One evening after the Group activities were over, a bunch of participants dropped into the school gym where there was an upright piano on the stage behind the closed curtain, and where one boy once showed me that if you hit only the black keys then it sounded like Chinese music. But that evening I forgot all about the music because besides the piano on the stage, there were several boys from senior grades who had a pair of real boxing gloves!

We dared to ask permission to touch the gloves’ shiny leather and try them on. The senior graders kindly allowed us that, and then they had an idea of holding a match between the sprats, a fighter from the Gorka (that is someone from the blocks atop the hill) against someone of Lowlanders who dwelt in the rows of timber houses at the foot of the Gorka upland.

The choice fell on me—O! and I wanted it so dearly!—and so did red-haired fatty Vovka from among the Lowlanders. As the stage was illuminated too poorly for the match, all the present went over to the gym hallway under the bright bulb reflected in the ink-black winter darkness behind the wide window-pane, and they commanded “box!” to me and Vovka.

At first, we both chuckled punching each other with the bulky balls of gloves, but soon we grew hot and angry. I in earnest wanted to deal a good one in his head while in his eyes in that very head you unmistakably could read his craving to knock me down. Before long my left shoulder, which kept receiving all his blows, felt terribly sore, while my right hand, that kept hitting his shoulder, grew limp and floppy. Probably, his state was no better, our giggles turned into puffing and gasping. It was bad and unbearably painful because his blows, like, penetrated to the very bone of my forearm, but I would rather die than beat retreat. At last, the big boys got bored with such a monotony, they told us “enough!” and took away their gloves.

The next morning a purple-black bruise decorated my left forearm and for several following days I was very touchy at that spot, ducking even from a friendly pat and issuing the hiss of self-defending gander…

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If the Courtyard was covered by powder snow but not too deep, all of our family went out to clean the carpet and the runner. We spread them face down on the snow and stomped on their backs. Then the carpet was turned over, the snow from the snowdrifts about it got swept with a broom onto all of the carpet’s face and then swept away. Done. And we folded the carpet.

The long green runner remained face down after the stomping, and the 4 of us—Mom and the 3 children—gathered upon it, and Dad dragged the runner over the snowdrifts with all of us standing upon its back, leaving a crumpled, dust-smeared, furrow thru the snow in our wake. Yes, our Dad was so strong and mighty!

And making use of a slushy snowfall, the boys began to roll up snow in the Courtyard forming huge balls to build a fortress. For a start, you made a regular snowball, put it down onto a snowdrift, and began rolling it back and forth. The lump immediately swelled with layers of slush snow stuck all over its sides. The snowball turned bigger than a football, then grew above your knees, becoming denser, heavier and you had to call for help already and, in a team of two or three, roll it to the fortress construction site where the big boys hoisted it and fixed into the course of dense snow lumps making the circular wall taller than you…

We split into two parties—the besieged defenders and the assaulting troops. In a record short time, the ammo of snowballs was hurriedly produced and – off to the storm they rushed!