Thoughts – The Herescu Family

MY FATHER, VASILE

CHAPTER FROM THE BOOK OF MEMORIES

HOW WE'VE STARTED OUR JOURNEY IN LIFE

Vasile Herescu is the name of my father. He was born on October 1, 1919 in the village of Costeni, Cupșeni commune in Țara Lăpușului, Maramureș region, Transylvania, Romania.

He was born in a house built of beams and covered with straw by my grandfather's great-grandfather's father, named Ioan Hereș, in 1780. All the men in the family before him were named Ion or Ioan Hereș.

Born after the end of the First World War when Transylvania rejoined Romania, as the surname of the family was no longer Hungarianized, it is written down in the registers of the Civil registers at the City Hall as Herescu. It is the option agreed by the authorities. During the last visit made in the village with Vlad, on December 21-22, 2018, the elderly villagers told me that the founder of the village around the year 1600, named Costea, had four sons: Hereș, Nodiș, Lucian and Țura. At that time these were "nicknames"; these become surnames later, but before the Hungarian ruling. Therefore, in Costeni the surnames Hereș and Nodiș are very frequent, and apparently has nothing to do with the Hungarianization.

Because in German there is the noun Her (Mister), others bring up the Saxon origin.

Ana and Ioan Hereș, his parents, were wealthy shepherd peasants. They had flocks of sheep and herds of cows. Maria was the older sister and Dochia the younger sister. The area was dominated by the everyday barter life. Paper money was little used, and gold money was non-existent. The word was like a written contract and the word given, sacred.

Coming from Târgu Lăpuș, a town 12 kilometers away, heading towards Cupșeni commune, a few tens of meters before entering the commune, there is a road to the left that leads to Costeni village. End of line. Wherever you want to go, from there you have to make your way back from Târgul Lăpuș to Cupșeni. The village is guarded by high hills, on one of the surrounding plateaus having its camp in the past, as the legends say, the Pintea Haiducul, who found his end by betrayal, cornered by law enforcement.

During the crisis of the late 1920s, the Romanian state issued an ordinance by which all debts of legal and natural persons were canceled regardless of who they were. My grandfather Hereș had borrowed, as he used to do every year, from an acquaintance living in a neighboring village, many male sheep in order to mate his sheep. He put the male sheep to work and when he went to give them back, the owner refused to take them back, on the grounds of the recently given Ordinance. As there was no written agreement between them, my grandfather managed to convince his neighbor to get his male sheep back.

The villagers knew that the First World War had taken place because they participated in it, including Ioan, Vasile's father, who had been seriously wounded. They also knew about the revolt of the Romanian peasants in 1907 in Transylvania against the Hungarian counts. My grandfather, Hereș Ioan, come out with a rifle in his hand, as the people in the area claim, to defend the cause of the many and oppressed. The rifle was the same one with which he used to go hunting on Thursday night, returning on Sunday night.

However, the issue of the World War II was more complicated. If an armored transporter with drunken German officers, lost from the Baia Mare garrison, more than 50 kilometers away from Costeni, had not arrived in the village, they would have easily "jumped" over the war episode that had not affected their lives at all, considering that the Germans were actors in a theatre play from the city. They were offered bacon and brandy, as they used to offer to any other guest, were hosted overnight, and the next day, early in the morning, they wished each other good luck. When Vasile returned to visit his parents and told them about the horrors experienced at Cotul Donului, they whispered: "See, neighbor, I told you that those were real Germans!"

Being the oldest in the area, in perfect condition, the house where my father was born came to the attention of those who wanted to organize a village museum in Baia Mare (capital of the county), Maramures, proposing to Ioan Hereș at the end `60-s to transfer the house within the Museum. Ioan Hereș agreed, receiving a compensation of 60,000 lei. The house is the pride of the museum, located immediately on the right when you enter the main street. The place where, without exception, the young bride and groom, after the religious wedding ceremony, are immortalized in pictures with relatives and participants to the wedding.

On the occasion of the dismantling of the house, the craftsmen who carried out the works found in the "sole" of the building a coin with the effigy of Empress Maria Theresa engraved in 1780.

The inhabitants of Țara Lăpușului consider themselves special because they that the Roman Invaders did not reach their when invading Dacia. They would be the descendants of the ancient Dacians in their pure state.

The dialect, unintelligible to me, used by my grandfather Hereș Ioan and his eldest daughter Maria when they were talking, was strikingly similar to the language spoken by the elders of San Sebastian and Bilbao, northern Spain. In the Basque area many men are called Ion, written as heard, with the same pronunciation, and not Juan as in the other regions of Spain.

When the colonization took place, in the Roman legions there were also soldiers from the Iberian Peninsula, Emperor Trajan himself coming from today's area of Catalonia, after the Catalans, in fact, from Seville. Things seem more complicated than my father's countrymen claim.

The school from Costeni held its classes in the village church, built of wood in the typical Maramures architecture, famous all over the world. Places of worship like this have received over time the status of UNESCO Heritage, like the one located in the village of Rogoz

Here, at the village school, the children, regardless of their age, would have their classes in the same room with the same teacher who was the teacher of the church. Vasile, standing out due to its smartness, was often allowed to supervise the other children at school. He used to have better math than the teacher.

After classes, my father had to take the cattle to graze. He used to take the Bible with him as he was studying it diligently, but would fail to watch over the poor animals that would go graze in the neighbor’s corn fields, causing disputes with his father.

At the age of 14, fed up with the pastoral works, Vasile decided to leave home – "to conquer the world", out of the desire to achieve more than he could achieve in his native lands, thinking to leave for Bucharest, the only place where he thought he could become a Lord.

He finished high school with the desire to enroll in the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, to become a surgeon. I only found out in May 1992 when I stopped practicing as a Surgeon, noticing the disappointment in his soul. He hadn't told me about Medicine, and he hadn't pushed me towards it. He had been proud of me and considered, after 1989, that putting the family business dramatically ruined in the late 1950s on the track, my sister and I, also a doctor, world-renowned anesthetist, we should live a carefree life, practicing our profession. He had not taken into account that what had come through the world maneuvers of 1989 had nothing to do with the capitalism we were expecting; he lived to experience it for a while, but I had only read about it in the books in the library of my high school classmate, Andrei Boico. He had also omitted the fact that he had amassed his fortune – which he would leave us when he passed away in January 2001 – during the transition period of the 1950s, when small private property had been deliberately left to coexist with socialist property which was growing.

He comes to Bucharest with the idea to enroll in the Faculty of Medicine, whose courses would begin in October.

He met by chance the former high school principal, who proposed him to get involved, before starting the classes, in the harvesting of the grapes from his vineyards in Buzau county and in Moldova. Vasile would have to coordinate the harvesting of the vineyards, the winemaking process and the sale of the wine. Knowing him to be a smart and resourceful young man, the boyar and school principal offered Vasile one million lei for the whole job. At that time a very good salary was around 3000 lei per month. Vasile accepts, not realizing that he would not be able to finish this work until the beginning of the courses at the Faculty of Medicine. He postpones his idea of studying medicine and surgery, and, following the Boyar's recommendation, he is temporarily employed at a restaurant called La Calul Bălan, located in the area Halelor on the Quay of the River Dâmbovița. He rents a small room in the attic of the Agricola building close to the end of the quays of Calea Victoriei and, as he was “the guy who does it all”, he manages the business of the restaurant La Calul Bălan. At half past four in the morning he used to go to the nearby Halelor Market to supply the restaurant and at six o'clock he would raise the shutters for the clients that were already waiting in front. In the morning, the restaurant was serving belly soup and tuslama, followed by barbecues, beef, pork chops and neck and and sausages prepared according to a local recipe, claimed today by many innkeepers. Little by little, he starts taking care also of the cash register and becomes in a few weeks the manager of the place, as it is called nowadays.

After pulling the shutters and doing the calculations, he would arrive home 1:30 at night, in the small room in the Agricola building. On the night of Friday to Saturday, he would find hanging out on the corridor the other young people sharing the attic with him, agents at the Romanian Stock Exchange, located in nearby. From Friday to Sunday night they would organize poker games, and Vasile was invited. They used to make fun of him for working so hard, and proposed him to become a stock exchange broker, saying that the money was good and made easily. The same agents died poor and in debt. My father begged me and advised on his deathbed never to invest in the stock market. I listened to him piously. These young men convinced him one evening to attend a meeting where the people present were dressed in black/green shirts and called themselves the Soldiers of the Archangel Michael. He didn't like the atmosphere, which is why he didn't go a second time, despite the insistence of his colleagues who told him that that was the future. He warned me not to join any regiment or to be co-opted into organizations in which meetings with mystical rituals take place. I listened to him. I have friends and former schoolmates in such Societies.

As the war was knocking at Romania's door, he was recruited. Despite all the boyar's interventions, he was not assigned to the Intendance, but to the Heavy Artillery, due to the very good results in mathematics during high school, and he started his one-year army training as a TR student-soldier (Reduced term).

The garrison was in Bucharest and Vasile had the right to sleep at home. Early in the morning he would pass by Calul Bălan to help the owners to open the place, hurrying then to the Military Unit, arranging for a carriage to take him there on time.

One rainy morning, while getting out of the carriage, dressed in his military uniform and "protected" from the rain by an umbrella, against the regulations, he met the Colonel, the head of the garrison. Following this meeting, he was punished by three days in isolation.

Romania joined the war, while Vasile was in Garrison from Bucharest. He is promoted to RT Sergeant and sent to Cotul Donului with a platoon of 20 soldiers, with four heavy artillery cannons fired by four Bernhardt trucks. The driver of the first truck where Vasile was travelling was his ordinance. He was to be promoted in rank, having the responsibilities of a second lieutenant or lieutenant.

He would spend two killingly cold winters at Cotul Donului, where he used to live in the house of a teacher. There, he was accommodated in the house of a teacher who had a daughter, Natalia. The Germans, on the same front line as the Romanians, evicted the villagers out of their houses, settling in their place. If they hadn't shoot them, they would let them live in the barn.

My father made sure that Natalia and her father would remain in the house, and he and the ordinance stayed in the barn.

On New Year's Eve, while he was at the table with his ordinance, the teacher and his daughter, a young man appeared, equipped with a cartridge case and a gun in his hand. He entered the room like he was at home. He introduced himself as Alioșa. I didn't understand if it was Natalia's husband or brother. They drank vodka to celebrate the New Year, exchanged a few words, and then he left. He was a Soviet partisan. For my father, a case of the Martial Court. The ordinance proved loyal. The great uproar of the withdrawal of German and Romanian troops began when more soldiers died than in all the years of war until then. The Red Army was advancing towards Romania, the Romanian troops, in retreat towards the country, were expected by the partisans, being trapped like in a box clamp, without any chance of success. The partisans were killing everything in their path.

At one point, while going by night through a forest with the headlights of the trucks off, forcing the encirclement, my father came face to face with Alioșa, who had recognized him sitting on the seat next to the driver of the first truck. He had not started the deadly fire. They greeted each other discreetly. Dad escaped the encirclement, saving his life and the lives of his subordinates. Related to this incident, he taught me that it is good to know when to refrain from putting the alms in the wrong bag. I tried to follow this advice, but I wasn't always successful, which brought me some discomforts throughout my life.

After crossing the Prut river, he was seriously injured. Placed on the operating table, he was "opened up" by German surgeons, but because the Soviet troops entered the hospital yard, he was left there on the operating table, having the good fortune to be "closed" by a Russian surgeon.

He received the decoration Military Virtue, for which he should have been made owner of five hectares of land and promoted to the rank of lieutenant major.

As the times changed, they forgot to give him the grade and the five hectares of land, and also one hectare of out-of-town agricultural land or 500 meters for the house, as the Guys decided after 1989 to equate the five hectares – even today, Vasile, wherever he may be, is still waiting to receive his merits, and I am waiting for these, too, wherever I still am.

The City Hall of Sector 1 says that it has no land, taking advantage of the fact that, as the cadastral plan requested by the European Union for Romania's accession on January 1, 2007 is not finalized, it is difficult to prove the lie in the Courts.

Without other perspectives, with the 1,000,000 before the war spent on supporting the family and devalued by the galloping inflation, Vasile returns to Calul Bălan where the owners were waiting for him with open arms offering him some of the shares.

Before the war, the official exchange rate of the American dollar was 100 lei, increasing in 1941 to 900 lei, reaching in 1944 to 4000 lei, in 1945 to over 100,000 lei, when the 5000000 lei banknote was printed, and in 1946 to 200.000 lei, on the black market at 6000000 lei.

On August 15, 1947, the stabilization takes place, through which the newly established regime replaces the old lei with new lei in a ratio of 1 new leu for 20.000 old lei, setting the exchange rate of an American dollar at 115 lei.

In 2003, by a Decision signed by the Governor of the National Bank Mugur Isărescu and another Guy from Statistics, named Ungureanu, published in the Official Gazette, in relation to the issue of the compensations to be given for the nationalizations carried out during 1945-1947 and included in a Law, in a way additional to Law no. 10 of 2001, published in 2002, these Guys, without anyone pulling their sleeves, set the exchange rate of the US dollar from 1945, 1946 and 1947 until August 15, 1947, at 96 lei (used to calculate the amount of compensation for those nationalizations from 1945-1947).

My father, as he wanted to do something with his life instead of waiting for the Americans to come, started to work diligently for the prosperity of La Calul Bălan restaurant where he returned, becoming a shareholder, and enrolls in licensed accounting courses.

Knowing him to have a healthy origin – the son of a peasant -, suitable to stand out in the new conditions in Romania, some young men approached him in order to convince him to go to an Assembly, telling him that the business with Calul Bălan will not last for long. It was an assembly of the Communist Party. It was the only time he took part in such a meeting. These were the same young men, former stockbrokers, who had taken him to the Legionary Assembly before the war. During the Great Legionary Rebellion, employees of the Romanian Railways and the Bucharest Transport Company had supported the revolt by blocking traffic routes. After years, they would be from the category from which many members of the Communist Party were coming.

Apart from these young men, some other Guys proposed him, by virtue of his social origin, to build a career in the reorganization of the New Romanian Army. He politely refused.

The boyar, former school principal, reached out for him, confirming that the business with the restaurant La Calul Bălan will no longer last. He offered him the opportunity to accompany him on his escape to the West, which he had arranged to occur by plane. He was successful in convincing Vasile who started to pack the suitcase that he brought with him when he came to Bucharest and they meet at the designated place in order to leave together, along with other fugitives. As he put his foot on the plane's stairs, to everyone's amazement, Vasile changed his mind and the plane took off without him. He would never regret his decision, being his whole life against my desire to go to the West, as long as, he said, this was impossible.

"Take care of your business, Adrian!!" he urged me. You must accept your fate and, if you are a smart boy, follow it.

The business at Calul Bălan soon started its decline.

The king abdicated and Vasile with only a suitcase, found himself on the streets, due to the nationalization of the big hotels and restaurants which also included the restaurant la Calul Bălan.

As he returned to his attic studio, he began to study the newspaper listings, hoping to find a job offer. A certain Nicolae Ionescu, owner of a restaurant opposite the Studio hall of the National Theater, was looking for an associate.

Vasile shows up for the interview (as it is called nowadays) and is accepted by Nicolae, despite the fact that Vilma, Nicolae's wife, had some concerns about hiring him. This couple had a 22-year-old son, Georgica, a law student, and a 16-year-old girl, Elisabeta, whom everyone called Lizica, a student at the Catholic School for Girls “St. Maria”- known as “Pitar Moş” school, located on the street having the same name.

Georgica got expelled from college, due to his unhealthy social background, and Lizica would have to move to a state school, as the "Pitar Moş" school was closed by the communist authorities at the end of the school year 1948.

Until it was abolished, Vasile would go every afternoon to pick up Lizica from school and take her to her home on Buzești street, returning afterwards to work at the restaurant, where he would finish his activity around midnight. Vilma realized that Lizica and Vasile, 13 years older than her, were having a romance, and started to go herself to pick up her daughter from school. Vasile would bribe the watchman to tell Vilma that Lizica was no longer at school, and she would jump the fence towards the Aro Cinema, later called Patria, where Vasile was waiting for her.

Their secret relationship lasted for two years, until Lizica, born on February 22, turned 18 in 1950 and married Vasile in April, at the People's Council of I.V. Stalin District, across the street from the restaurant, behind Amzei Square. The religious wedding took place in September of the same year. The relatives of the Ionescu family, both Vilma's and Nicolae's, participated in both events, but no family from Vasile's side, not even a friend. Vasile's only friend was work, whatever that would be. The smooth running of the business with the restaurant was ensured by 24-hour shifts, by rotation, by Vilma with Nicolae and Vasile with Lizica; meanwhile, Lizica had finished high school, but had not continued her university studies.

A beneficial period begins for the Ionescu and Herescu families, which would overlap with the era in which the communist party was tolerating the small private property in its various forms. Starting with small restaurants that could use work from outside the family of up to eight employees, pastry shops, tailoring workshops, shoemaking workshops, etc. and to the doctors' offices, as was the case with the doctors: Goldwerth, internist, from the same address as us, and Tomescu, radiologist, the father of the actress of the same name, on 2, Tatra Mountains street, a house on the corner with Buzești street, close to our home.

Between Calea Victoriei and Magheru Blvd, on the street called Amzei, which also crossed the Square with the same name, there were a lot of pubs and restaurants, but only the establishment of the two couples had all the tables occupied starting from 6 am until midnight, which was the closing hour after the last customer.

There was used to be queue at the restaurant door. The tables were covered with white and red or white and blue square tablecloths, always starched. The menu consisted of served tripe soup, tuslama (tripe stew), sausages, pork chops and neck, grilled beef and tenderloin, marrow, sweetbreads, brains, garnished with French fries and accompanied by summer salads or pickles, depending on the season.

As drinks, they would serve: soda water, bottled in the family's soda water shop on Occidentului Street, near Buzești Square, transported to the place with the help of 12-24 soda water carts, handled by some hourly employees, mineral water and, theoretically, that was about it.

Authorities did not allow the serving of alcoholic beverages, not even beer or wine, the restaurant being called "Popular and Dairy". Rarely did someone order yogurt or whipped milk, which, according to the product sheet, had to be on the menu. These were served in large white ceramic cups.

These cups were also used to serve wine, thus camouflaged, offered to loyal customers. How to deny to Calboreanu, Giugaru, Bota, Finteșteanu, some sacred monsters of the Romanian theatrical scene, the pleasure of having a cup of wine.

The clients were merchants who were selling their products in the Agricultural market set up behind the Theater and in front of the Marriage House of the Popular Council, their clients, judges, lawyers and their clients, prosecutors and militiamen licensed to work at the premises of the Courthouse, located in the same building as the People's Council. Also, actors of the National Theater, whose Studio Hall was across the street from the restaurant, and officials of the nearby French Embassy, the British Embassy, near the Army Theater – today, the Nottara theatre -, and the American Embassy on Batistei street. Architects, engineers, doctors, also made their living there, eating fast, cheap and tasty; their orders would be written down in a notebook, and they would pay their bills at the end of the month.

The earnings of the two families were significant, 6000 lei net per month, per couple.

The supervision and vigilance of the Tax Office were ensured through agents who had the obligation to monitor the activity in the restaurant. They used to come from time to time, at different times, sat at a table and did the calculation for an hour: how many portions of steaks, sausages etc would be served, roughly establishing the restaurant's sales by day, month, year. The submission of the monthly and annual declaration to the Tax Office was made on the own responsibility of the local owner, the Tax Office having the possibility to assess the taxpayer's correctness through the system described above. There is, as in the rest of the world, a system of "lubrication" of the tax levers, just to be able to take care calmly of the restaurant business.

One day, militia officers who were also customers showed up at the restaurant, with the invitation addressed to Vasile to accompany them to the Miliția Station, for statements regarding the restaurant's activity. He is subjected to a confrontation with one of the tax agents coming to the restaurant, caught red-handed by the militia while receiving a bribe of 5,000 lei. Asked from whom he had taken money for the same purpose, he had stated that he took money also from Herescu Vasile. Seeing that the agent was well wrinkled by the militia and barely standing, Vasile tells them that he did not know him. The militia made the agent repeat the statement. Crying his eyes out, he asks Vasile to confirm that he gave him money too, because he had been promised that he would get home sooner, where he had children. With the imperturbable calm of the surgeons, Vasile repeats to them that he has never ever seen the guy. The militiamen releases Vasile, with the promise that he would remain under surveillance.

Vasile and Lizica's godparents were Marian and Sofica, who were running various businesses that could still be developed at that time. Marian was an entrepreneur, but one too bold and speculative, that determined my father not to get into an association with him. However, during a discussion, my father told him that there were abandoned tanks in the river Prut, left there during the withdrawal towards Romania. Marian went there, took out two tanks from the river, and took out their engines, bringing them to Buzau, capitalizing them in the form of scrap metal at the DAC.

The DAC was a socialist enterprise that collected scrap metal, which it was then allowed to sell. Marian had discovered here two truck bodies, scrapped because they no longer had the engines to make them work. He buys from the DAC, with an invoice, the truck bodies and the two tank engines he brought. He manages to put on wheels two trucks, beginning to transport the wheat and corn crops of the Agricultural Production Farms, newly established following the collectivization.

Things are going well until someone from the Party and the Security notices that the trucks did not belong to the Cooperatives, but to a smart individual who was getting rich. So, he is framed a criminal trial, accused of forgery and theft of public property, although the Guys had not found anything illegal in the whole business. The invoice from DAC was real, and the bodies and engines were made of scrap metal.

He got arrested and sentenced to many years in prison. Vasile also got involved in this whole affair, for the simple fact that, while he was going to Mizil and Buzău, where the 6 hectares of vineyards and the family mansion were located, Marian was asked him to collect the bill for the two engines and the two bodies correctly marked on the invoice as scrap. By signing the receipt of the invoice, he was considered an accomplice to forgery of public documents and theft of public property, so Vasile was sentenced by the judge to two years in prison for favoring the offender.

While he was preparing his suitcase to go to jail, the comrades gave a pardon thai also included the deeds of Marian and Vasile.

From the profits from the restaurant, Vasile and Elisabeta had purchased in 1953 a mansion and six hectares of vineyards in Fințesti Village, Năeni commune.

Starting with the spring of 1956 I began to accompany my father to the vineyard on the days when he was not working at the restaurant. The vineyard was producing around 20 tons of grapes per hectare, a record in those times. Refusing to join the Cooperative, he was included in the social category of Kulak, and got his Kulak Certificate.

"You are hereby informed that following your status check-up, you still belong to the social category of kulaks."

Without a car, the trip to Fințești used to be difficult, the train would leave us in Mizil or Buzau. Simoca, the former driver of the Ionescu family from the time when they were having a Ford Eiffel, which, for fear of being requisitioned, Georgica, his son, had disassembled in order to hide it, and later on he was unable to assemble again; he did a great job. He had become the driver of the first-secretary of the communist party in Buzau, who had a mistress in Mizil. After taking him to his mistress, he would take us from the train station in Mizil and, on the way to Buzau, he would make a detour and drop us off in Fințești, which, opposite the Mizil-Buzau road, was on the hills, 12 kilometers away.

Very early in the morning, on the way to Mizil, when he was picking up the first secretary from his mistress, he would pick us up from the vineyard and drop us off at the train station at Mizil. Sometimes he would take us to Buzau to take the train to Bucharest, depending on the chief's route.

Andronescu, the administrator of our vineyards, used to take us sometimes us with a cart, on a shortcut through the village from the mansion to the road, from where we used to hitchhike. The road, inaccessible to the car, passed in front of the MAT from Fințești and by a plot of land cultivated with corn, from where I imagined that we could be attacked by robbers.

When leaving the vineyard alone, so as not to disturb Andronescu, my father used to walk this cut-oof of eight kilometers. He was accustomed to such distances, given the episode of the withdrawal from the Russian Front or the winter of 1954 when the snow was as high as the buses that got stuck on the Ploiești-Bucharest road, covering the distance of about 60 kilometers between the two cities by foot. During that time, he once met a wolf, whom he overcame with caution, having prepared for his defense a can opener as a short-bladed knife. He would keep the can opener in the briefcase he always had on him. The briefcase used to contain documents and sometimes amounts of money for the payment of the "quotas" corresponding to the obligations to the State regarding wine production. The money had to be handed over at the cashier's office of the Mat in Fințești, in front of which he used to pass while walking on this road.

One evening, near the cornfield that used to make me shiver, he was attacked by two robbers, one threatening him with a knife, the other remaining secluded in the cornfield, armed with an ax. They ordered Vasile to give them the money they were suspecting him to have on him. Although he only had documents in his briefcase, he realized that they would react violently when realizing that they had failed. He asked them to let him take out the documents before handing them the briefcase with the money. With a sudden and rapid movement, pretending to take out his papers, he took the robber with a knife by surprise, taking the can opener from his briefcase and sticking it in his neck, millimetrically close to the carotid artery. The other robber, seeing what had happened, ran away, not answering when Vasile called him to help carry the victim. He managed to take him by himself to the road, where the Pobeda car of the Party Secretary passed by, with the Secretary in it, who commuted daily from Buzau to Mizil and back. Through his interventions, the victim received immediate medical care, and survived, not complicating my father's existence with a trial for culpable homicide.

The most beautiful time for me in the vineyard was the grape harvest. The grapes were transported by cart inside the mansion, where they were subjected to the process of being smashed in order to prepare the grape juice on the terrace above the winery, where the 1000 and 5000 liter barrels were located. The process of making the wine was carried out under the supervision of Vasile. The production of wine was around an average of over 14,000 liters per hectare, which meant an annual production of over 80,000 liters, in some years even 100 thousand liters.

The wine stored in the cellar located in the courtyard of the mansion was sold at the place of production and at the home address in Bucharest, 75, Buzești street. This meant a large-scale operation, as the wine was transferred from the barrels in the cellar in barrels for having the transported with a truck. From the truck, fit to enter the yard in Buzești street, the wine was moved in smaller barrels of 200-300 liters, in order to be sold; these were arranged in the basement of the building where, in the backyard, in the high groundfloor Dr. Goldwerth's family was assigned by ICRAL to live there.

On the gate of the house on Buzeşti street, there was a tin plate with the text: "We sell wine". A normal citizen could only buy 1 liter bottles, as stipulated by law, as the sale of wine by the glass was prohibited.

One morning in early January 1959, while Vasile was away on business and Nicolae, my grandfather, was selling the wine. Three individuals showed up who, on the pretext that they had to organize a wedding for which they would buy hundreds of liters, they asked to have a tasting, in order to decide on the varieties. Grandpa explained that he could not sell wine by the glass. However, as they insisted, he went inside the house and brought three cups, where he put wine directly from the tap of a barrel.

At that moment, group of guys with cameras bursted into the shop, who immortalized the blatant that proved that in that place the wine was being sold by the glass, so it was considered to be an illegal pub. Soon, Vasile came home. A thorough search of the house began, looking for gold mainly. In the previous minutes, my mother, realizing what was about to happen, had managed to put the jewelry and watches we had in a suitcase and, using the service ladder, she gave it to the family of the engineer Andreescu, who lived in one of the upstairs apartments.

In the evening, my father was taken out of the house handcuffed, although he had not been the protagonist of the blatant, he wasn't even at home. From that moment on, I would see him again after a long time when he was released on parole, and Dorina, who was seven months old at the time of her arrest, would call him "Uncle."

At the trial, Nicolae stated that he was the one who sold wine by the glass, but given that during his detention, following the torture he was subjected to, Vasile had "acknowledged" under signature that he was the author and not taking into account the photos from the flagrant miraculously disappeared from the file, my father was "urgently" found guilty and convicted. Although on the appeal my mother had given the prosecutor a briefcase full of jewelry, he maintained the accusation and the sentence was confirmed; Vasile was imprisoned at Roşu and then Văcăreşti, that were the prisons "in trend" at that time. During the investigation, Vasile was lured with the promise of being releases, provided that he would disclose where Nicolae has hidden the gold; they had information that, at the time of the decree in 1947 of the law regarding the transfer of the gold to the state, my grandfather had deposited such a large quantity of gold, that he could not have been such a fool not too keep something in a safe place.

While Vasile was serving a sentence for an act he had not committed, the family survived by selling fruit from the orchard in Băneasa (one of the real estate properties) in the Matache market and selling sweets and soft drinks in an open kiosk opposite the Popov cinema, later called Dacia, on Calea Griviței, where I had my very first popsicle.

Although in prison Șmighelschi, the head of the cell where he was imprisoned in a crowd with 19 other detainees (who were treating their running wounds through incisions with the flapper on their boots and would disinfect these wounds with their own urine), had sold him out because he had apparently instigated them to organize a riot to force a pardon on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of August 23, 1944, the Day of Liberation from the Fascist Yoke, reason for which he was delayed the conditional release to which he was entitled, he facilitated my father, after serving his sentence, an employment contract as a worker at the Cooperativa Arta Aplicată.

In the year when my father started to work, I started attend the school of the rich in Bucharest, "Petru Groza" High School.

My father was assigned to the Plexiglas section, where they were making plates for the trinkets sold throughout the country in the "Bijuteria" stores belonging to the cooperative. Here, he found opportunities to streamline some technological processes and, studying on his own in the field of chemistry, he became the chief of his section after four years.

For the next 10 years, through innovations and inventions, the productivity of the department increased thanks to him, bringing important material benefits to the factory which would make him indispensable. At the same time, his personal earnings were significant, because the pay for these innovations and inventions was consistent. They represented the value of a variable taxable percentage of the profits brought to the enterprise for one year, plus a non-taxable 10% premium of the profits brought to it for the first six months of operation of the innovation or invention.

In 1972, with a part of the profits, the family purchased the property from Predeal. In 1973, on the occasion of Romexpo, the annual national exhibition showcasing the achievements of the heavy industry and the consumer goods industry, the Allouette helicopter, produced in collaboration with a French company, is presented at the pavilion organized near Casa Scânteii. One afternoon we went to visit the exhibition. The pavilion where the Allouette was on display had two items, one very large and a small for four people. Dad asks one of the agents giving the public technical explanations about the helicopter's performance about the selling prices. Astonished, he answers: 16 million lei for the big one and 1,600,000 lei for the small one, and wanted to know why he was curious to know. Dad replied that he was interested in buying one and wanted to know to know what to in in order to buy the small one. It only took a few minutes for two guys to show up and invite us to join them in an adjoining room. Instead of giving us information about how to buy, the Security officers identified themselves, they asked my father who he is and what he really wanted. He calmly explained to them that he was the inventor of a technological process for which money rights were established, coincidentally, 1,600,000 lei, of which he had already collected 400,000, and at the beginning of 1974 he would take possession of the difference. While we were being questioned, the boy with whom he had previously talked rushed into the room, announcing to those with ID that there was a citizen outside who wanted to buy the 16 million helicopter. Dismayed, without paying any attention to us, they rushed outside. They returned with the citizen in question, who was wearing a shepherd's coat over his shoulders. Ignoring our presence, menacingly they begin to question him. He, without saying a word, opens the suitcase he was carrying with him and shows them the money prepared for the transaction. I thought that ambulances should be called to give medical care to the three comrades in the room. Ignoring us, they immediately arrested the shepherd and went away with him to start the investigation.

We would find out that he was mandated by all the shepherds from Rășinari-Sibiu area who had worked hand in hand to raise the amount and buy a helicopter to facilitate the herding of the sheep on the occasion of the transhumance every year.

The scandal was of such proportion, that it reached the ears of Ceausescu who ordered the helicopter to be delivered to the shepherds, as long as they were able to prove the legal origin of the money.

At the end of 1973, a bill was initiated in order to regulate monetary rewards for inventions and innovations, stipulating a maximum of three salaries awarded for them as prizes, their realization beginning to be considered a task of one's job. The proposed text provided that for those already implemented in production, for which no payments had been made, they would be remunerated according to the old law. This was also my father' situation. At the beginning of 1974, the law was published in the Official Gazette, with the deletion of the paragraph regarding the situation of those inventions already put into productive practice. My father never received the difference, living with the fear that he would have to return the 400 thousand. This did not happen, but, ever since that moment, he stopped making any innovation or invention.

As he was a visionary, he sensed that traveling on Valea Prahova would be difficult and, given that we used to go on a weekly basis to Predeal, he wanted to ensure the comfort of traveling by helicopter.

Between 1974 and 1989 we lived our lives sneaking through the reins of life, without waiting for the Americans.

After 1989, my father's health began to squeak. Since 1976, due to the stress created by a work accident in the production hall, when a fool lit a cigarette next to an oxygen tube, causing a damaging fire, he had developed, due to hypertension, a chronic atrial fibrillation. He was prescribed all sorts of antiarrhythmic medicines that did not work as expected, until one day when Dr. Macarie noticed the connection between the arrhythmia and his potassium deficiency, miraculously resolving the discomfort. The same thing did not happen when he took Scobutil for the disabling pain in the right side under the ribs. The surgical indication was for the removal of the gallbladder, which, although there were no stones, the gallbladder was "muddy", but he vehemently opposed the intervention.

One night, in the apartment in Grivița, he suffers from melena (elimination of black blood through the stool), which attests to some stomach problems. Although I was at home, where I had moved after the divorce and after quitting my career as a surgeon, knowing that I was tired because of the commute I was doing to supervise the construction of the mini hotel in Predeal and the office business in Bucharest that also covered the administration of the presentation store and sale "Column" from the commercial space that belonged to the family on Calea Victoriei 101, he did not bother me until I woke up alone around 6-7 in the morning. Enough time for another melena.

I did not take him to the Emergency Hospital, where I had spent nine years as an external employee, trainee and secondary, but, consulting with Dorina, she suggested the Fundeni Hospital, and I agreed to take him there. Indeed, Dr. Tulbure was there, the head of the anesthesia-resuscitation department and Dr. Macarie in cardiology, and the surgeons had a good reputation.

Due to the colic pains in the right hypochondrium, in which the gallbladder confuses the diagnosis, with the production of the melena, the suspicion of a juxta-papillary duodenal ulcer, ie on the edge of the orifice through which the bile flows into the duodenum, became a priority. I asked Dorina to talk to Mihnea, the doctor who would operate on him, an eminent surgeon, to perform a gastric resection (cutting of the stomach) followed by a gastro-jejunal anastomosis (connection between the remaining severed stomach and small intestine), which meant closing the duodenal abutment (the end of the duodenum where the bile flows) and removing it from the food circuit keeping the ulcerative lesion at this level, but which, by deriving the flow of hydrochloric acid, produced by the stomach, by this technique directly in the small intestine, it heals without scarring spontaneously, disappearing the cause of production: hydrochloric acid.

He suggested me that I should let the professionals do their job and refrain from giving my opinion in front of the famous doctors from Fundeni.

In an operation in which a gastric resection is performed with removal of the ulcer and restoration of the gastro-duodenal anastomosis (connection between the remaining sectioned stomach and the remaining sectioned duodenum) when the ulcer is on the lip of the duodenal papilla where the bile flows into the duodenum, it is necessary to cut the duodenum very close to it. The duodenal abutment remains narrow and the anastomosis that is performed does not ensure the comfort of the digestive transit at this level (which should allow the easy insertion of the surgeon's forefinger and median through its orifice), turning the patient into a chronic, invalid sufferer. This technique offers comfort to the surgeon who performs the operation in 45 minutes, to which is added the comfort of the anesthetist not faced with possible complications due to the patient's cardiac status. Evaluating, from their point of view, the relationship between the benefits and complications of the patient Vasile Herescu, they decided to perform this type of intervention.

The one I suggested would have lasted two hours, two and a half hours, being laborious, in the case of patient Herescu requiring a high-performance anesthetic team capable of dealing with any intraoperative inconvenience. Which was not a problem with Dr. Tulbure.

Because of the narrowness of the mouth anastomosis between the stomach and duodenum, entailing food to go in very hard, Dad remained hospitalized 35 days wearing almost permanently a nasogastric tube through for the decompression of the stomach that would bloat, causing him uncomfortable vomiting.

After a few months, nature did its job, producing a slight relaxation of the anastomosis mouth, which no longer required a permanent gastric tube, sometimes used at home by my father who had learned to insert it alone through the nostril. The rest of his life he had to eat little and often.

Busy with the trials for recovering the properties confiscated or nationalized by the communists from the Ionescu family, my mother's parents, he neglected the first signs of urinary discomfort. In 1997, he had a urine retention, on which occasion Dorina admitted him to Hospital X, to be attended by Dr. S. He undergoes a prostatectomy, and biological material was collected for a biopsy. The result is benign and Vasile continues his fight with the authorities, as he had done all his life. This time, I did not get involved at all, although I had skills in urological surgery given by Professor Neagu, also very famous in the branch, supporting him in numerous surgeries in the training stage, chosen voluntarily, which I had performed in high school in the Panduri clinic. Not to mention that in Ploiești I had supported Dr. Ionescu in over a hundred interventions on the prostate, to which, as in the case of Professor Neagu, I was assisting him in establishing the diagnosis. I didn't want to fight with Dorina anymore, but I admit that until then I had a good opinion about S., although I didn't really understand why a former colleague of mine who had performed surgery courses at the Emergency Department, later becoming a urologist, was not getting along very well with S, his boss.

On New Year's Eve, 1999-2000, in Predeal, my father had a new urinary retention. Diagnosis: Prostate tumor recurrence, which exists only in the case of initially cancerous tumors. He undergoes another surgical procedure, in the sense of removing his testicles, the standard procedure in such situations in order to remove the source of the testosterone hormone, as prostate cancer is a hormonal cancer, making it easier to be detected. No cancer cells appeared in the tissue for the histopathological analysis. The classic prostatectomy, as performed on my father, is a "blind" operation, performed like a uterine curettage, after which, depending on the gynecologist's surgical skills and his manual dexterity, the amount of fetal debris that is removed spontaneously after the curettage is larger or smaller. Keeping the logic of what was explained before for understanding, after the manual detachment of the prostate from her lodge and the instrumental removal, as one cannot "scrape" its walls just as one cannot "scrape" the lining of the uterus, due to the impossibility of eye contact (at that time), small remnants of the prostate gland remain after the intervention. These small remains were exactly those containing the cancer cells, which thus escaped histopathological control. Okay, okay, and then what is S.'s fault?! One for which any student would have failed the exam if he had failed to ask to be performed the analysis of the tumor markers in the blood test. The blood level of these markers differentiates between a benign and a malignant tumor. S. did not request the analysis or if any subordinate had omitted it, he could have performed after the surgery or during the regular check-ups – on which blood levels are monitored dynamically – instead of waiting for the recurrence. Starting this time to get involved, not even thinking that such mistake could be made in a urology clinic, I ask my father: "Did S. or at least some resident put his finger in your ass?" His answer "No!" left me speechless. Inserting the finger in the ass, scientifically called rectal tact, is the procedure that is being learned from the third year of medical school, as an essential gesture for establishing a diagnostic, in order to ease the differential, both in men and women. If in a woman it helps the surgeon to distinguish between a digestive and gynecological peritonitis, in the man easily detects if the prostate groove is supple – when the tumor is benign, common in elderly man – or is rough, hard, bulging, which attracts suspicion of a malignant tumor. This simple gesture detects from early stages the development of a malignant tumor and is the palpating "marker" decisive in diagnosing malignant tumor at first contact with the patient, waiting for the result of prostate blood markers, which arrive within 24 hours after harvesting the tissue sample.

On January 21, 2001, after a very rough year of suffering due to metastases to the pelvic bones, spine and rib cage, kept somewhat under control by morphine, my father died smoothly like a candle. On December 20, 2018, my mother also died smoothly, which required the exhumation of my father's remains. In a snow-white fabric bag, the gravediggers had gathered his bones and the skull, and none of the participants in the funeral wanted to photograph them, as I was not the owner of a high-performance phone, but of one that works as a landline.

Life as prey?! Not. Like a farce.

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