Sometimes, I had to queue (for eggs, cheese or meat) because there was nobody to stay home with me, each f my grandparents being at a queue. They would go there around two or three at night, at eight or nine o?clock in the morning asking somebody to keep their place in the line, they would come home to take their grandchildren (our parents had left for work, we would wake up) and we went all back in the line. The sad thing was that we had only one small chair, folding chair, very small, so we had to sit down in turns. For the rest, I liked very much to queue, especially with my grandfather, who would stand in the line telling stories to other old men, boasting about all sorts of youth adventures, those were unreal times, for me at least because I did not conceive him as a young man. There were stories about how they stopped him from going to school, because he was needed on the fields, about his good grades, then about how he was among the best in his factory (?among the best milling machine operators?, one of his photos says), then about how he grew four children. There was a real contest of wonderful embellished stories. At a certain moment, we got hungry, we would eat the sandwiches out of the bag, and then there was this well-known thrill in the crowd: somebody announced that the meat car might have parked in the back. And it seemed like everybody concentrated himself or herself, they occupied their place more firmly ? until then, the queue had been relaxed, and everybody was telling stories. Then the children were taken out of the line, we had to wait somewhere aside because when the doors of the butcher?s or supermarket opened, everybody started pushing in an awful manner, they would step on each other?s feet, and the children risked being squashed unaware.

In the second part of the line, ? there were comments ? ?will we get some??, ?if only it had not finished right before me, because it happened to me yesterday as well?? (G. S. 145)

I was in the second grade and I stood at interminable lines. What annoyed me the most was the bread car that would always be late, especially when I was very hungry. I remember that the oranges always ended right in front of me because the shop-assistants would take them. (G. S., 107)

Generally, people queued at night at one or two o?clock, or even earlier, at 10, the products were distributed when the car came, in the morning or after ten-eleven in the evening. In general, the cars would come late in the evening so that they could give it all to acquaintances. The beautiful thing was, and they chose only the ones with connections then ? I was really lucky then ? because if the car came during the day, the queues would already be formed and people would comment, so that, in the evening, people got tired. That is all right, because, in the rest of the country the situation was worse, the capital was still rather well provided for, and, one would get the necessary products one way or another, so I gave some to my mother-in-law, who lived in the countryside, oil, sugar, whatever we had. In Ardeal, I would send even more expensive ones to my sister: chicken package in Ardeal, packets of meat. The ones who lived in the countryside had nothing to eat. We had, at the expense of standing in a line, running from one line to another, leaving the famous bottles of milk on the ground as a mark that that was our place in the line (who, meanwhile did other chores) and that was it.