Max talks about his home town, mentioning the social life of young people and the attraction of the outside world.
MAX: Max, interviewed by Lisa or talking with other family members We were living in a small town; there were about five or six main streets, and there were two lakes surrounding the town, but inside there were six, seven, eight streets, avenues, something like that. There was a main street where the young boys and the young girls used to go out on dates. These streets took us out of the middle of the town, out in the big world! To the bigger cities. There was the road to the railroad station and also the road for the boys and girls to go romancing. Yeah! In those days was the same thing as nowadays.
In the time of Max's youth, Wysokie Litewskie was certainly a small town. The estimate of five or six main streets in the town seems barely reasonable. A modest-sized pond near the entrance of the Sapiega Castle ruins —today about 100m or 325 feet square— might be generously described as a lake. The Pulva River was at one time dammed a bit further downstream from that, but at some undocumented time the dam disappeared; if it was present in Max's time, it would have defined the downstream boundary of a second lake alongside the town.
The town's main street, Pocztowa (Post Office) Street, was an obvious place for young people to gather. It ran past the town's most salient feature, the market square – arguably the town center. Would that unsophisticated trade-ground be of any interest to young people like Max?
We can imagine that any path that led out of this small, isolated town could be seen as a route to the big world.
In the region it was not unusual for a town's railroad stop to be some distance away. Then and now the Wysokie railway station is about 5km north of the town via a lovely tree-lined road. There are no records of any structures along this road so, yes, secluded and very likely romantic.