Slave's wedding. Dad drove us reasonably early in the morning. It's not that far, less than 100km, it's just that it's on the other side of Fruška and the climb seems to take forever. But we got there and then it began.
The trouble was that I was the kum. As such, I had several official duties - first of all, to deliver the best and fanciest present to the young couple. Me being a long haired hippie student made that point moot, I simply wasn't in that category at all. We did buy something, nice but not too expensive. Next, when leaving the municipal offices (there was no church wedding), it's my job to spill coins around, from a bag, to the shouts of everyone "kesa, kume" (kesa being the (money) bag), which was short for "kume, izgore ti kesa" (your bag is on fire). The kids would then scramble to pick up the coins. This was solved by mom going to sdk and exchanging a few hundred (roughly 4$ altogether) into smallest denominations - they had that, as all the retail had to deposit their daily cash into the vault on its outer wall, and were held accountable for every coin left in the registers. These things were strictly controlled, petty theft is dangerous. (Large scale theft is politics, that's different)
Third, I had to know how and where to sign, no problem, did that.
Fourth, I had to demand things. I did ask for four fat horses on the way to the city hall, and the band kept playing that song - it being the hymn of my city, everyone knew that. I actually meant a carriage, but never mind.
Fifth, I had to be the life of the party, should keep drinking all the time but never get too drunk. Which I did marvelously, drinking špricer all the time, with anyone who wanted, then adding more water but no wine to it, for as long as it had any color - with white wine, there was no way to notice the difference in all the chaos. His brother just loved to drink with me - I knew him from the few visits before, and he was a junior at physics at the time (or enrolled in october), even had the looks of Nikola Tesla, down to the mustache and partition. I got him drunk, my trick worked.
I even held the microphone for a while, to everyone's amusement. They told me, later, that I was the surprise of the day - seeing me with long hair and split beard, they expected anything but me leading the kolo up the stairs to the top floor (they held the party under an awning in the yard), then down, not missing a beat. The accordeon player had to follow us at least to the middle landing.
We had a little accident - the first glass of wine that we had to drink as soon as we arrived, we were to smash the glasses on the ground. Unfortunately, mine didn't hit the concrete, but rather the one patch of soil, no larger than a handkerchief, which was left for some future tree. The soil was elastic, it rained recently, so the glass bounced and then shattered - and one of the shard hit her toes, giving her a cut on the thumb toe. She wore a bandage for a while.
Paja was the court tie tier, he tied both Slave's and my tie.
In the morning (which was about 4:00 or thereabouts, this is just around the summer solstice) the guests finally left, and the older women started brooming the shards from the paving. That's when the four of us (we and the young couple) gathered all the wine that was left anywhere in the bottles and got down to emptying them all. As each was empty, we'd just smash it into the corner below the staircase. The pile got huge, fast. We exchanged girls, kuma in my lap and she in his, and then resumed drinking, until we eventually ran out of bottles.
At some point I got up to puke - too much wine on top of who knows how much food. Went back to sleep. Eventually we took a bus, some time in the afternoon, and went home.