HOME DELIVERY CENTER

14 09 74 was the number of the home delivery center. I know it because one would dial it so many times, that eventually one knew it by heart. And if one were lucky enough to get through, one would also get a carton of eggs. (S. R.-B., D. R.-B., 138)

You made a phone call, you said hello, I am so and so, and you had to order something around two or three hundred lei, so you could not simply order just two packets of meat. I think there were some more rules; one would not be able to get more than two kilos of meat? Around ?84-?85, it was quite difficult to get these home delivery centers on the phone. My grandmother, who had nothing else to do, would spend even half an hour phoning the company, and she kept ringing with no luck. (C. V., 97)

My grandmother would spend two days in a row to get a clear line. When this happened, it was a happy day in our family and everybody waited impatiently the arrival of the products. I was just waiting for the olives and the Cuban candies. (160)

If you got a clear line, it was seventh heaven. And when it was due to come, one would get stuck in the house for a whole day, because one did not know the time it got there. You had the right to order a packet of one kilo of pork meat, one Ness can, which was ultra rare, Cuban cigarettes, BT-s (cigarettes), Chinese cigarettes, peanuts, oranges, Cuban candies, Havana Club ? One would order, each time one managed to get through. The girls from the home delivery center would receive small slips of paper with phone numbers on them, that is how they got rich, and that was illicit. They did favors. One would ask about what they had in store? we do not have this, we do not have that ? Then, please, tell me what you have. She would recite what they had and you would interrupt her. A kilo, how much can you give me? This was pretty much the key question, how much was allowed? (I. H., 48)

Once, when the supplier arrived, we suggested coming to our house on a regular basis. And he would come once a week, without a phone order and brought a list. I know that at first he charged us an extra of about a hundred lei and it got to a hundred and fifty. Everything amounted to about five hundred lei. Everything was balanced; you were entitled to two kilos of meat. The meat was on the first list. There were two types of meat, meat costing thirty-seven lei a kilo and meat costing seventy a kilo. The one costing thirty-seven had more bones, the other had less. This was all pork. I think they had beef as well. They would bring you all sort of things among which vodka Stalishnaia, Ruskaia or Krepkaia costing fifty lei, a carton of cigarettes D.S. or B.T., eight lei the packet, four sachets of pepper, lemon salt, toilet paper, preserves. We lived on those preserves until after ?90. (C. V., 97)