We had keys that were huge, like a shoe. They didn't fit in a pocket or a purse. They were even very heavy. Each one weighed almost half a kilo because they were made of cast iron. We didn't carry them with us both because of the weight and because most of them were moldy. Some of the neighbors would put them under the mat in front of the door, others in a hole in the garden wall. Since the toilet window of our house faced the street, we used to leave our key there. For some reason, there were only two windows on the lower floor of our two-story Greek stone house, the smaller one was the toilet window and the larger one was the living room window. Everyone would lock the door and put the key in the toilet window, we didn't even have a spare key, we only had one key.

The whole street knew whose key was where, we didn't even have any secrets, everyone passing by would see us putting the key in the window. In fact, long ago, when our parents were children, there was not even a key, the door was never locked.

I never heard of a single bad incident, a theft or a bad omen in my childhood or youth. Or rather, we had never even heard of theft. Unless we went far away from the neighborhood, no one would lock the door of their house or garden. We would push the door and enter. The doors were usually wide open, but sometimes there were people who opened them to prevent cats and dogs from entering.

Anyway, the doors to the gardens were never closed and we children used to play hide and seek using the gardens of all the houses on the street. The doors of both houses and gardens were locked only when we were going far away.

To make a long story short, under the blue canopy of the endless sky, we lived together and in safety.

Even better, instead of rushing to places, we would run to each other. All the residents of the neighborhood lived together as if they lived in the same house. The elderly would be seated, a blanket would be spread in front of them, and winter provisions would be poured on trays. The elderly would chat amongst themselves while they sorted vegetables for canning, de-boned beans, or sorted parsley and mint for drying. Sometimes fruits and vegetables for pickling and jam. The pits of cherries and apricots, for example. Every day they would sit in a house or in the garden of a house and prepare the hostess's provisions in turn. Lunch was made and eaten together. The young people did the cooking and the errands. The noodles were cut together and the tarhana was rubbed together. We didn't have the technological conveniences and ready-made pasta and noodles like today, but it was a lot of fun to prepare kilos of winter noodles together. On noodle days, our lunch would be noodles with plenty of strained yogurt, as you can imagine. My favorite time was these noodle times. We children would get so tired from running from one garden to another, maybe that's why I never, ever felt the flavor of the noodles of those times again.

Weddings, funerals and births were easier. Since all doors were open, guests were hosted in the closest houses and the wedding host was not put to any trouble. Some would make hoşaf, some would make pilaf with meat, some would make sarma, some would make güllaç dessert, and some would make okra with meat and sour to eat on top of the dessert.

Since even television was new back then, there was only one house in the whole neighborhood. The broadcasts would start after 6 p.m. and end at midnight. We would all gather in the house with the TV and excitedly watch Sweet Witch or Star Trek. Women, men, children, the whole neighborhood, all together in one room, we would have incredible fun. We would pop popcorn, roast chestnuts on the stove, and run out into the streets when we heard the voices of street vendors selling lemonade in the summer and boza in the winter: "Bozacııııııııı!"

The cartoons "Bear Yogi", "Bıcır'la Gıcır", "Pink Panther", "Popeye", which were broadcast only on weekends, were the things we enjoyed the most, but they would start and end at the same time. We would dream about it all week, but it would be over in the blink of an eye.

We used to spend long cold winter nights in each other's warmth, playing bingo, playing "angry brother" and hiding rings.

Every day at the same time, the cotton candy maker would pass by and share the cotton candy he wrapped around a wooden stick with all of us. Maybe not all of us would have money, but we wouldn't even realize that we didn't have money, and one of the elders on the street would leave a glass full of granulated sugar on the helvaci's counter every time. In other words, even if there was no money, the cotton candy maker would accept the candy and make enough cotton candy for all the children on the street.

This is what life was like, once upon a time. Despite all the difficulties, deprivations and shortcomings, it was very noble and enjoyable.

The flow of life and the workings of the universe, which do not slide in a straight line, sometimes with ups and downs, sometimes ugly and sometimes beautiful, good-bad, right-wrong, right-wrong, light-dark, black-white ambivalent duality, have brought us this far by taking our knots. Everything is different now, everything may be very different, but this is the flow and functioning of life. Taking it as it is and accepting it as it is makes life more livable and easier. It was beautiful then and it is beautiful now. Who knows, maybe centuries from now, maybe even decades from now, people will remember these days with longing and tears in their eyes. Or maybe it will be the other way around.

But staying in the flow of life, being in the moment, flowing with the flow and becoming one with it is the shortcut... I am grateful that you are with me in the Flow of Life...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber