A high school with many names. Generally called technical school (as it initially was and is now again) or machine high school, it went through several incarnations of the name. Was MŠC (machine school centre), then MEŠC (machine-electrotechnical school centre), then Nikola Tesla, then there was one name which didn't take (socialist union didn't approve the usage of a distinguished revolutionary's name on a Texas style school)(where "Texas" meant "wild west"), then it was named after an obscure local revolutionary, who was practically a gorilla for someone important, I guess Leka Ranković, and was therefore deeply conspirative and left nearly no trace. But he did attend the antecedent of this school, the Railway High, and is mentioned in the archives of The Party, roughly two pages, and is from the same village as the then principal.
The first generation of professors was made of half-graduate engineers from local industry, who were sent to Rijeka to finish that Industrial pedagogy college. „Whole city knows“ (as the phrase goes) how the exams were organized - it was far cheaper to bring the professor here, pay full pansion in kaštel, and then organize the exam along with the dinner, than to send seven or ten of them over there. Of course I never asked them whether it was exactly so, and they come across as quite competent and knowing, and the school produced good majstors and technicians, and in further instance, engineers too.
I worked there 1981-1986, teaching maths. The staff included, at various times, Bogdan, Mima, Duca, Đole (mathematicians), Radisav (organizer of practice work for common base classes), Bane (some machine subject).
Now the rest of this article is tales, because I got most of it second and third hand, except the couple of episodes which occurred in my presence.
The school director since inception was some guy, who was probably a real machine engineer, and was some kind of a legend, with rich history. First of all in the staff room, which, it seems, he held on a short leash. When I began working there he was alredy directoring it in one of the units of the metal kombinat, but his ghost stubbornly refused to leave the building. As one of the rijeka school colleagues put it, after four long years under other directors (more of them, as we reorganized, see september 1983), „he came to my dream again, won't ever leave me alone“.
His first wife was the classmaster in VIII3 or perhaps rather the fourth division. They divorced, for who knows what reason, possibly because he was prone to meandering, director style, and finding company to share a bed for an hour or two in the hotel „Central“. In the staff room I met his second wife, a confused blonde who taught some of the humanities. Whether her vision was impaired, can't be certain but she did blink as if the contact lenses were not sitting well. After that reorganization of 1983, all the classrooms had to be renumerated, because previously both oours had their numbering systems. And it didn't matter in the slightest that there were clear instructions published, everybody knew which number tiles on doors were current, and knew that the old ones are there for just a fortnight, until everyone gets used to the new ones, nope, she got it exactly wrong and took her class, who were waiting where they should (in any reorganization, the students get it right from square one, it's the staff who get confused) to the class with the same number as per old system, and there was another class in it (again correct as per current layout) and she ran them out... Sixty students must be all wrong, and she's obvously right...
So blindsided she was, that one colleague put an issue of Novosti of three years ago, with huge title „Britain attacked Falklands“ by her things on the long desk, he found them in some back corner. She looked at it, and with the righteous rage of a nonaligned internationalist citizen, started cursing their imperialist mother, what do they want this time, didn't they get enough last time.
This old director, her husband, was some kind of a fan leader for Proleter, then in first league. During one of the skirmishes near the opponents' goal, he stood by the fence of the fans' lodge, and in a proper rooting flames, he swung his leg as if he meant to score the goal himself, hit the top bar of the fence and broke his shin. The next day, the same colleague from the previous paragraph, stands next to me, and she's right behind us, and tells me this joke:
Lala broke a leg, in the hospital they set it, put it in a cast, he lied for as long as necessary, and time came to take the cast off.
- doctore, I need to ask, now when you take the cast off, will I be able?
- of course you will, why wouldn't you
- well, finally, wasn't before
Of course she heard, and in a fit of rage she picked up her books and the logbook for the next class and rushed away to the class. It was still at least ten minutes before the bell, this was the long recess. During, if I remember correctly, 1985, there was a news that he heart trouble, a first stroke, accidentally exactly in a bed in the hotel „Central“, in pleasant company. As the geographer colleague said, „he must have gone too far with viagra*“.
When I left the school, he soon came back to it to be director again, as the workers in the metal firm simply ran him out. „You're a teacher, you're for a school, not for a factory“. The colleague who insinuate the newspaper and told the joke came in his place, maybe not immediately, and was much more succesful there. As told to me by Zdravko, whom we both had as a student, and who also worked there. So it happened that I collected so many stories about the guy without ever meeting him, guess the school was not big enough for a both of us.
And then he died, guess during the nineties, and the socials colleague lasted some twenty years more. She was younger than him by that much. Whenever any of these stories reached me through someone from Zmaj, they were invariably taking side of his first wife, then against his second wife, and not all of them against him.
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* it's an oddball remark to remember, considering that viagra wasn't marketed until at least dozen years later. It may have been known by then, and may have been smuggled for the select few, who knows. Don't remember even reading much about it, didn't concern me yet. Except in a small way, as I could imagine a wave of old farts with money and position reactivating themselves and finding way to younger ladies, now that they could serve them completely - they had everything else so far. This would, I imagine, disbalance the society, the young guys would find shortage of available women. I was actually right about that, except for wrong reasons.
4-IV-2013 - 17-IX-2025