august 1957.
Judging by this picture, we moved to the city by now. The gate of šećerana is to the right in the background, and the built-in kiosk to the left. Whoever made the shot had the monument and the park behind his back. The paths elsewhere in the park were strewn with red slag, i.e. ground brick. This little path around the monument was ground marble, and it even had this cute low white marble curb. It was carefully maintained by Vlada parkar - the -ar suffix being generally added to anything to mean "guy who does -". I never heard the word horticulturist until college age, and I guess he never heard it at all. Never met the guy, he was more of a scary legend, who'd come to hunt us and beat us down if we did damage in the park. He was employed fulltime by the kombinat.
The outfit I wear is still in one piece, even all the embroidery is intact. Our first grandchild wore it once, just to have pictures of it.
Interestingly, I don't remember that barrier at the gate ever being lowered, and even less when it disappeared altogether. A barrier at a gate was a common thing then, any decent factory or object of any importance had to have one, less some saboteur drove in and did damage, which is why these were massive. Even when it was removed, there should have been some trace on the soil - the piece of fence between the kiosk and the gate is where the movie posters were hung - but it was neatly repaved, which is unusual. Neat paving was not anyone's order of business.
The trellis fence and the iron tube fence in front of it have soon vanished. The bowling alley (the building behind the kiosk) got its own piece of street, and some 3-4 houses were built there. At least one is still standing, the one on the new corner. The tube barrier was for the bus station, to allegedly herd the people into the bus. Bad project - the bus could never make a neat stop there, right after a left curve, and there were many people who wanted to get aboard. A bus can take up to a hundred, even the londoner that we had then - and there were people for some three buses, plus the two or three hundred who'd go on bicycles. So that fence became kind of pointless.
Note how mostly blonde I was. Same goes for dad - his eyebrows are light, and the outstanding parts of his hair would go light, given enough sunshine. I'd gradually switch to light brown between age of 8 and 11. My eyebrows remained light forever. The moustache, once I grow them, will always be lighter than the beard.
This could have been any time, because if we weren't in the village anymore, dad was working at that „bureau for agricultural base/fundamentals“ („osnova“ may mean both), and would visit the surrounding villages at times. This combination of lokomobila (steam engine on wheels, which moved where needed) and the dreš i.e. thresher, was by now already replaced with a tractor plus dreš combo, but the word lokomobila was still around and well known, they must have still been in use. This photo is from the city museum, I saw it several times, and now (march of 2025) it dawned on me that I saw this scene, so it must be dad taking me to work at times. I also remember the kampanjola (campagnola, italian jeep) and mud as well, so there were multiple trips like this.
I clearly remember having sat on something, under the roof of some shed without front wall, and watching this, from roughly the same angle as this was shot, and that there was a leather belt from the tractor to the dreš, almost a pedalj wide, and how I wondered how doesn't it fall off the pulley, as the pulley didn't have raised edges. I knew the principle of belts and pulleys, as mom used to sew on the old Singer machine, which had the foot pedal and a leather thong, and the thong had to lay tight in the groove in the pulley or else it would fall off. I've seen these flat pulleys on tractors later, and was proud that I knew their purpose.
Of course, I have no clue of the year when that happened. This, or any one of the next four.
Mentions: kombinat, pedalj, šećerana, in serbian
10-X-2020 - 12-III-2025