Memories and Reflections-№9-Technology - for the village(elements of modernity and paintings from life in the 1980s and '90s)-Every motorcycle must be painted-Media collection "Driving Idea"

Memories and Reflections
Memoir-nostalgic lyrics and review of the current era
№9

Technology - for the village
(elements of modernity and paintings from life in the 1980s and '90s)

Cultivator

The eighties and nineties of the twentieth century have passed quite recently, but life has changed so much that it seems as if three centuries have already passed. Recalling some pictures of that unforgettable time, concentrated on motorcycle and moped themes, then extremely popular, will be pleasant for those whose youth occurred at the end of the last century, and useful for those who know about that era mostly from Soviet films and books.

Young people living in big cities have been accustomed since birth to the noise of cars and snowplows, the rustle of trolleybuses and the grinding of trams that constantly surrounds them. It is not surprising that public and personal transport is perceived by the “metropolitan people” as an integral part of their lives. All the more strange to them are the empty streets of remote regional centers and half-forgotten villages, where, at best, once a day a still alive Zaporozhets rattles or a small tractor hobbles. In such places, one gets the impression that people don’t need technology at all and are purely a luxury item.

Meanwhile, provincials love wheeled transport in their own way - their preferences are simply biased in favor of its practical application. Getting to know the peasant’s way of thinking and his attitude towards self-propelled structures will be useful to all narcissistic city dwellers who consider the car to be the invincible “king of the highway.” Indeed, rural residents almost always use technical devices in their farming. Even if they are the simplest, smallest and cheapest, even in a single copy, you will find some kind of two-wheeled tractor in an old peasant’s barn.

He will squeeze all the juice out of this brainchild of progress. Then he’ll take you to the regional center and have it repaired at a discount for labor veterans at a pompous auto repair shop, where he bought his amazing unit for a city dweller five years ago. The service life of this micro-super-tractor has long expired, but the brave grandfather will again go to the regional center and order a milling machine friend with whom he sat at school forty years ago to turn out twenty-six new parts, and will pay for the work with a sack of potatoes and two turkeys.

Rural teenagers follow the example of their elders in everything and therefore cannot imagine life without a motorcycle. Its acquisition is as obligatory a life milestone as marriage. Particularly zealous motorcyclists buy themselves an old, half-broken “Java” by the age of 16, and, having spent six months on repairs, regularly drive around all the streets of their native village with a wild roar and a very busy look. When rural rockers get tired of just scaring old ladies and scattering stupid chickens, they will repaint the dirty brown-crimson gas tank in a catchy white color and stencil a toothy black skull on it.

Having played enough with redesigning and outfitting an already terrible “superbike” by the age of 18, the brave lad solemnly sells his war horse to another daring young man, passionately eager to make a strong impression on the neighbor girl. In the army, the former rocker will tell his colleagues for a long time about how dashingly he drove around the village, and will add to the ordinary real facts several freshly invented romantic episodes, which he himself will willingly believe. Of course, a motorcycle is always needed in the village, just like a motor cultivator. But neither one nor the other took root in the regional center.

The first one is too bulky and powerful, and the second one does not justify the money spent on it if the motor cultivator is used on a small plot of land near the house. That's why residents of small towns always and everywhere prefer to use mopeds. There is nothing better than this chirping grasshopper to go to the sea, to the garden, for water or to go fishing on the other side of town. Quite small compared to a motorcycle, the moped is equally popular with old people and adult men - and, of course, with teenagers.

Old people ride a moped mainly for fishing, tying everything they can and cannot do to its frame: a shovel, fishing rods, oars. The “sea workers” manage to place buckets and bags on the trunk, and on their own back they also carry a rubber boat in a huge backpack.

Fathers of families mainly use mopeds m for moving around the city. They can often be seen on the outskirts, buzzing towards the wine farm, tractor factory or bus station. Not considering a moped to be a workhorse and draft force, which is urgently needed in the household, they do not take care of it at all and squeeze every possible speed out of their recently purchased “Carpathians”.

Sometimes the piercing squeal of their cylinders even drowns out the growl of Volga cars rushing past and the chatter of fussy Zhiguli cars. It’s not often that a new moped has to be repaired, but dads try to fix rare breakdowns on their own. Without a shadow of a doubt, they would pay for the repair of a moped to a car service center, but they are not ready to sacrifice the pleasure that comes from personally digging into the glands and “hoses” that have been studied for a long time and in every detail.

Young men over twenty years of age use Verkhovina only for chic. It is considered a special luxury for them to drive up on a moped to the doors of the wrestling section, and after training, give a ride to a friend’s house on it, shiny with fresh factory enamel. Constantly imagining that one day, very soon, “Verkhovyna” will turn into a used “Zhigul”, the guys are actually very reluctant to part with their two-wheeled friend and, having bought a car, prefer to store their favorite moped in the garage until it “crumbles” .

Finally, the most passionate lovers of mopeds in regional centers are young people of school age. Happy people, satisfied with the fact of their acquisition, never receive the desired wreck in working condition. Having repaired it half-heartedly with the help of craftsmen from the neighboring yard, the boys, at the first sign of ignition, sit down on the creaking junk and bravely go “to the sea” - that is, to a semi-wild beach.

Of course, there can be no talk of any brakes on such an antiquity that has risen from the ashes. Having approached the destination of the trip, the marginalized children simply pull the spark plug out of the engine to turn it off, and in front of the surprised vacationers’ eyes, they continue to brake together with the soles of their sneakers. Everything ingenious is simple - how can you not agree with this statement after such a spectacle? Drivingidea.ru LogoArrow

On May 26, 2001, the “official” opening of the motorcycle season for amateurs took place in the Moscow “American Bar and Grill”, located near the Taganka Theater Harley-Davidson brand. It must be said that fans of these iron horses make a strong impression even without their favorite two-wheeled dinosaurs. I got to the festival closer to its middle, when the bikers, clad in leather jackets and hung with iron chains, had already drunk a lot of alcohol and therefore openly expressed their emotions with joyful cries, actively moving around the bar space.

Having dodged the fat bikers falling from the stage a couple of times, I saw that an erotic show was in full swing, during which one of the dancers, her friend on stage, was being kicked. They probably argued which of them was more beautiful.

After the frantic scantily clad warriors who proudly left the stage amid the screams of the bikers enraged by them, the hard rave subsided and more textbook ones appeared next to the new Harley on display. motorcycle cultural tradition, musicians in cowboy hats. They sang something in English and played rockabilly from the fifties.

The audience immediately switched to dancing mercilessly towards themselves. Fans of American motorcycles rubbed the wooden flooring of the stage with the toes of their Cossack boots so much that I was surprised that it didn’t end up with holes. One young biker with waist-length hair managed to say something to his friends and hold a two-liter mug of beer, more like a bucket with a handle on the side. And that's not all - he also took a sip from it every 15 seconds. How this could happen at the same time, given the constantly accelerating rhythm of rock and roll, I don’t understand.

All this chaos was sparked by a hoarse vocalist from the band "Time Out", as it seemed to me. At least the face and voice were exactly like one of those “motologists,” as the Time Outites prefer to call themselves. Motologist constantly demanded a more visible expression of emotions from the bikers and even jumped up several times with a microphone in his hand, like Fidel Castro at an anti-American Cuban rally. Some bikers had already fallen, but they were picked up and “turned into the music” again.

At that moment, not far from the stage, I saw the leader of one of the biker associations, Surgeon, whom I recognized from photographs in newspapers and television reports. As I wrote in one unpublished article, the stern features of his face spoke of the difficult life of adherents of motorcycle romance.

The surgeon was talking about something with another biker and writing down some kind of address on a piece of paper for him, probably. A chronicler with a huge video camera immediately approached and directed the beam of its flashlight directly into the Surgeon’s face. Although in the thickening twilight such a bright light greatly blinded his eyes, he continued to write as if nothing had happened.

In the camera's rays, a tattoo in the form of arrows of wolf hair appeared on the Surgeon's neck. Then he walked away and talked for fifteen minutes with a tall, red-haired young biker. Under the skirts of her black leather jacket, the iron inserts of a wide belt sparkled.

Soon a cake made in the shape of a two-cylinder Harley-Davidson engine was brought in a large Gazelle-type cargo van. Several chefs in white caps, bending over from enormous weight, barely carried this massive confectionery structure through the crowd of bikers to the stage, and everyone realized that it was time for dessert.

It should be noted that despite the stormy temper, fans of the American motorcycle almost culturally distributed slices of the cake. True, at first I couldn’t reach him because of someone’s wide black back and therefore had to make my way to the treat from the other end of the table.

The cake was delicious and sweet with apple filling, chocolate icing and white cream inside. But the height of the slice turned out to be rather large, and the grasping greed turned into oversaturation.

As I left the Bar and Grill, I saw the holiday guests getting on their motorcycles and heading home. Then I remembered that immediately after arriving, I looked at the intricately painted Harleys in the bar’s parking lot. Their gas tanks were marked with red hieroglyphs, scary dragons and some kind of landscapes.

I could go on and on about that event, especially since I didn’t even mention a tenth of my impressions. For example, from a cheerful middle-aged guest who constantly smoked a pipe with a wide smile on her face, and from an eerie and very low fireworks display, which miraculously did not set the entire establishment on fire.

Summarizing what was seen and heard at this event, we can conclude that despite the very young age of many Harley lovers -Davidson they know how to have fun. At the same time, Harley fans could easily open their motorcycle season even in early March, since the huge and powerful American motorcycle, like a tractor, is capable of easily overcoming urban snow drifts, ice and deep puddles. Drivingidea.ru LogoArrow