The year I got into playing solitaire as well. Mom used to play it a lot, and dad too. Though he did it mostly in the evenings; mom did it while granma made lunch, or when friends (like Milosava) would drop by, to pass the time along with the coffee, which was then becoming popular, and was sipped from rather small, probably only 0,5dl porcelain cups.
We knew only two games then, the standard big one (the, I guess, Canfield type) and another, kind of stupid one, where you didn't have much choice, and skill was to be applied only rarely. We called that the small one. Later, in perhaps late sixties, we learned a few other types.
(the following could have been the last or overlast year; what I remember of it was fair weather, probably spring because the acacias on the street cast no shadow yet, and that I wasn't tall enough to see through the window without a stool)
My playmates were mostly Kale, little Brnjoki, sometimes E. (cross the street, he lived in a house next to Đuđa) or Bakračevi, and Mancika. She lived about fifth house from us to the railway, was a year older and a tad taller than I, which didn't matter at all, we played together nicely. Once it happened that my folks were all somewhere, on the [green] market or who knows where, so they left me alone to amuse myself for a couple of hours. They locked the gate, but the windows can always be opened from inside, so that's where I helped her in and we played just fine. My [folks] were suprrised when they returned and saw me having company, and the event was retold dozens of times over the years, „he let the girl in through the window“, yes, so what? I had not the faintest what the fuss was about, and there wasn't even a hint that I did anything bad.
And then of course I don't know when the fashion came around and then wouldn't ever leave, that boys and girls play separately, or at least not in couples. As soon as two would find some fun around something, be it even just moving pretend toys in the grass, one of the other kids would mock them, maliciously, with „muž i žena, mačka pečena“ (husband and wife, cat roasted - there's a rhyme but I never got any meaning out of it), where I never understood why would that boher anyone. The next mocking song began with their names, „...to su srca dva, ljubili se grlili se iza klozeta“ (...they are the two hearts, embraced and kissed behind the outhouse). That was even more difficult to understand, but I did gather that I'll be the target every time, so M. was gradually pressed out of the play. Not pressed out, rather we began nothing while alone, waited for someone else to appear.
About this summer one Nadica started appearing, year younger than me, sweet and not too popular, guess because she didn't know how to fit into our rules and customs (which I say now and didn't understand then). She lived in a shabby little house behind the railway crossing flagman's hut, guess they were poor, and it looks like she grew with reduced contact with the rest of the world. While we all had radios at home, and newspapers were commonplace, none of that reached har and she came across as an outsider. And she wasn't a regular either, she'd come sometimes.
28-VII-2018 - 24-II-2026