Gadgets USSR to pull. Bashny.Net

Remember how cool it was at the time have, for example, a personal video recorder;) Appears nostalgia? Then look further.

1 This process was limited to regular visits to shops with radios, of which a relatively large cities, there were no more than five, and in my, if I remember correctly, only two. Although the process - it's a bit not the word that defines all the action that unfolds in these stores. If you think about it, the buyers of those years was making the right choice where it is not easy - the number of products offered at the same time never even reach a dozen





2 However, in the sales rooms of stores always relevant and at any time you could meet a crowd of sullen men who clustered at the counter, looking awkward silence radios, massive record players and cassette decks, article and thoroughness resembling ballistic missile boosters



3 As a rule, each of the male mind has been focused on this or that product, and which has come to look at every day. The entire process took 10-15 minutes, followed by another "as if the buyer" was replaced by another - almost like the front of the cage at the zoo with tigers, with the only difference that the role of exotic animals were boxes from plastic and metal packed with transistors, radio and other semiconducting current tripe. People came and went, but the crowd thinned curiosity almost never



4 also dominated on this show unrealized desires, of course, the seller. Vendors at Radio Shack those years is a pretty interesting type: dressed in the latest fashion in the hundred-ruble imported jeans, they radiate around itself a charge of grandeur, uniqueness and consciousness of their own superiority over mere mortals, that Philip in the best years of her singing career seemed be confused with them first-graders on the first line. Not paying any attention to the "stoyaltsev" salesman looked majestically through the crowd, looking barely visible over the heads of human fragments trolley bread vans and prefab, approximately wading through the streets



5 Of course, this is not always the case. Occasionally the door flung open the store yesterday "stoyalets," and he did it gently, not ingratiating, as usual, but in a businesslike, confident and proud looking at others. And immediately I understood everything that this man is now something to buy. It literally could read in his eyes - the individual who decided to buy, even begins to look a bit like the seller, as if imitating his regal serenity and majesty



6 And buying this too is a kind of ritual and polysyllabic. Buyer, as if feeling its special position, even a little dismissively pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers, and those feeling the solemnity of the moment respectfully parted. After a moment, the views of the seller and the buyer met - about as the expression of emotions, fire was in these views!



7 Seller logged nodded almost imperceptibly, as would, for example, scouts, met each other on a hostile territory. Buyer raised forefinger and pointed to the desired device. Seller nods knowingly and deliberately took out from under the counter cardboard box packed in foam tape recorder, radio, or anything else. Gawker surrounded the counter more dense ring, standing in the back row, even rising on tiptoe, trying to make out the details of the action unfolding in front of them. Sold with a straight face unsealed cardboard box and removed in the white light, well, a tape recorder, for example



8 At this point, the buyer has considerably lost a large share of ambition, pretty worrying, kept his eyes almost so near and dear devices, trying to go to understand the nuances of his design, and then find possible flaws in the form of scratches on the body or nedovinchennyh screws



9 Translating rushing look with a sample mounted on a rack to "own" a copy of standing on the counter among the piles of cellophane and foam, as well as lying close to the passport products, printed on paper, texture and quality resembling toilet, purchaser plagued by doubts like "maybe, Still string up and take out one of 30 rubles more? "or" do not know whether I should pay more for the signal lights with arrows? »



10 The seller, not the buyer paying laceration absolutely no attention, he pulled out of the box the power cord and its famously stuck one end into the wall socket, and the other - into a tape recorder. Then from under the counter pulled a personal device with the seller - usually it was battered Sony EF blue (as an option - Denon D, Maxell LN or "allied» Agfa), on the side which sported made with green felt-tip pen inscription "Emigrants»



11 charged in the cassette tape and press the button "PLAY" chords filled the room ... no, chanson, and another popular hit by "Earthlings", "gem", or that came most often, "Jolly Fellows". Keeping monumental equanimity, the seller turning the volume knob on the line, tone, press a button and the squelch type selector. After the demonstration of each individual site, he threw the buyer fleeting, questioning look, and he nodded his head and say, yes, I hear and see - everything is functioning as it should



12 Test ended test capabilities of the device to make a recording. The seller took out a box bundled with the machine tape MK-60 Soviet-made, charge it in the recorder, and press "RECORD", mumbled into the microphone in a sort of "time, time, time ... check ... check ... just-just-just ..." . After this record reproduced admiring the buyer, who at this stage are almost always inexplicably embarrassed, but also invariably nodded, as if to every nod even for a moment to keep the mental well-established relationship with the seller - the lord and master of the recorder amplifiers. By the way, to the seller all the nods were damn



13 completed the test, the seller hands sketched the broad strokes on the blank receipts hardly seen a few words, and handed the form to the buyer sent the order to the cashier



14 And at the box office, it should be noted, has always had an impressive line. Well, no, of course not because of buyers wishing to purchase a music center or radiogram. Batteries - they are the reason for the majority again silent men languish in the queue to the cashier. Lovers of adventure and all other tourism acquired, as a rule, the batteries are large and round - for flashlights and portable transistor radios. "Diy" stocked flat panels on the 4, 5 volts - are perfectly suited to power supposedly useful in everyday life devices, soldered under Soviet cuisine schemes magazine "Radio" or "Young technician". We met and dudes who bought "crown". The battery is more expensive than the cost of all and most often used in communication devices, miniature radios, and other devices, whose descendants today behalf of the word "gadgets»



15 Of course, a man wielding a receipt for a real tape recorder, looked at "batareechnikov" down - they say, "get confused here under our feet, only time will take away from serious people." In these moments he had the feeling a person can experience, go to the airport by taxi. And not just to someone there to meet, and was leaving for a vacation, a long and exciting vacation. When you look out the window at the people - standing at bus stops, wandering somewhere, opening the doors of shops, all this fuss they seem insignificant and virtually meaningless. That's airport will roar, the plane will be in a pack of sugar cubes with the image of "TU-154" will be smiling stewardess, "fasten your seatbelts" vomit bags, security gates, air pockets, so a lot of interesting things to be! And the people outside what they do? Wander somewhere, they think that things are important. It is ridiculous even. And that's what batteries are for, well, silly same - there is a serious purchase, and have to waste time because of some nonsense



16 But as time went on. Queue approach buyer pokes through the window cash receipt, shaking hands counting money (for some reason, his hands began to tremble during this inopportune moment, but before that they if they were shaking, it was only after the great feasts associated with mass libations), then the same He recounted the money the cashier and the buyer, afraid to even blink his eyes on her hands, mentally muttering to himself, "twenty-five, fifty-three tens - is eighty, then fifty - completely new ..." and so on. And here came the ritual to its logical conclusion. Buyer received a check in hand, carrying it along with the receipt to the seller, and in return received a box sealed with tape to lust avionics miracle



17 And at the door of his shop awaited prudently ordered (or catch) taxi. The taxi driver, though looked like a seller, but was more humane, perhaps, more sociable. Although, of course, to call a taxi - it is not necessary. The store could not stand each buyer and, well, or a colleague from work - on a red or beige "Moskvich", which on the shelf behind the rear seat has always laid leatherette kit and sat next to a toy dog ​​with a constant nods his head. And in the salon mirror hanging skeleton with red eyes and a jack made of tubes from the drip



18 Although it is not the point. Because in the end all this multipass saga ended the same: purchase carefully unpacked, installed at a place of honor in the apartment, then followed by groans, moans family members and closest neighbors, solemn study of "manual", no less solemn zapihivanie on the mezzanine cardboard box with all the bags and plastic ...



19 Hot tea, bought on the occasion of cake or a piece of cardboard with cakes, the first attempt to record something on tape (well, that's when everything turns or speak into the microphone of stupidity, or trying to expression read out to the tips of the wall tear-off calendar) - all this together and created an atmosphere of celebration. The point which was set cloth the size of a hand towel, only poizyaschnee - exactly as napkins laying its electronic miracle virtually every Soviet family



20 Napkins, these goals were not clear, whether the dust protected, whether from direct sunlight - who knows? The main thing that before the arrival of the guests take them off neatly folded and the room was filled with hollow and hoarse singing those "immigrants", which even had been declared labels on store cassettes, but the stores never sounded. Time was that.



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