May 1st is probably the most cherished holidays since our childhood days-perhaps the second most cherished holidays after New Years. You have the same flags, balloons and fireworks and the parades, especially the military ones, which are even more diverting. When we were younger, we used to see the tanks up close and touch the caterpillar track or the cannon. The generous soldiers would sometimes give their badges as presents to us young boys without letting the commander know. One time, one of my peers got a bunch of presents during the parade, including a badge given to the soldier by the “Young Communists’ League” (YCL) and even a “Guard” badge. That boy remained the “hero” of our neighborhood for a long time after that. True, he really didn’t do much with the presents. He used to pin the badges on his shirt and since the cloth material was soft, it couldn’t hold the badge long and the shirt ripped. His grandmother used to slap him for that. But that didn’t stop the shirts and t-shirts from ripping. Every night before going to bed, he used to take off all the badges carefully and keep it in our cache. We used to keep different kinds of things there-slingshots, knuckle-bones (there was a game like that back then), badges, a folding knife. We also used to keep cigarettes there, as well as a picture of a big-breasted woman.
After a while, that holiday started to become less important for us. We no longer ran for badges and there were no May 1st military parades. The civilian parades were getting boring with the same posters, slogans and promises. As time passed by, May 1st simply turned into a non-cherished holiday. Television networks were only broadcasting the labor parades and schoolteachers were even forcing us high school students to take part in the boring event. They used to line us up next to other students somewhere far from the administrative tribune. Hours would go by until it was our turn to march towards the local political party leaders. By the time we reached the tribune located on Rustavel street, another couple of hours passed by. All that just to wave the red colored flags with the words “Peace, Work, May”, or the pieces of cardboard with a red star painted on it and scream hooray. This was very tiring and since we were under the control of our teachers and militants, we couldn’t even hit each other as a joke.
The whole May 1st event was getting on our nerves during our years at the institute. It was evident that there were no actual accomplishments in the working field, it was all fake and hypocritical, and for some reason you are forced to take part in that tiring march “for whom and why-you don’t know”.
The only thing that consoled us was the fact that this was an international holiday and wasn’t only celebrated in the Soviet Union.
May 1st really turned into a punishment for me when I started working for the “Georgian Youth” newspaper part of the HamLKEM press. The chief editor used to say laconically “150 pages in the edition” and we journalists used to go out to the parade to find interesting heroes who were producers or simply villagers who could give us a couple of words other than “I have done the work for the beloved Communist Party”. The press photographers were trying to take pictures of something extraordinary; however they had no hope that their photographs would be printed in any newspaper. The holiday editions of the newspapers used to go through huge censures. During my third or fourth year at the edition, I already knew how to work during the parades dedicated to May 1st (and not only because there was a holiday in November and others). I used to leave the edition, approach the participants of the parade, write down the names of workers or collective farmers, the place they work and headed for the nearest pub without wasting anymore time. While drinking a mug of beer, I used to take out the papers I had written reports on the past year, erase the names, write the new ones and return to the edition in a couple of hours. One time, the secretary correspondent read my report and said: “This is quite familiar…we have all gone berserk on the count of these parades.”
Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and May 1st was no longer a holiday. Then it came back, but without the obligatory parades. Then we had the paradox-people actually started participating voluntarily. They were organizing demonstrations with flags. True, they were few in number, but there were people. As I see them, I immediately reminisce my childhood days, my years spent at the institute, the first years working at the newspaper edition and many other things. Oh, and our childhood cache.
The cache didn’t have a happy ending. Someone had found it and one day we came and saw that it had been emptied. Our cigarettes, the slingshot, the badges and the knife were all gone and we didn’t even find out who the thief was.