Sale got two more yugos for DBA. They were perfect twins, even had consecutive registration numbers. So we had five cars now. With the country now being the stump of a federation (just Montenegro and Serbia), most of the component manufacturers were now abroad and it's actually a small miracle that they were still made. The engines were still made at DMB (Dvadesetprvi Maj Beograd - 21 may Bg), but the springs were from Lancia, imported. The engine wasn't the 55HP as with the older two, but rather the 45HP, smaller 903cc engine that used to power the sporty versions of the old Fiat 850 (the coupe and cabriolet).*
The time of purchase is my best guess, because they were purchased at the automobile fair, which is traditionally this month. And by the end of the year, when the crisis hit, I had to go to Vršac several times, each time carrying an emergency supply of 5l of gasoline in the trunk. The road was nearly empty, so the ride was quite smooth, not much stop-n-go or acceleration, but still these little ponies never needed that extra gas. "Eats shit, doesn't need gas".
Later in the year, we fitted one of them with extra springs and an 85l tank. It was the transportation horse, to carry the fuel for the others. Once at romanian border we poured at some guy who had some speciel funnel with airplane fuel filter - a sieve which wouldn't let water through. Don't know how that worked, the holes seemed quite small but it let the gasoline through at considerable speed, and a spoonful of water remained on it. Fuck computers, this is technology.
About this time we had an electrician, some simpleton guy, his daughter was Nina's classmate, they lived somewhere behind the corner, fit everything around the house. Well, almost everything, he left a few things unresolved, like the xor switch in the anteroom, similar one in Johan's room (aka pantry) and garage. When he asked at what height to put the switches, I closed my eyes and lifted my hand at the expected height. Then we added 15cm to that, which will be the thickness of the floor.
Once Števa and I drove to Šid, after finishing work in Belgrade, so highway west. Beyond Šid one whistles, nothing there, the border is closed, and even from the Ruma intersection there was barely any traffic. The road was practically vacant. You just drive, doing nothing, keeping foot on the pedal and watching the road pass beneath and around you. The weather was the mushy lousy bright cloudy, don't see the sun, where's north where south. Hypnotizes in two minutes. We quickly switched to chatter for chatter's sake, to keep the mind focused and the car from veering into a random crash on empty highway.
On the way back I decided to drop by Ljuba, whom I didn't see since... guess early eighties. Found the house by the adress (probably we sent some letters at times), got in, he wasn't there so we had a coffee with kuma. She was still good looking, still the good domestic chick, seemingly ordinary but actually not. The kids were okay, there they finished the house...
On some other occasion we held a demo for some companies there, so he was there as the experience programmer from some local firm, which was among the prospective customers. Sale did his regular spiel, and specially lent the spotlight to Brata to showcase the payroll and specifically demo the time it took for the whole process between begin of the batch and ready to print. It was still the slow version, where he writes column after column, running through the whole table forty times, instead of doing the whole process row by row and writing each row only once. Even so, the speed was impressive, in terms of speed far ahead of anything they witnessed before. After the presentation we had just enough time for a smoke break, so I asked Ljuba how does it look to him. „You poop a lot“. Well, fuckit, I remember when you said you couldn't even use indexed tables, had to deal with relative, of course fox looks like space tech in comparison. And it's not that we were immune to bullshit, but what we had was minor stuff, small bugs in hundred places and we won't ever find the time to fix them all, and what we fix for one customer is not regularly distributed to all the customers, and we may even distribute an older version at times, and the fixes may be long in the waiting... But whatever was demoed was exactly as it looked, no tricks there.
On sezam on 17th:
"Two days ago, in Sombor, I heard two stories about the blue helmets: first, that first few hours after disembarkment they exchanged dollars at official rate, until they got smarter. This was still long enough for some smugglers to get rich quick, and some other smugglers to get into a fight among themselves...
The other story is from the other side of Danube, about a fight between some Russians and Belgians. Russians say "Zđesj Serbija!" while Belgians say "Here Crowaysha", which ended in fists. Don't know how much of a fight, but some broken noses for sure.
Don't believe this was anything big altogether, but there was something. Locals, supply details.
Also, you can't buy a bicycle and vicinity, also jeans and few other things. All bought by hungarian neighbors. They buy everything. The folks in Subotica complain, and now in Sombor too, though I don't know why - we emptied anything between Szeged and Györ and Békescsaba for years, now it's their turn for courtesy visit."
And, BTW, we're in a different country now. SFRY is no more, on 27th they announced we're the FRY now. And the word is actually not federation, it's a league, so we're now a Bundesrepublik.
These months Grgi was a patient for acupuncture. He fucked up at training - he sparred with some youngster first, then stood aside to observe another couple fencing. Ever since he wasn't a member of country's representation, he quit competing and became a trainer. So he stood there, all hot and sweaty, and caught a draft and his left shoulder started screwing him for all it was worth. He tried many things, even found some sport medicine specialist, but the pain stayed. So he decided to try acupuncture. She found the appropriate points in her books, and it turned out to be a lineup from his collarbone to half his bicep. She already had a better, stronger stimulator, which would pass some low voltage, around 1V, low strength pulsating current. She'd hook its terminals to the end needles. He looked like a model of a transmission line.
He paid in eggs, his folks had hens and too many eggs. Sales were a problem, so for a while he was peddling eggs to folks at DBA.
He'd lie prostrate on our old couch, which fell through second time, the springs in the middle have sagged again. The upholsterer didn't replace them last time, just rebound them. The first crater came from dad's watching TV, in the years while the contraption was in my room (i.e. until it got remodeled into purple in august 1973). This time they failed as being too old and worn out. Grgi already had quite a belly by then, it's a miracle what courting Višnja by going out for dinner so often can do in just two years. Which lasted while it did, and then only the appetite remained. The destiny of ex sportsmen. Anyways, the belly fit the hole snugly, and his back was straight.
She didn't cure him, he just got better. Then later he found another sport medicine specialist, who shone some yellow light on him, and he said it nearly solved the problem.
The hole in the couch was bothersome. I slept on the part which doubled as backrest in the day; it was she who slept in the hole**. It did happen from time to time, that I take a nap after lunch, because she did some heavenly miracles in the kitchen, and my circulation would go to the urgent task of digestion, leaving the brain working on only seven of thirteen cylinders (which was an internal joke, which never provoked anyone to ask „why thirteen“... yet on other jokes they always find logical flaws), and belly in the hole was the only feasible position. Nina described it with these words: „dad loves mama's hole, it's so nice, comfortable and soft“.
There was also a case of troublesome meat, again folks shopped at some guy in a village, and had to take antibiotics, pretty much the same as happened back at march 1986., except this was not organized at all, just regular citizens. A sizable hubbub was raised, it even arrived to the local newspaper. (... 56 words...) Well yeah, but the shit got published, and the citizens expect the state to do something, so the county principal leaned on the inspection, the boss of inspection then (... 98 words...)... The matter dragged for some while longer(... 63 words...).
Don't know where we found a mortar majstor, and one like this at that... He lived somewhere near the post office, in some old backyard apartment, next yard to the one where stour's erc was. Števa used to live next door, but soon managed to find some better place. This guy had a stall on the [green] market, sold produce and fruit, and at times partnered with one veterinarian inslector's husband (maybe that's how we found him), who was as reliable as a willow spike, a gambler, getting into a triper every so often, unable to keep track of his own lies and promises. The stall wasn't turning much of a profit, because „I simply lack the imagination... mind you, one day I sell everything, and the next day on kvantaš [wholesale green market, where retail buys straight from peasants or bigger merchants] I have barely enough money to replenish the store. Then I eyeball some insane margin and top it with 20% more, and sell everything again, get a ridiculous amount of cash, and the next day that's not enough for yesterday's stock... I'm incapable of guesstimating it rich enough to follow the reality“. And so it was better to plaster walls, good that he knows that job too, that's sure money, paid in [german] marks, and no need to keep up with the whims of the inflation.
He was a funny guy, and a strange face, resembling mostly that guy Pierre Richard [reeshahr] from mid-seventies french comedies, so light-haired and with a brow up to mid scalp. Had a sense of humor, I don't know how many times we said „don't want to have a 'majstor killed the gazda' title in the newspaper“, or in the opposite direction.
There was a lot of work, the whole house needed mortar, outside and inside, plus the layer of bavalit on the outside. For the scaffold he managed himself, I ran out of goodwill. That is, for the first part I rented from stambena, but this took a while and they eventually called to return it. By then the outside was mostly finished, at least the front and neighbor's side, and it was easier on the gate side, no gable, and the rear, where the terrace was.
Now the straightness of the walls came to roost - in some places (like the main door, for example) he even had to chisel down the siporeks where it butted out below the upper plate; above it it was flush with the plate, that's where I laid the blocks straight to the line. So our walls, with the mortar, are thick between 32 and 38 centimeters, depending.
Couple of years before that, while we were building the garage and the windshield wall, and the upstairs walls, I had to have my own set of tools, no majstors bringing their own. I bought a trowel, plastic buckets - and, oh the bliss, they were plastic, with walls properly sloped for easy pouring out, and good handles, I think one or two of those are still in some use, thirty years later. And a fangla. They didn't have a regular one, sheet metal with wooden handle, but some plastic rubbish. Changed my mind soon thereafter. Just like these buckets, this plastic was easy to wash, and pouring out of a clean vessel leaves far less on the walls, almost nothing, so it remained smooth for years. I couldn't believe that such a plastic toy would actually do the job better than the classic metal [one]. And its handle was not round, but rather square so it sat firmly in hand, and wouldn't crack from water over time, and wasn't riveted to the vessel, it was injected in one piece, so the inside was smooth even where it connected, which never happened with the classic [one].
And the guy liked this fangla so much that in the end he promised to steal it from me. He also passed the same phases, from disbelief to delight.
The whole exercise took two-three months, well into may. He cost me maybe 700 or 800 marks (plus fangla), which was an okay price, not enough for him, too much for me, the way that it goes. And this gambler guy worked one day as a grunt, guess working off a debt. He left one sneaker, which he never came to pick, who knows if he ever remembered where he lost it.
----
* amazingly, the same engine is still used in various FIAT's vehicles - in 2020 I rode a FIAT 500 cab, a regular spacious five-seater, with that engine, running on methane, and it didn't even have to rev high at all. Amazing.
** and she slept on my left side, which was only then. Later, we developed the opposite habit which we almost never changed. Except once, eleven years later (v. 20-VI-2003.), with funny consequences.
4-III-2020 - 31-X-2025