Along Petropavlovskaya Street (now Igor Serdyuk, formerly Oktyabrskaya) in Kremenchug, stone and wooden shops are being built on both sides, and in the quarter adjacent to Konstantinovskaya-Green Street (now Heavenly Hundred, formerly Proletarian) there is a Kremenchug attraction – a fish market. And what kind of fish was not here! Dried and dried, brought by Chumaks from the Don and Crimea. It was sold from carts, most often in bags. Under wooden sheds at any time of the year – fresh Dnieper fish for every taste and budget:
river sterlet,
meter perch,
the incredible size of the soma,
in wicker baskets, live crucian carp, tench bounced, loaches swarmed,
and in winter, the bright colors of perches shone next to the dull brilliance of burbots. A special revival reigned at the fish market during the days of fasting, when salting was literally scattered, burbots were briskly traded, without which a real Kremenchug capusnyak was not conceived, ruffs and perches were not stale – the basis of any fish soup. Among the Jewish population of Kremenchug there were many connoisseurs of stuffed pike. Delicious and inexpensive fish was delivered in plenty.
In the warm season, the wooden platform, where fish were traded in the morning, turned into a kind of labor exchange in the afternoon. People who came to Kremenchug in search of work did not always manage to find it right away.
“Having wandered around the city for half a hot summer day and not finding work, a man, tormented by hunger and thirst, lay down helplessly on the dirty stage under a canopy, where fresh Dnieper fish was traded in the morning, and fell asleep with an uneasy sleep. But before going to bed, he drew with chalk on the soles of his holey shoes, who he was by profession and those who needed workers of such a profession, they were found here by “advertising on the sole”,
recalled a contemporary of those events.
Based on the materials of the book “Streets of old Kremenchug”. Authors: A.N. Lushakova and L.I. Evselevsky