Аннотация: MMMCCXCVIII. A private house in the tradition of Sergei Korolev. A story. - June 15, 2023.
A private house in the tradition of Sergei Korolev. A story.
One day Andrei got the idea to buy a sports simulator for running.
Andrei purchased such a simulator and began to rotate pedals.
For each day, the duration of the exercise (of running) was determined - about an hour.
Sports simulator for running come in - at least - in two models. The first is the treadmill. The second model is a kind of device with pedals. Such device, when used, imitate human steps ('a stepping simulator').
The simulator showed the distance (which the person ran), the time spent on running, and gave some other information useful for the user.
Andrei pedaled, a pleasant breeze came from the open window.
A small gym was arranged - on the second floor.
One of the variants of the General Plan of the city of Rostov-on-Don was drawn up in the seventies of the twentieth century. According to this Plan, Rostov was surrounded by green spaces - urban forests, groves and forest belts.
So there is a huge grove nearby, which gives relatively clean air.
Andrei looked through the window at the fruit trees. Then he directed his look at the wall next to the window.
Andrei hung a collective photograph on the wall.
The photo was taken in October 1961, during the 22nd Congress of the CPSU.
Earlier this private house belonged to the first secretary of one of the city committees of the CPSU (a city of regional subordination in the Rostov Oblast), to the man who left the "world of the living". [a private house - an owner-occupied dwelling - a detached house]
This man was a delegate to the 22nd Congress (in October 1961).
Andrei found this photograph in a spacious attic. It looked like a medium-sized wall picture (it lay on the boards [wooden planks] of the attic). The photograph was in a neat wooden frame and under glass. The former owners did not throw it away, and after 1991 they did not want to hang it on the wall.
Andrei learned from old-timers-neighbors which of the photographed is the former owner of the house.
Many of those depicted in the photograph, Andrei recognized without outside help: Khrushchev as well as other "portraits". On closer inspection, he saw Sergei Korolev among the numerous other delegates to the 22nd Congress.
The most pleasant was to look at Sergei Korolev (among others faces) - during training.
Still, it was a time of responsibility and reliability - at least in the field of space technology.
A sense of reliability was also created by (inter-story) ceilings made of concrete slabs with a thickness of about 40 centimeters. These slabs were located above the spacious basement and above the first floor. It was possible not to worry about the reliability of the floor when pedaling. The foundation of the house is made of huge concrete blocks, about a meter thick and high, and two meters long) or so. The house itself was built of white brick (walls 40 centimeters thick, which complies with the heat saving standard in the Rostov Oblast).
(A person looks at beautiful houses - and admires them. But what the inter-story ceilings [interfloor slabs] and foundations are made of - he does not see this. He is not always interested in the thickness of the walls. Yes, this is the principle of all the modern life.)
In the second half of the 80s of the 20th century, the former owner received a plot of land in this area (although he did not live in Rostov-on-Don). Around 1988, the house was built (according to the legend, it was built by one of the former owner's pupils; apparently someone who was helped by the first secretary got a job in the construction industry).
Around 1991, the former first secretary moved to Rostov-on-Don and he periodically lived in this house - gas and electricity were connected to the house. There was also a borehole for uppumping underground water (when watering plants), as well as there was an ordinary city water from the water supply system.
Andrei once heard that there is such a tradition in English houses - that the portraits of all the owners of the house should be placed somewhere on the wall in the corresponding house. As for his own portrait, Andrei did not build similar plans, but it was nice to realize during sports training that the situation (albeit partially) corresponds to the English (European) tradition.
Naturally, like (as) any private house, this house required a great care and a constant attention.
Gradually Andrei bought several cabinets and filled them with a variety of instruments. The cabinets easily found a place for themselves in the former billiard room (on the second floor) - a person can enter it from the room, which has become a small gym. From the billiard room a person can go out to a quite decent balcony under the roof - there in bad weather or at night a person can sit in the fresh air or take a walk for 15-30 minutes (a few steps in one direction, a few steps in the other direction - the length of the balcony is about six meters).
Once the house stood on the outskirts of the city, and it was difficult to get to it - if the owner did not have his own car. The former owner bought a small car, and it was easily placed in a small garage. Andrei also owned a car for some time (but of a different brand). With some ingenuity, he managed to arrange in this garage the car that he had for a while. Why keep a car on a site, even if it is quite spacious (5 a) [1 are (a) = 100 m2 = 0,01 hectare], if you can keep it under a canopy?
However, the city was expanding, and in some distance the stops of numerous bus routes, and a clinic, and a bank, and a post office, and shops, including supermarkets, were arranged and built. It was easy to get by without a car.
If a resident of the house keeps bicycles in the garage, he can easily get to the Mega Mall in Aksay (Auchan, Leroy and other huge and small shops of various specializations). (There, even before the well-known events and the departure of some foreign firms, Andrei bought those very numerous cabinets in which he placed a variety of tools, clothes, books, etc., etc. - a variety of tools were bought in Leroy Merlin).
What wasn't useful, but what was a pity to throw away (for example, a microwave oven), Andrei sent to a spacious basement, where he arranged racks from metal corners and from sheets of thick plywood. In the same place, in a spacious basement - if somebody with a noticeable level of suspiciousness - such a person can keep plastic barrels with water supplies.
At some point, the sports simulator began to work with difficulty. Andrei assembled the necessary tools, unscrewed the nuts and did not see any special problems in the simulator.
It is not clear where the difficulty came from. It was necessary to think and to analyze the situation. So the simulator was left in a disassembled state.
Andrei switched from training on the simulator to cycling and walking.
And the simulator remained dismantled, and the spacious house (about 150 square meters) was increasingly difficult to keep in a tidy condition.
Somehow it was more convenient to live not in a private house, but in an apartment [in a flat]. Moreover, the living in an apartment could be combined with the walks.
However, it is nice to see Sergei Korolev, even if the sports simulator for running is disassembled.
Time passes, traditions remain.
June 15, 2023 08:37
Translation from Russian into English: June 15, 2023 17:00
Владимир Владимирович Залесский ' Частный дом в традициях Сергея Королева. Рассказ '.
{ 3327. Частный дом в традициях Сергея Королева. Рассказ. - 15 июня 2023 г.
MMMCCXCVIII. A private house in the tradition of Sergei Korolev. A story. - June 15, 2023.
Vladimir Zalessky Internet-bibliotheca. Интернет-библиотека Владимира Залесского. }