the most final
concluding work

SMP-615, aka Construction and Installation Train of the same number, was located about where I once chewed blades of grass, half-starved in the bicycle trip to the river of Seim, only on the other side of the road.

At the time of my grazing experience, Konotop had not reached that place yet, but the city grew and the location became a part of the outskirt neighborhood named "At-Seven-Winds". Konotopers hardly ever lacked propensity to a poetic vision of the world they live in.

On the 7th of December 1979, after a brief stay at the 4th kilometer in the outskirts of Chernigov, I came to SMP-615, because none of the streetcar or bus routes were reaching there, that was as far as hell itself, on the frontier of At-Seven-Winds.

I couldn’t even distantly imagine why in the course of my job interview the head of the personnel department kept giving such warps to his face that would put to shame the amateurish attempts by Slavic Aksyanov. At some point, he even grabbed from his desktop a wide wooden ruler to cover his left eye with it. So as not to jinx me off? Taking a hangover for the distortions' cause would be a weak conjecture, as I came there in the late afternoon. Just one of those things that you'd better dismiss with a shrug, and forget.

Anyway, he provided me with a job at the organization, which as he explained, levied 10 percent of the apartments built by them for subsequent distribution among the workers of SMP-615, whose turn it was the established queue of employees waiting for the improvement of their housing conditions. Currently, the construction of 110-apartment block was underway, with 23 people in the aforesaid queue. Of course, I handed in the application and became the 24th. Even the fact, that after the delivery of the 110-apartment block, I automatically turned the 13th aspirer did not scare me off. Because in the following couple of projects, I would definitely get an apartment for my family. I did not know then that not everything was as straightforward. And the head of the personnel department did not have time to explain to me the details and nuances, because he changed his place of work.

The position was embraced by a retired army officer. With the new head of personnel department, everything was clear and subordinate, since retired Major Petukhov kept his countenance under the army-trained control. However, the facial expressions of the personnel department heads were not of much importance, because the main people in my life for the coming 6 years became the team of bricklayers.

In SMP-615 there was only one team of bricklayers, all the rest – plasterers, welders, carpenters, plumbers came to the erected objects after us. The workforce at the mortar-concrete unit, as well as crane operators, forwarders, and loaders were an auxiliary layer; even the engineers and accountants stayed secondary when compared to us.

It was we, who came to the deep foundation pits to fill them inserting multi-tonnage concrete blocks with the assistance of the truck crane operator Vladimir Gavkalov. And then began the epic of upgrowing the walls and "fillings", aided by the tower crane operators Mykola, Kolya, and Vitalya, in turn. The crane operators replaced each other, welders changed, but we stayed and withstood, for who else, if not we, would transfigure the space?

In place of an air-filled void for the roaming flocks of crows, stair flights marched up, for the tenants to climb to their homes located at the previously unattainable altitudes. The idle crows had to reconsider their flight routes. Of course, multi-apartment houses ensued from the work of all the above listed, as well as of not mentioned SMP-615’s structures and units, but we, the bricklayers, were the arrowhead in the advancement towards the realization of the everlasting dream of mankind about normal living conditions.

Being the arrowhead is not an easy job. Neither office walls, nor the cabins' glass, nor the boards of the hulls shelter you from the whims of calamitous weather. All your protection is your spetzovka, helmet, and boots, in the winter a pea-jacket, mitts, and a hat will be added, any part of you not protected by them becomes a prey to the scorching sun, whipping rains, ruthless whirlwinds, and merciless frosts. Not everyone will endure, not everyone will stand up to being a bricklayer day after day.

I have worked with lots of different people both in SMP-615 and beyond it, but for me, these 12 will forever remain "our team":

Mykola Khizhnyak – the foreman;

two Peters—Lysoon and Kyrpa—bricklayers;

two Gregories—Gregory Gregoryevich, and his nickname Grynya, handled Melekhov (after the serial of the "Quiet Flows the Don" on the central television)—bricklayers;

two Andreyevnas (not relatives though)– Lyubov Andreyevna and Anna Andreyevna—bricklayers;

Lydda and Vitta – bricklayers;

Vera Sharapova and Katerina – riggers;

Sehryoga Ogoltsoff – a bricklayer.

In the city of Konotop, it's easy to see an apartment block built by our team from the houses built by other organizations because ours were striped. Starting the walls of a floor, we laid the perimeter belt of red brick (6cm x 12cm x 25cm) courses. The mark "KK" on the brick stretcher stood for "Konotop Brick", instead of "Factory" there followed "I", or "II", or "III" indicating the shift when it was produced.

After the belt courses reached the level of window ledges, we switched to laying the pillars between the windows of white silicate bricks (9cm x 12cm x 25cm) of unmarked origin.

The pillars were bridged with concrete cross-pieces delivered up by the tower crane. The completing courses over the cross-pieces were also of red bricks.

Now, looking from aside, another floor was ready (red-white-red), yet not everything goes as swiftly as it happens in a fairy tale… Now, it's time to start the "filling", that is growing up the inner walls – the load-bearing axial one, aka "the capital wall", and the transverse ones partitioning the blocks of adjacent staircase-entrances, as well as one apartment from another within the same block. The partitions between the rooms and corridors in an apartment were laid of gypsum slab-plates (8cm x 40cm x 80cm) laid “on rib”, in shiner position. The toilet-bathroom compartments were also of red bricks (and only red!– because silicate bricks, as well as gypsum, do not withhold moisture) laid on stretch, in the same position.

Only then the floor was ready to be bridged over with the concrete slabs conveyed, one by one, by the tower crane on 4—taut strained by the held weight—steel cables which the riggers, Katerina and Vera Sharapova, hooked them with from the stacks on the ground. Each of slab ends had a pair of iron loops for the hooks, the length of each slab was 5.6 meters, but the width might vary from 1 to 1.2 meters.

The difference in slab width was dictated by the need to fit them accurately between the staircase-entrances because a slab should not overlap and block the kitchen and toilet ventilation ducts laid out inside the staircase-entrance walls. And if the slabs brought to the site all happened to be of the same widths?

What if there was nothing to choose from in the slab stacks crowding about the site, eh?

Not a problem whatsoever! There was a breaker, a sledgehammer, two Peters, two Gregories, one Sehryoga and foreman Mykola – passing the tools to each other, they would bring the slab to the needed gauge dimensions.