25-XII-1993.
The big day when we moved. A shitty winter day, with mud, clouds, no rain nor frost, just shitty.
I came home to decant ten liters of the age old heating oil, because that was the price of transportation. We weren't using oil heaters for a couple of decades now, and this old barrel was left over. We got the truck from ms, who was DBA's customer, and I was counting on getting Ćola to drive, but got the other driver.
By the time I got home, mom and the girls already dismounted the kitchen cabinets and the double bunk bed. We (Števa, Grgi and Željko) came with one of them yugos. The truck came soon and we loaded the heating oil (which is actually diesel fuel, supposedly dyed so it's not to be confused with the more expensive diesel fuel, but the driver just didn't care - dyed fuel is much better than no fuel, and he only had to cover about 2km and he gets 10l, and fuel was very hard to find these days), and then all the cupboards and stuff went through the windows, into the truck.
We then unloaded at the new house. It was rather hot already, because we turned the heating on, and the differential feedback sensor wasn't really working. It was supposed to turn it off when the difference between pumped water and the reverse falls below 15 C, but it didn't. And we didn't have a thermostat yet.
The guys helped us unload, then we all helped the truck driver get his wheels out of a ditch - that's where the gas line was dug in, then filled in but not compressed, and now the soaked soil gave in. We didn't really get too muddy, the driver was experienced and steered sideways.
The guys stayed a bit, then went their ways, and we stayed to enjoy the first night in the new house. The beds weren't exactly in place yet, so we laid down the mattresses on the floor, between the cupboards laid on their sides. I slept on a sofa.
In february 2011, (... 6 words...) we found a scribbled "selidba 25.12.1993" on the underside of one, where the previous owner wrote a similar date from the seventies.
The shots were made while the girls were dismantling the beds and mom and she were taping the kitchen cabinet doors so they don't open during the move.
There's another story to this, but it couldn't have happened this time, because it was saturday, must have happened within the next two weeks. I left her old red bike at DBA, and not inside but leaning on one of the columns in front of it, in the underground. Of course, the next day the bike was missing, and I almost went to the police (at the other exit of the underground) to report theft, or maybe I called them on the phone, when I noticed a couple of guys pushing that bike outside, next to the place where I left it. I went out and had a few words. It was the neighbors' night guard (Jovela the pharmacist, same guy who was my lieutenant in the reserve, and few other shops paid him together) who "moved it to a safe place so it wouldn't be stolen". At some point he wanted some proof (the other guy stayed silent), because how does he know it's my bike at all. I took the bike by handlebars, pushed it behind me, looked him straight in the eyes from 1 pedalj away, and started "the left bolt on the rear axle is larger than one on the right side, the spike on the left pedal's shaft has been hammered and the right one wasn't" and a few more details that I couldn't possibly notice so fast. Then I suggested we take the bike to the police to solve the dispute. I somehow knew these night guards are probably ex cons and guessed this one wouldn't want to do that walk. Got the bike.
Mentions: august 1971., 25-XII-2018., 31-XII-2023., Atila Gereg (Grgi), Ćola, DBA, ms Rašetić, pedalj, Stevan Garaj (Števa), Željko Žaja, in serbian