march 1960.
Just some random bits, can't place them into any particular year, just remember that I was a kid.
Granny had her set of rhymes, sayings, nicknames... whole lore, which I later traced to her mixed village, near enough the border and thus having lots of linguistic influence (though the Romanians were not the largest minority, it was Hungarians... but then there were some seventeen others). Today I remembered she used to call me "zmaj Mikul" (mostly as one word) when I'd accomplish some feat, like jumping on a bed ten times in a row. Now the -ul suffix is romanian, but Miklos (miklosh) is the hungarian version of Nikola - the day of that saint is called Mikulás (mikulash) in hungarian. And "zmaj" is dragon in serbian... who knows what's the story behind this.
Op, cup, nakalup
četr babe, jedan zub
Doesn't make much sense - "op, cup" is the dance movement/call, sometimes may translate even as "hanky panky". "Na kalup" is "on(to) the mould". And the second line is "four grandmothers one tooth". Again, there seems to have been a story behind this, but I think it was lost even to her.
Wrote the above in july 2024; by december I remembered another one:
leba sira i krompira
da ti dupe svira
(bread cheese and potatoes
that your ass plays [music])
The music. It came from the radio, the old niš* RR, a rarer model, though, who knows what were they doing then, I don't remember ever seing another one like that. The next model I've seen in thousand places, this one not. We'd listen to the Merry tuesday, just before lunch, which was a fun show for the kids, back then when they still had actors who could do kids' voices without peeping, squealing and falsettoing. Probably the main couple were Dara Čalenić and Ljubinka Bobić. But, the music... was actually scarce. Their phonotheque was quite short, and they had to cover the music from all our nations, they all had to have a share of airtime... so then when the regular emisija „music from our ends“ is on, it's always the same song, which on one hand were interesting at first, then it's hey I know this one, the joy of recognition, and then it becomes annoying. First annoyance was „Zajko kokorajko“ (probably a crowing rabbit, or whatever, didn't quite get the macedonian then), and then the rest of the macedonian, with those voice jumps into high pitch. They had some interesting oro too (a hora), which would begin slowly then accelerate, but that grew old too.
The second category were the songs of which I understood the verses... to a point. Only in my old age I realize it's a global problem, singing is a language to itself and a huge part of humanity has some trouble catching the exact words in the sung verses, and that these frequently come across wrongly. Two such cases, that I remember clearly, are „devojke iz Gruže lepe su koruže“ (the girls from Gruža are as pretty koruže“. The last word should be two, „ko ruže“ (as roses), which I thought was a mispronounced „kožure“. Kožura is a skin on the roast (and kožurica is foreskin). But why would a girl be a kožura, or compared to it? The other case is the dalmatian „sve ptičice izgore“ (all the little birds „iz gore“, from the mountain; „izgore“ means burned). This was later (around 2020) confirmed as a common occurrence, someone asked „why did the little birds burn?“.
There was also the third category of music, the childrens'. The domestic were okay, for what existed of them, they were produced but I don't remember too many of them. I more remember the music from Disney's movies, which maybe weren't more aplenty of, but was full of various effects and gimmicks, which made it, as it were, suitable for the kids. And it was played a lot and often, and also gradually became annoying. Of course, then I didn't even know the word 'annoy', but I remember feeling frustrated that they're wasting preciuos airtime - that children's emisija before lunch was some twenty minutes long, right after the river level report - on the same rubbish, why don't they play something nicer.
From time to time čiča Rada would drop by, bringing his father and my grandfather, or whomever he'd pick. He drove that opel olympia, now whether still state or did he already manage to buy it when it was written off, all black with lots of nickel plated slats, specially on the front grille. He'd park behind the corner most of the tima, don't know why, sometimes at the gate. He'd leave it unlocked, so I'd get in and, just like any kid, jerked the levers and buttons. I'd honk a bit, but I understood that I shouldn't do that because it uses power so the car may not start, and if I overdo it he'd lock the car and then I'd have nothing. The car radio astonished me most, with those radio buttons which slid in so smoothly, pushing out the previously pressed button. To this day I don't get how the mechanics of that work, how do the levers operate. I'd press them a dozen times until I got bored. The radio wasn't even on.
This toy is, I'd say, the only one preserved from before this year. I asked for a car... and was very disappointed when they tried to fool me with this one instead of providing a real one. Well I did understand, eventually, that the real one is something we can't have, but then the misadvertising got me on the wrong side, the attempt to pretend it's a car. It's a toy. And I did play with it. It's hungarian, the word means "midget auto" and the quality is really good - at least the metal and paint have survived the intervening 60+ years without a hitch, apart from some scuffing. The mechanism didn't last, though - it was either supposed to be wound up by pressing the driver's head, or the head was supposed to go up and down while it ran. That lasted maybe a week or two and something got bent inside.
I had a trotinet, i.e. a scooter. Not the tough iron job with proper tires (I'd say the wheels were the kind they put on factory floor carts or dollies, about 18cm), ball bearings etc that Mancika had, hers was running incredibly. This was more of a make-believe scooter, with wooden wheels and practically no bearings, wouldn't get far without permanently pushing off. But it was something and I had it.
I almost didn't recognize the fence behind, didn't remember it at all. But yes, this picture is old enough, that's before the neighbor behind had built the extension to the house. The cherry behind me survived until june 1971..
The neighbor's tiny window should be seen through the cherry's crown, but I guess it didn't exist yet, he probably had one facing left, but when he built the addition there, this corner turned out dark. So he cut a window in this wall, but as it was facing our yard, he nailed something like a stool to it, so to hide the view (both ways) but still have the light. Despite never getting any coat of paint, that stool is still there even today.
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* Niš is the city where the factory was, lowercase when an adjective. My rules.
Mentions: june 1971., Balogovi, emisija, Radomir Sredljević (čiča Rada), in serbian
7-IX-2020 - 24-II-2026