01-V-1976.
We came home by šinobus, which takes 150 minutes, but is cheap and smoking is allowed - the buses still had the ashtrays, and while it wasn't forbidden, it wasn't comfortable either, the ashtrays were rarely empty, and were quite small to begin with. And people would stuff them with all sorts of candy wrapper etc, as there were no garbage cans or bags anywhere. So train was preferable, and for a weekend it paid off to take a two way ticket, there was a 25% discount - I actually found and scanned it, stamped 29th. However, the validity of it depended on the length of the trip. There's 45km between Zrenjanin and Novi, but 96km by rail (it's complicated), which makes the ticket valid for a weekend. For an extended weekend like this - the mayday being on a weekend, we'd also have the 3rd off, we took a ticket to Elemir, which is a dozen kilometers beyond, so the ticket would be now valid for six days.
I guess this was shot exactly on the mayday, but it could have been any day of the long weekend. Most probably 2nd, I sort of remember it was a sunday. [checked, 1st was a saturday]
Took the škodilak, had a roll of slides in praktika, and we drove Helga's daughter to the other river, off the road to Novi. Not into the coastal jungle, as we did last time, just sat around and made a few shots. She was about 16 at the time, and I remember she asked if we could get her any material - articles, photos, whatever - about "The Sweet" band. We sort of promised but... at the time I've completely given up on reading the pop stuff in the magazines, and buying Džuboks was not an option (my costs were prioritized into studying, beer+tobacco, photography, and everything else fell under „if possible“). Džuboks wouldn't have anything on such a band, anyway.
I really don't remember what we talked and what we did all afternoon, except posing for the four shots we made (out of which one was just the dog at the keeper's house door, and the fourth of the girl, but smudged for movement, despite the flash, so her face come out oddly twisted). The generational disconnect was just a tad too much, even though it was just about 5-6 years.
I was drinking schweppes, being the driver on duty.
Amazingly, the shirt I had for the prom was still wearable and even the upholstery tape looked like new. And the green corduroy jacket would serve at least another year, maybe longer.
I asked anyone on the group to write a ξ the way they think it should be written, on the front of my geometry copybook. Quite a collection.
The copybook was smuggled from Romania.
The „noli tangere circulos meos“ was an internal joke, because of Poincaré's model of hyperbolic planimetry, where various circles play the role of straight lines. The other part of the joke is in the language itself - why would a Greek, allegedly deep in his scientific thinking as the story would have it, speak latin at all?
Speaking of smuggling, we had an interesting turn of events once. We were returning from Timişoara, can't remember which year it was, at a time when they had foot and mouth disease among the cattle. The standard measures were enforced, when entering Romania you had to drive through a shallow pool of some desinfectant, so at least anything that the tyres picked up off the pavement would be neutralized. That's to enter cleanly. To exit, ours have forbidden import of any meat product from their side, for as long as the measures are in effect. Dad, as a cattle engineer, knew it all and stuck to it, so we didn't buy anything of the kind, not even the chinese spam nor cheese. There were other things to buy - and we bought 60 eggs.
At the crossing, the customs guy ordered us to destroy the eggs. But why, this is not meat, the diseases affect cattle, not hens. I know, but our boss is inside and watching, and the regulation wasn't specific, said „nutrition of animal origin“, so it's no use trying to explain.
So what could we do - we took both cartons to that barrel on the other end of the parking lot, and cast the eggs inside, one by one. As if we were shooting a scene with Timothy Byford. We suffered a loss, but at least we had fun.
Around this time there was a gig at her faks (college), now whether it was by end of april or first half of may, beats me. I know that I already had the clogs and have learned to walk in them by then. Ljuba procured them for me, his father was a cobbler and was making them as well. Walking down Cara Dušana, from her place to mine, was screwy, because the sidewalk was made of bricks, which were mostly dislodged, the edge bricks were next to a rut carved in by bicycle wheels, which would then turn into puddles. My ankles would often slip this way or other. The stone floor in the college's grand hall was a different story, smooth, flat and just right for various tricks which I practiced then. For one, I'd walk sideways without lifting feet off the ground, by swiveling on my heels, then on my toes - that one pair of moves would see me half a meter to the side.
The band which played was the Omega, no less. Why would a band from Hungary, quite famous already at the time, take a gig for five hundred people, in a space with awful accoustics, is beyond me. Perhaps they felt like going for a trip, perhaps they wanted to smuggle something, have a good time, and if some groupies come along, fuck. Whichever it was, they played it at full power, it was really good.
Mentions: Helga, Ljubivoje Tomić (Ljuba), Novi Sad, Omega, praktika, šinobus, škodilak, in serbian
24-III-2020 - 31-X-2025