Because I could not go for my holidays so suddenly, in my spare time, missing the main occupation I have, I have chosen to use my time before the fests, in visiting my relatives. So being, together with my wife and children we “settled” in visiting. As in the most times, we didn’t have a lot of food in our fridge (talking about the time after the year 1981, when the crises got worse until unbearable). The nut tree we planted in front of our apartment house still kept some nuts for us, enough to cook one cake, while the flour …was on feed/ration (1/2 kg per person). Like people on big foot, we chosen for our first visit the relatives that weren’t so close, by all means. They were the relatives that were living in “Hatvan” once known as being the gypsy neighborhood. Between us and them there were about 4 km distance. We were glad they were home as we hit hard the problems: “What are you doing on holidays?” There where years when the New Years Eve was on the hand of every “earthling” and anyone could enjoy it according their own savings, there were collective friends parties, parties of people who knew how to party, living the true holidays. In the last years, the menus with “the fish that nobody wants”, with the “songs selected by someone” and the least “insignificant” prizes, were leading everyone to mind their own needs. During our visit we also discussed about the “exposures” revealed as commercial from the TV show that will be broadcasted on the New Years Eve night (a small observation, we were talking about the program after 12 o’clock, before that the program was “theirs”). The hosts told us with regret that they were not able to watch this show because their TV was broken and at the workhouse they do not receive anything for fixing until after the holidays, so … It is not a gossip, but it seems like when you most wish your TV to work, that is when it breaks. Us, having two TV’s (in order to get through the above annoyance) we offered, with heartache, to borrow one of it until they fix their own. So that the house wouldn’t be empty on holidays. It’s not as if we were using two Televisions; do not get us wrong! God forbid us! We were being allocated 20 Kw every month. If you happened to head over this consumption they would disconnect you. In order “to settle” in this miserable standard consumption we spent a lot in changing the equipment and still we did not succeed. The halls had no bulb and inside the rooms we had bulbs of 25-40 W. We used turn on the radio only for the news and the traditional music shows (by that time the radio program was being printed). The fridge became the comforts’ caricature. We had it but we could not use it, it would spend the entire electric current “ration”. The TV …

With so many requirements and restrictions, only on Sunday you could allow to “take a hold of” the “magazine” program, meanwhile…The New Years Eve program.
At the end of our visit they decided to come to our place for the TV. On our way, while we were having the usual conversations I noticed a sort of movement, actually some soldiers running in different directions. I assumed they have an “emergency” and the agents called their superiors, a usual thing for those in the army. The fact that most of them were not wearing their uniform properly was the reason I adjudge, gossiped and blasted them. It was as if “somebody thrown the clothes on them” and for an old soldier these soldiers with the belts on their hands, with the hook unbuttoned, order less … were distasteful.
One day while I was in Bucharest an old man was arguing: “ Not even the newspapers get in time, when Ceausescu is missing.” They remind us he was paying a visit in Iran. Regardless the situation the army’s wearing was an example for all times. As it was a Sunday and the soldiers were having a day off, they were wearing dirty uniforms, some of them wearing a part of the monition, some not. All this disarray was inexcusable for an institution that believes in “cleanliness and discipline”.
After we gave them the TV, they hurried up … to watch TV.
After “Pacepa’s” run away, while his book: “Red Eye sights” was being read at the “Free Europe” radio, I saved money and bought a tuner that would give me the satisfaction needed while listening the radio’s news. What came to me after the guest left with the TV was to listen the “Europe’s” news that broadcasted all day long, continuously. With this occasion I found out that: “something happens in Timisoara” and that in there were around 4000 dead people. That …
Then I was sure that their news was broadcasted from inside the country and that they don’t know as many things as they should know, since the departure of the ones that gather up the information and go on the field for broadcasting is dangerous considering what was going on. In fact we didn’t wish the country’s denigration, one of the favorite subjects from the chronicles of “Free Europe”, was telling that inside the country were blacked out. This was their “job” in our service. Still we were thankful for this knowing that for the bread they have to eat they had to say what the “masters” wanted them to say.

At evening, HE and SHE, came back from Iran and showed up at TV, along the prime minister (the one that next day will kiss his hand just so he won’t be left in the middle of the revolted crowd. There was also HIS brother, last president of CAP “Scornicesti”, by that time a high secretary of PCR, surrounded by those two flags, one of the country and the other of the party and explained that: “gangs of law breakers, spies and other hussies started a mound of violence by breaking shops, stealing and burning, creating panic in “Timisoara”. By now things look credible since we were so hunger that the step from being hunger to being a law breaker was not big. How this gangs of bandits got so big, over 100.000 of people, was not told.
Maybe sometimes our memory plays tricks on us, showing us things on fragments. Otherwise there is no explanation why our reactions are sometimes exactly opposite than what normally would be. That’s how things happened with the defunct. Hearing about this multitude of people, of the thousands and hundreds of people, he probably thought he was in 1968, when “the Russians got to Czechoslovakia” and when Bucharest’s population and of all the country gathered ad hoc in front of the Headquarters Committee from Bucharest and of the local regions, to tell them and all the Romanians what happened and what we will do in this kind of situation. That’s when people started to appreciate and adulate him, and declaimed his name. Now “the guy” handled an arranged and imposed congregation that “had to” manifest disapproval and express disagreement towards what was happening in “Timisoara”, towards those bandits. Now, as many other times, Romanians did not do their homework, conscientiously. It went out exactly the opposite than what he assumed. Nobody wanted him as a leader anymore. I was telling you only about “him”, as “Pacepa” in his book did not quite blamed “him” only “her”. He was saying that “she (Elena Ceausescu) is the head of all means from this country”. In this case, people did not make mistakes in selecting. They hoot them all. He was tired of everyone, and … everything …
That morning, radio news was ambiguous and censored. At about 11 o’clock I couldn’t bear staying at school without any news and I ran home to try “Free Europe”. On my way I went to a shop to buy bread. We “don’t use to keep” white bread. Black bread was medium corn flour and it had a taste of buck. With all the annoyance I bought one.