; water is already tightly controlled in some areas and it will continue to be more restrictive to use, and more expensive. The EPA controlling rain water, Executive Order 13603 of March 16, 2012 giving the Department of Defense control over all of our water resources in both peace and war time, Agenda 21’s public-private partnerships to control rivers and water supplies, watersheds, blowing up dams, denying irrigation water to vegetable and fruit producing farmers in San Joaquin Valley in California represent major efforts to alter Americans’ “wasteful and evil capitalist” lifestyle, de-developing U.S. to the level of third world nations.

“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” (Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies)

Was water really in short supply or undeliverable in the communist “paradise” I had to endure for 20 years? No, it was not about water shortage, it was about power and control over our ability to drink, to cook, to bathe, to wash our clothes, to flush our commodes, it was an attempt to make us so miserable and submissive to their will that when we did get water, we were grateful to our benevolent masters and controllers.