I will make a reservation right away. It will be interesting to read only to those who were born in the mid to late sixties of the last century. Those who were born and grew up in the center of Moscow, and then their parents (here, surprisingly, completely free) received instead of communal apartments, where they lived before, separate two or three bedroom apartments. True, already on the outskirts of the capital. We, our family, who lived in Samotek in an eleven-meter communal apartment, received a three-room apartment on Rossoshanka. The devil on the horns, as I thought then ...

Towards evening the water in the pond froze. Everything was frozen in nature: no leaf would move, no ripples in the water — everything stopped. Such an amazing hour exists in the evening of Summer. When the sun is on two sides: from the top, from the sky ... And also from the bottom, a reflection in the water. Even the birds are silent at this hour. And if at this hour you don’t dig potatoes on your six-hundredths, or if you don’t repair the cottage with an ax or a hammer with nails, then you lie on the grass and merge with nature into one whole at this amazing hour of summer. And you think, and think, and relax ...

... We found the Lower Pond about three years later. We are our class. More precisely, on then - its only a quarter.
Our class was an awesome class. However, why was it? So I stayed later ... how much? After all, not a fig for 37 years.
Before turning to that story, I will tell you why and why our class was unique.
In the early seventies of the last century (stunned, if you think about it, how old I am!) The center of Moscow, the communal apartments, began to settle.
What is a "communal"? By myself I’ll say: until 1972 we lived - five families with a common single kitchen, one tap in the kitchen and one toilet for all. Only cold water poured from the tap. And hot ... This is only once a week: a bath at Seleznevka.

And here is our family: the deceased father now, mother, younger sister and I, who lived in the room for rent in a communal flat, receive a three-room apartment from the state. This today may be a little incomprehensible: not in a loan, not in a mortgage - just it is provided to us. Free of charge. Or, as Owl said in the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon “Yes-a-House” ...
Then he was a naughty fourteen, and therefore bad. I did not understand the joy of my parents: well, what good is it to go away from here that the hell knows where? And we really went there and left. In Chertanovo. And not even quite to Chertanovo, but to its very outskirts, to Rossoshanka — Rossoshanskaya Street.

There was still talk then that, they say, Peter the Great, when he was unsuitable, was exiled from Moscow. Spent a certain line, for which they sent. And everything that was beyond this line - called Chertanovo. No, I don't know. But we were sent there ...
This is now - the subway. If you want this, if you want light, the boulevards are spacious and upper transport ... And in the early seventies; in the place where it is now North Butovo, there were hills. When I happen, I walk today along Dmitry Donskoy Boulevard, Green Street, I remember how then, in the winter, we went skiing here, and in the summer, just like in a zoo - cows grazed in the meadows. And shepherds, shepherds, shepherds ...
Now here at home. And the place is considered more than prestigious.

Why are there! When I had just moved in, I got off the bus at my stop “24th quarter Chertanovo” (and only then it was possible to reach us: from the Varshavskaya metro station 25 minutes by the old bus - “kerosene”), and went to my house through the rows of free merchants, it could get including natural (his own!) fat. The old Warsaw highway was then squeezed from two sides by private houses in which pigs were kept.
According to our ruler, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, the “five-storey building” block began to be called at one time “Khrushcheby”. And to me, our nine, twelve-story monoliths in the era of Brezhnev, in the seventies, were introduced only as "Brezhnyaki" ...

Still, I'm about my class. Such rarely meet. I will make a reservation - his, that is, them, was originally two.8 "A" and 8 "B" in the new school - new building. Senior classes were not. There simply were not those who filled them.

A year later, there were exams that were not passed by everyone, and those who did not pass them were forced to go to vocational schools, which are now proudly called “colleges”. Well, those who remained - they became students of the ninth, later the tenth - the first graduation of our school. Why, with my light hand, then our class was called “The Motley Affair”.
We were lucky. In the sense that when a newcomer arrives in a class, he must join the class ... To some extent, we were all beginners - from Taganka, from Lightworms, from Pokrovka, from Arbat ... And we
did not join the class, we reunited. This school united us all. We did not get used to the class, we got used to each other.
And soon, in addition to the school, they found other possibilities for this. In winter, of course, skiing. Well, in the summer ...
Before Bitsa was like two steps. Forty minutes on foot. And, through the still untouched forest, where (I’m not lying!), Then on the way you could collect nuts and mushrooms. And only if you go through the Moscow Ring Road - a huge and almost empty pond.

By the tenth grade, this Eden began to lose ground. Just a few steps from it grew new residential
quarters - "Yasenevo". And soon on the banks of the pond it became as crowded as on the shores of the Black Sea coast.
I didn't want to dip my body in the mud ...
Mishka found the exit (how did it occur to him?) Once he led us down to where there was another, Lower Pond. Although the water cascaded from the Upper, in the Lower - from him like all the dirt went even lower in the third; and it was so pure for us, gathered on its shore, that it was easy to see the bottom by three meters.
For a long, very long time this place became Ours. Three years later, only began to appear rare towel-beds of new guests. The fact that there was not a single tent, a single store that could sell a bottle of beer or a pack of cigarettes there also had an effect. All this could only be purchased, standing up a fair turn, on the Upper Pond ...

... Not sure, but now access to it seems to be closed. Indeed, in addition to the pond, there is still an old manor. Having rummaged in the archives later, I found out; she belonged to Tolstoy - Leo's parents
Nikolaevich. And it seems even there was preserved a unique (according to legends) sofa, on which he was conceived. Lev Nikolaevich.
But then we did not care about these facts. Because in the evening the water in the pond froze. And everything froze in nature ...
We have finished school a year already. Guys, among them I, remained a little. The military registration and enlistment office accelerated the draft harvest.
As for me, I was in an air condition, suspended: between admission to the next exam and the words from the song "... goodbye, the pipe is calling, the soldiers are on the march"

There are fewer girls among us: our class for today is ten pairs. Then, when their guys went into the army, they somehow
immediately moved aside. They waited ... And already less often participated in our ... how to say it? In the "get-togethers", modern language, or what?
Only here Zheka was different. Not one of them. With character. It was a willful ... How many years have passed, I, unfortunately, have never met such people later.
... That day there were us then, that Saturday, about seven or eight people — no more. Everyone perceived the frozen beauty as his soul laid for it. My sverbila is peculiar: the day after tomorrow it will become clear with my “Va-bank”: I handed over to MSU on
Faculty of Journalism. So, if I am not in the list of those who passed the essay, then they will continue to hum: “but for you my dear, there is field mail ...” And I will not be here in the next two years ...

I was also shocked by something else: how did Zhenya, Zheka, Zhekachka become prettier in the last year after school.
... We were familiar with all the time that our class existed. I sat at the desk right behind her and talked to her in different ways. Well, let's say, in the middle of a lesson I could (such a fantasy came) with two fingers to poke her on the sides. She gasps, the teacher looks at us menacingly, and we ...