After a nice time in the living room you may be thinking about visiting the restroom because…well, let’s just say you want to. Toilets, restrooms, outhouses, toilet paper, outdoor plumbing and all the related paraphernalia is the next chapter of my “Behind the Iron Curtain” series.
Toilet paper.
Toilet paper was hard to find. If it was available you had to stand in line like the one on this picture and then it was probably limited to a certain number of rolls per person. A proud new owner of the precious TP would head home with a bunch of rolls hanging around their neck causing jealous reactions from the not so lucky bystanders. Of course that was not soft, quilted or baby skin toilet paper that American buttocks are so used to. It was more like your printer paper in a roll, maybe a little thinner but still required substantial calluses in certain places. And calluses we had: since the paper was not readily available everything served the purpose. It could be magazines, newspaper, stolen forms from work. I distinctly remember reading an obit for some communist party honcho in the paper before using it for its intended purpose, and the guy died in 1983. In more civilized houses the newspaper was pre-cut into squares, in others you had to rip it yourself. Outdoors people used leaves and whatever else was easy to reach, I myself once split an empty cigarette box with my buddy when nothing else was available.
Now with toilet paper in hand you are about to discover the facilities. To be continued.
Giving the Life Magazine a break, we continue onto the May 1914 issue of the Rotarian Magazine which was largely dedicated to Kansas City. Filled with photos and articles where mustachioed men took turns extolling the virtues of Kansas City, its businesses, theaters, schools, real estate and architecture. If you are bored at work a fan of Kansas City history, you should be reading this magazine already. 1914 was the year when the Kansas City Union Station was opened and the magazine dedicates the cover and several pages of photographs and essays to the “largest Union Station in the world”.
While staring at women doing research for my previous (and future) post at the Johnson County Central Resource Library – home of the new amazing microfilm readers, I couldn’t help but save a few unrelated pages. Going through the old newspapers with the benefit of a hindsight is a bit strange; we know which companies, technologies and trends survived and which ones failed; we realize that investing in Apple was a good idea but buying Atari stock probably wasn’t; we know who won the VHS – Betamax rivalry and even when the winner itself became obsolete; we know which policies would be successful and which are still affecting society in a negative way.
These clips are taken from the Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times published in January 1981 and in January 1986.They are in no particular order.
On this day 22 years ago Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and became the world’s worst nuclear disaster. I don’t have much of a Chernobyl personal story. It happened right before the May Day when we were looking forward to a weekend of camping and drinking. Soviet Government did not even acknowledge the disaster and obviously didn’t know how to deal with it, so all the information was coming in the form of rumors and Voice of America shortwave broadcasts. Some unconfirmed whispers about a fire on a nuclear power plant did not stop us from spending few careless days in tents around the campfire. It was literally the wind direction that decided who will be affected by the fallout. My friends and me were among the lucky ones, wind blew in the opposite direction. There are few people in Kansas City who were drafted to work on the site clean-up and decontamination. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who were affected in various degrees. Nowadays, there are plenty of pictures of the ghost town which is still stuck in 1986 and tours of the disaster area are freely available. The eerie images from the 30 km zone would make a suitable background for the final scene of the Planet of the Apes. Just like the destroyed Statue of Liberty in the movie it stands as a reminder of a good intentions gone bad, government inefficiency and lack of caring for the people, and heroism of the simple people in the face of unknown and deadly force.
More information is available here.
Chernobyl,
Reactor is still going,
Still taking lives.
Toilet paper was hard to find. If it was available you had to stand in line like the one on this picture and then it was probably limited to a certain number of rolls per person. A proud new owner of the precious TP would head home with a bunch of rolls hanging around their neck causing jealous reactions from the not so lucky bystanders. Of course that was not soft, quilted or baby skin toilet paper that American buttocks are so used to. It was more like your printer paper in a roll, maybe a little thinner but still required substantial calluses in certain places. And calluses we had: since the paper was not readily available everything served the purpose. It could be magazines, newspaper, stolen forms from work. I distinctly remember reading an obit for some communist party honcho in the paper before using it for its intended purpose, and the guy died in 1983. In more civilized houses the newspaper was pre-cut into squares, in others you had to rip it yourself. Outdoors people used leaves and whatever else was easy to reach, I myself once split an empty cigarette box with my buddy when nothing else was available.
On this day 22 years ago Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and became the world’s worst nuclear disaster. I don’t have much of a Chernobyl personal story. It happened right before the May Day when we were looking forward to a weekend of camping and drinking. Soviet Government did not even acknowledge the disaster and obviously didn’t know how to deal with it, so all the information was coming in the form of rumors and Voice of America shortwave broadcasts. Some unconfirmed whispers about a fire on a nuclear power plant did not stop us from spending few careless days in tents around the campfire. It was literally the wind direction that decided who will be affected by the fallout. My friends and me were among the lucky ones, wind blew in the opposite direction. There are few people in Kansas City who were drafted to work on the site clean-up and decontamination. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who were affected in various degrees. Nowadays, there are plenty of pictures of the ghost town which is still stuck in 1986 and tours of the disaster area are freely available. The eerie images from the 30 km zone would make a suitable background for the final scene of the Planet of the Apes. Just like the destroyed Statue of Liberty in the movie it stands as a reminder of a good intentions gone bad, government inefficiency and lack of caring for the people, and heroism of the simple people in the face of unknown and deadly force.
