december 1961.: First I thought 1960
It's not that the month is approximate, even the year is. Judging by the adjacent pictures - I see there's the new year's spruce, and one of dad's brothers-by-maternal-uncle from Zajač visiting. Ah, there's asphalt outside on this shot, and everything between it and the house is mud with footprints, so this is not 1960. The patch shown would grow its own grass next spring, but this time it was still fresh from the groundwork, so mud it was. The path beaten served all the folks from across the street, who'd come with buckets to get fresh water. Some would carry two buckets on a long obramica (rame being the shoulder), a long bent pole which hung over the shoulder and carried the buckets hung in hooks at either end.
Now whether it was M. or B. who was the guest at the time I wouldn't know, M. died too early to leave an impression on me, and the two did look alike. I'd say B, by his posturing on other pictures, he was that self-important legal guy (later a judge, and also a football referee). The third, G., I would recognize anytime, he always had a moustache and was thinner than these two. Only in 2021 I learned, from G., that they actually had a fourth brother, the smartest of them all, who'd have had a promising career, but jumped off the train in a wrong way (the train was narrow track and would drive slowly through the village) and eventually died in the hospital.
Amazingly, dad managed to pull this shot, or is it dad on the left and the uncle took the shot... I guess the latter is more probable. There couldn't have been much light, through that one window in winter, no matter that it's facing southwest. As was customary in the family at the time, turning on the lights was delayed as long as possible. Not that the cost was much, there was a single 60W bulb (later 100W), it's that the window is facing the street and the insides become visible to anyone outside, and also the general dislike of mixing natural light with artificial, one of those fads that everyone held to and nobody could say why.
I see the better flatware is on the table, probably from a set they got as a wedding gift. Of course, a small rakija decanter - it was considered in bad taste to pour brandy from an ordinary bottle. In the following decades it came to a near mandatory presence of a crystal glass bottle (no matter that glass is definitely not a crystal).
Behind mom there's the fuel box, or rather a wooden chest where firewood or coal would be stored, to be at hand without the need to go to the shed to get some. On the wall above the box there's the kuvarica (literally, female cook), an embroidered piece of simple white cloth with some scene and text. The one we had showed a guy addressing a girl by the big brick-built stove, and the text was „kuvarice, manje zbori, da ti ručak ne zagori“ (cook, speak less, lest your lunch burns).
Mentions: rakija, Zajač, in serbian
10-VII-2022 - 13-IX-2024