The long holiday weekend. The st twentyninth being a saturday, it meant no work on monday and tuesday as well. Sleš took the opportunity to spend it with his wife at her parents' place, in a village some 40km southeast (more by road), and had a gig scheduled for the first evening to do a disco night, i.e. a proper dance party, in the village culture home (which every village had, that's among the first things the communists built, mostly finished before the fifties). All fine but he didn't have a car, how to carry the records and equipment. Some cousin of hers would bring them back, so the problem is to haul it there. We volunteered, so I borrowed the škodilak from dad, which he easily gave, I had two years of driving staž by then, and off we went.
The road is easy until you get there. In the village itself it's mud everywhere, there simply isn't enough asphalt, there's a pavement only in the middle, wide enough only in the main street, everything else is... insufficient. Every now and then one parks two wheels off road, and the mud sticks, smears the pavement, and the thin paste is layering everything. Which is no big deal, we are used to it, it's just that we had to watch where our soles go, so not to touch clothes or anything but floor.
Sleš did his stuff professionally, did everything right except one heavy fuckup: he put me to hold the fort during his break. I managed to do it technically correct, each song began on the right spot at the right time, and lowering the needle exactly on the beginning of the third song, on an unknown player, is a substantial challenge. I did that right, it's my choice of music that was off. I played what I thought they should hear, without paying much attention to the dance rhythm. The audience didn't exactly leave, but they thinned. I guess many toilet breaks were suddenly urgent. Then he returned and lit them up again.
We returned at around 20:30 and got home just fine. Next week we heard how it went on there.
He played the music until the janitor shood them out - he still has to clean and lock the place - which was maybe around one, half two. Then most of the folks just moved to the tavern across the street. In every village the central square has a school, church or two, culture home, a grocery and a tavern. Post office and community office may be a bit away, and if the village is large enough, there may be other hubs of activity. This was a small one, so everything is at that square.
At five thirty the tavern owner threw the keys on the bar, „I can't stay up anymore, drink what you find, pay what you mean, bring me the keys“.
Sleš swears that in the morning he saw a few guys in the rain drain canals, lying in the mud.