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Few years before retirement I quit my job and went to work at the souvenir shop of the Uzhgorod factory in the small village of Seredneye near Uzhgorod. I worked with wood and later began to make wooden souvenirs and design samples for further manufacturing. I learned drawing in the grammar school. This proved to be handy in my work on souvenirs. For the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 I made a souvenir: 2 wooden football players 10-12 cm high, on the round stand from birch wood. There was an inscription on the stand: Moscow 80, and 5 rings, the symbol of this Olympic Games. Moscow approved this sample for manufacture. For this souvenir I was awarded a bronze medal at the Exhibition of Achievements of the Public Economy in Moscow. This was work by orders and I could earn up to 500 rubles per month [The average salary in the USSR was 130 rubles at the time]. Of course, my family was assisting me. I took work home and my wife and daughter helped me to glue the figures together, but this didn’t last long – they introduced restrictions on salaries limiting them to 250 rubles. I employed my son – he was a driver in the fire brigade at that time. He worked one day every four days.
We still lived in the small house that was not sufficient for three families. My wife and I were saving money for a new house. We started construction in 1975 on the site of our old house. We wanted our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in this house. We made a 2-storied building: 3 rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom on each floor. We also planted a big orchard and vineyard around the house. My wife and I and our son with his family lived on the first floor and on the 2nd floor – our daughter with her husband and sons. There are children’s voices in the house. My granddaughter Yelena and her husband Ivan Nestor, Ukrainian, live with us. They have two children, my great grandchildren: Mihail, born in 1997, and Yelena, born in 2000 after my wife died, named after my wife Lea.
At leisure time I often went to the mountains to draw. I liked making landscapes and draw old houses of Uzhgorod. When I began to work at the souvenir shop, I got another hobby. I gathered branches and roots in the woods to make figures or candle stands from them – the shape of snags gave me ideas of what was to be made from them. I only keep few of them – I gave away most of them for presents.
We still lived in the small house that was not sufficient for three families. My wife and I were saving money for a new house. We started construction in 1975 on the site of our old house. We wanted our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in this house. We made a 2-storied building: 3 rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom on each floor. We also planted a big orchard and vineyard around the house. My wife and I and our son with his family lived on the first floor and on the 2nd floor – our daughter with her husband and sons. There are children’s voices in the house. My granddaughter Yelena and her husband Ivan Nestor, Ukrainian, live with us. They have two children, my great grandchildren: Mihail, born in 1997, and Yelena, born in 2000 after my wife died, named after my wife Lea.
At leisure time I often went to the mountains to draw. I liked making landscapes and draw old houses of Uzhgorod. When I began to work at the souvenir shop, I got another hobby. I gathered branches and roots in the woods to make figures or candle stands from them – the shape of snags gave me ideas of what was to be made from them. I only keep few of them – I gave away most of them for presents.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Laszlo Ringel