Headed by the group of teachers, we walked the uneven cobbles in Bogdan Khmelnytsky Street to Bazaar where Professions Street shared its asphalt to Bogdan Khmelnytsky Street for its dive thru the Under-Overpass. The ascend from the tunnel on its opposite end became an influent to Peace Avenue stretched away to the tall railway embankment in the distance, after which it ran thru the housing area of five-story buildings, named Zelenchuk, followed by the City center – Peace Square. Peace Avenue, tangentially passing Peace Square, separated it from the City Council concealed behind the greens opposite to the granite-rimmed, never working, fountain in the middle of Peace Square concluded by the edifice of Peace Movie Theater.

The middle one of the three alleys in the greens which led directly to the City Council’s entrance porch was blocked, because of the demonstration, with the red platform past which the whole city marched in the holiday demonstrations, except for the tenants of the five-story buildings bounding the square who watched demonstrations from their balconies. I did envy the folks at first, but not for long…

On our way to Peace Square, the column of School 13 had time and again to stop for long waits letting the schools of lower numbers overtake us and go ahead. But the working organizations gave way to us, like the columns of the Locomotive Depot, or the Railway Distance Of the South-West Railroad, as it stood in white bulging letters cut of polystyrol and mounted on the crimson-velvet covering in the shields on wheels at their columns’ heads. Neither streetcars nor vehicles were seen along all of Peace Avenue, only people, lots of people on foot both walking in the wide stream of columns, and standing by, kinda live banks scanning the current, which made May Day so special and unlike other days.

On entering the vast Peace Square, we had to suddenly change our dignified marching step to a frivolous trotting and kinda run to attack, giggling and panting, with the portraits of those Members atilt, to catch up with the previous column of which we, as usual, had fallen too far behind because of bad timing. And since School 13 was the last but one among the city schools, by the moment when we, mixed up with the disordered ranks of School 14, were passing the red platform, the loudspeakers shouted from up there, “The column of the Konotop Railway Technical School is entering Square! Hooray, comrades!”, making us hooray to others and not to ourselves.

After Peace Square the road passed the entrance to the Central Park of Recreation and turned right, descending towards Lenin Street, but we didn’t go down there. In the nearest lane, we piled the Political Bureau Members and red banners on a truck that took them back to our school to sit in the Household Manager’s storeroom till the next demonstration. And we also went back, on foot, giving Peace Square a pretty wide berth because the passages between the buildings around it were blocked by empty buses, face to face, and in the vast of the empty square solitary figures of militiamen were strolling leisurely.

Yet, it still was a holiday, because before we started for the demonstration Mother gave each of us fifty kopecks, of which there even remained, afterward, some change for a bar of Plombir ice-cream in thin paper wrapping cost 18 kopecks and that of Creamy just only 13. The saleswomen in white robes sold ice-cream from their plywood, double-walled, boxes at every crossing along the trafficless Peace Avenue…