The Spider Web II

Continuing

In September 1974 after being admitted to Tehnoton HS in Iași, my father drove me there.

At the end of school after the very last class, the physics/chemistry teacher, the sexy one with miniskirt, Mrs.Mezinu, asked me where i wanted to go after school and i said there was a professional school for phone techs in a nearby town. And she went,  "You, professional school? You should go to high school!" (i was second in class).

I was really submissive at the time and ready to do everything teachers or people with some authority were telling me. So was my father. Though there was a good HS in Câmpulung (called Dragoș Vodă, or Lord Dragoș, the supposed founder of Câmplung and Moldova) from where most grads were admitted to a college (again didn't know what that was at the time), i wanted to learn electronics.

My preference was to go to Bucharest, after what i saw during that filming at the National Television.

School and sometimes boarding (if you could catch room) were free of charge at all levels during communist period, but it was an 8 hours ride by train.

He went there (later he told me he also wanted to get me out of the influence of my mother) and when he came back he heard from a guy in the train about a new HS tied to the new company Tehnoton in Iași (yes they were lots of technical HS in Romania besides professional which were shorter, 3 years only all tied to companies in order to prepare workers.

Iași was at about 4 hours away only. So he went and filed my application. In late June i went for an exam and passed it. Can't remember what place i was on the list i was but not among last for sure. Though i did not have a real math teacher in grade. That teacher Popescu from Câmpulung proved to be wrong.

Tehnoton HS was about electronics and electrotechnics because Tehnoton firm was building radios. I will come later with details. They also had a 3 years only professional school but a (technical) HS also kept the door opened for college while a professional school was a dead end which i really did not care about at the time.

But unlike those guys at professional, i had to pay for the food at the self serve food court (they called them canteens).

But surprise. We got there late? and they had no more room in the dorms. Father had to scramble to do something. And he went to the nearby IPL (again, coincidence, wood processing plant), it was right in the back of the HS where, again coincidence, party secretary was a guy he knew from IPL Suceava.

To me, he looked again like Botnăraș (from memory and today's POV), this time in suit with gray hair.

Anyways. He arranged for me to stay free of charge in a building between the HS and the plant, the so called non familyist dwellings, in a room with a supervisor from the factory. They were small rooms in a concrete block building and it was right across the always stinking common restroom and showers.

He was a short guy and again he looked like a Japanese man. Titi Pancu was his name. In his 40s, he was always smiling and had this peculiar, penguin like, hypnotic walk. They were two beds but can't remember if there was a table for my homework.

I remember the first day of HS. The class master (diriginta), a very short woman with a very strong voice was in the backyard or inner side of the L shaped new building on the stairs with a list in her hand and was yelling each of our names and i said to my self, i'm screwed, she seemed very "severe". (First cut, the deepest).

When i was in Lake Oswego, many years after (2010 - 2015), i somehow ran across this video with the Romanian soprano (of Greek origin), Marina Krilovici who at the time was officially "escaped from the regime" in Germany and i said must have been her, who in turn must have been Hungarian soprano Gabriella Zsigmond.

A very short woman with lots of energy, heavy smoker, Mrs. Ionică (a diminutive of my last name), her husband was an agronomic engineer working outside Iași and was missing a lot from home. And in the end she proved to be not severe at all, almost human during an inhuman regime, though she always kept a safe distance.

And so the show at Tehnoton HS began.