Tag #154499 - Interview #94472 (Laszlo Ringel)

The building housing the pot house was 250 years old. It was a brick building with 1m thick walls. We also lived in the rooms of this house. There was an annex to the house where there was a food store. There was a big dinner room, a living room for parents and children where it was not allowed to smoke or drink, there was a room where one could play chess or cards and another room, something like a bar. The big room was often rented for weddings or birthday parties. There was a big kitchen in the building. Before my sister was born we lived in two rooms in the pot house: grandfather Menyhert in one and my parents and I in another. There was another building adjusting to the house. It was made from air bricks, a mixture of clay and straw. Air bricks are strong and warm. After WWI this house was a distillery where slivovitsa, a local plum brandy was produced. There were 2 m high, 1.5 m in diameter barrels in the cells: red plums purchased in surrounding villages were kept in them for fermentation. There was special equipment to process the fermented plums into slivovitsa. We, children, used to sip this fermented juice through a straw. It was delicious, but heady. In the late 1920s Czechs introduced state monopoly for production of alcohol, and the equipment from this distillery was shipped to a distillery in Uzhgorod. The building was reconstructed. There were two one-room apartments made in it with all comforts and separate entrance ways. One was leased to a clerk from the village hall and another – to a teacher of the local Slovak school.