As he grew, that song became his shield. He worked on the railways, his hands becoming calloused and stained, but he kept his spirit in the melodies. He watched his friends succumb to the hardness of their lives, their dreams drifting away like smoke from a locomotive.
Nicolae grew up in a house where the walls seemed to lean inward, held together by his mother’s prayers and his father’s sweat. There was never enough of anything—except for the cold and the music that lived in his bones. Nicolae Guta - Biata mea copilarie
He was back in that leaning house in Aninoasa. He could smell the cold air and feel the rough wood of the crate beneath him. He realized then that his "poor childhood" hadn't been a curse. It had been the soil. The hardship had been the very thing that gave his voice its ache, its power, and its truth. As he grew, that song became his shield