My children learnt a song from school: The night falls over Belu graveyard / And Satan calls everybody loud and hard / Oh graveyard, graveyard, graveyard / Don?t you give meat without an identity card!?. The macabre little song combined hints that some restaurants and eating places served dishes prepared with meat from dead persons? bodies, and the tragic reality of rationalization.

One friend of mine was taken to Coltea Hospital, at the dermatology department for a wart in his sole. He slept at home at night. One day, just before being released from the hospital, he went to buy his ratio: sugar, edible oil and meat, the meat ratio consisted of 1 kg. per month and also some minced meant or some already prepared for meat balls. They cooked the meatball they had just bought, but in a very short time, his hands and face swelled, and he felt a very bad itching. He was scared to death, as he had been hospitalized in the same room with some people suffering from syphilitics and psoriasis, etc. Yet, it was nothing but a reaction to the proteins in the meatballs he had bought.

During the summer, we usually went to Costului Valley, in Maramures. We lived in Breb, with our old hosts: Mary and Michael. One day, we went to Sighet to buy train tickets when I saw some liver sausage, a rare thing. I thought to make a pleasant surprise to the hosts. Well done, I came back with the liver sausage, and we all tasted one ? two small slices of it. There was no refrigerator so the liver sausage stayed in a cool pantry overnight. The next day, neither Mary nor Michael ate any sausage so I proposed to give it to the pig. Mary had a very strange reaction: ?I do not give such a thing to my pig!? The dog, Sultan, a Romanian shepherd dog, who was always hungry, as most of the dogs in the countryside, ate the liver sausage, rope and all. (7)

Whenever I had planned to buy meat, I woke up around 1 or 2 a.m., and I was there at half past two or three a.m.; but, for those that wanted meat, they opened only one gate, this one, from the market; so we waited there in the hall, and, at the right time, those inside pushed the gates open and ran. But, the crazy thing was that they did not have the time to actually open the gates, they just drew the bolt. The moment people heard the clanking of the bolt, the throng started through the gate. If you were among the first, and had the bad luck to have an old lady that stumbled and fell in front of you, it was a disaster. And let me tell you how things went, doing these things many times I developed a strategy. Whenever I queued, I noticed who was next to me, and I always behaved almost like a stag or a dear. I gathered some speed and I pushed on one side, yet I immediately withdrew and thrust myself on the other side, and in this way I made three, four zigzagged steps to get among the first.