A forever director of something, mostly šećerana. Fancy house but lately I heard it doesn't have running water in the kitchen, his wife wouldn't hear about it. I only remember I didn't like the guy, with gold tooth and the grombi* coats he wore. His wife and daughters liked me - I remember one winter when the girls pulled my sled with me on it all the way to the gates of šećerana and back, and then some. The sun was shining, the snow was melting in sunny places, there was half a meter of it.
He had conifers in his garden, see january 1960.. When our street got a sidewalk, there was enough only for one side, which is about enough, half of kombinat rides bikes anyway. The sidewalks runs our side of the street from beginning to the railroad, then switches to his side of the street and goes on until the park. This is how we got the unique case where a pedestrian crossing is simultaneously a railroad crossing, one'd say three in one in nowaday's speech. And this part of the street has pines, the rest of it sycamores (platanus, actually).
The sidewalk went on the odd side of the street, from its beginning to the railway, then on the even. On both sides of the railway there was a fence made out of track beams (still standing, actually, except one horizontal beam got shaved off by a truck in 2017) so the pedestrian cross the street and rails, well, diagonally. That is, they could stay on their side of the street when the weather was fair, but when it's muddy, there's no other way but to cross. And the sidewalk doesn't quite go to the rails, it stops where the fence begins, and then there are two sidestreets to cross as well, so there was some 20m of walking on the pavement's edge, then cross, then 10m more on the other side...
It was quite interesting when šećerana was working 6-14, and 200 bicycles leave at 14:00 sharp, then there's a train at 14:05, the barrier is lowered, and they fill the pavement full width for some 20m long. Then it is raised and they flood over.
The only accidents that ever happened was when some drunk fool hits the pedal when leaving kantina at night, and doesn't notice the bright lights of the canola-fueled railway lantern hanging on the pole. Incredible, how people can't see it. The pole was taken down every eithg months on the average, to weld or straighten.
He expected his girls to get married to highly positioned hopefuls in The Party, which didn't happen. The older one married a truck driver (and seems to have lived happily ever after), while the younger never married. She did get a job in Naftagas, which was rich most of the decades, and now has the trouble trying to sell the house, to pay off her sister and buy an apartment she thinks fits her level. Well, no takers for the price she asks, which is at least 4-5 times above what she may get.
The house was second next to the railway; the one at the corner held some distiller, who was too lazy to spread the leftovers, so he piled them up and wouldnt spread the pile until the anaerobic rot would create a decently horrendous stink. Then they died, their son (then an alcos) moved away and the house now belongs to Eva's family, and it hosted debelamačka twice.
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* kind of coarse looking but rich thick cloth, which was fashionable at the time