I have already written in my recollections of life in the “khrushchevka.” I understood little then that this was a hard period in our family’s life. It was hard for my parents! After my sister was born in 1963, the family’s material situation naturally did not improve, but worsened, and mama had to think how to go out to work and at the same time give attention to the family.

When my sister was already 1 year and 10 months, mama decided to go to work as a cashier in the “yellow” grocery shop; it was next to our house (and this grocery shop still exists! opposite Slavy Park). In that period the grocery shop was opened after a renovation, L.I. Brezhnev was already “at the helm,” and for the opening they needed staff. And mama agreed to sit at the till.

Now I think there was no work more frightening than at the till! And mama, after all, “did not choose easy paths” and could, without thinking, go to work in any post. I’ll explain what a cash register of those distant Soviet times was. It was such a “pain in the backside”! (I apologise for the expression), but I could not find another name.

Imagine a cashier sitting on a stool, in a half-glazed booth, in full view of everyone, a whole eight-hour working day, turning this very handle almost without a break, to “punch” the correct receipt, press the right buttons on the cash register and give the correct change, in small coins and large, without the right to a mistake!

The most terrible and dangerous thing was to “get a surplus,” that is a sum of money that might turn up in the final count of money and punched receipts (the receipts were received by the salespeople from customers in their departments for goods). So if the controllers discovered a surplus (and they often arranged checks), you could even end up in court. With a shortage it was “easier.” It could be paid from the cashier’s tiny salary.

Anyway, my mama worked at the till Saturday and Sunday, while papa and I could stay with the child, and quit, having got stress from the work. Then nobody knew such a word!

P.S. Yesterday, 26 March 2019, my mama Lidiya Sergeyevna turned 92! She never ceases to be surprised at my memory, at those episodes of her life that she no longer remembers at all. Well, and I sit here writing and am myself surprised. To be continued….