Tag #133714 - Interview #78150 (Magda Fazekas)

At home, we only had a kerosene lamp, which we used for lighting. But it was only us in the village who had a so-called Aladdin's lamp, which equaled the light of a hundred candles. That's what my parents used to say, that this lamp had the light of a hundred candles. When lit, this lamp usually was placed in the living room. And it had such a strong light, that if the shutters weren't put up, you could see it shine out on the street. The lamp was beautiful; it wasn't made of porcelain, but of metal. It must have been a kerosene lamp, it just had a part which had to be placed upon it. They said that the piece to put upon it was so thin and sensitive, that if you didn't handle it with care, it could crack. They called it mantle, the thing they put on it. [Editor's note: The interviewee is most likely talking about a gas lamp.] And when you lit the lamp, it gave such a great light. And of course it wasn't like a bulb. After being used, it went flat. Therefore we didn't use it all the time, so that it didn't get spoiled. We lit it rarely, mostly if we had guests or on holidays. Of course we lit candles too on holidays, and we used a standard kerosene lamp too.

We heated with beech wood. We didn't buy much pinewood. It was always my father who purchased the wood.