Someone told me to wait. I got in line and found myself at the end. In front of me stood a blue, slightly leaning, and almost rotten wooden fence, behind which, in a pine grove, stood my grandfather’s GAZ-69A.

The pine grove had to wait the longest. It had been waiting for its near-complete felling for 25 years. The cause was inevitable gentrification, which had reached our village, along with the appearance of the new neighbor Zhenya on his quad bike. Next in line was the GAZ-69A. Its engine had blown from the inside after I forgot to drain the radiator for the winter.

The fence, however, didn’t have to wait long: it was quickly demolished and consigned to the mercy of fire. In its place, another fence was built–made of the then-popular metal mesh stretched over square metal posts. If you shook one end of this mesh, waves ran along it, producing a characteristic sound. I will never forget the sound of those mesh waves. As children, we used to lounge on it like on a vertically suspended hammock, and it creaked in a strange way. On the side of the grove that hadn’t yet been cleared, the mesh was attached to a metal garage where we kept the already-busted GAZ-69A. The garage resonated, making everything sound even better. The garage is still waiting.