03-VIII-1961.
They finished paving our street. They started during the spring, they cut all three rows of accacias. There were two rows on our side, then a gravel road, then one more. On our side there was a fat old accacia, with a bench nailed to it.
Then they ran bulldozers to take away a thick layer of soil, then laid large stones, then drove rollers over them. Then smaller stones, up to 100mm, roll. Then even smaller in two more layers. And finally asphalt, completely black, and then some powder on top of it, allegedly bone powder, to make it less sticky. Of course we didn't wait for that, we ran on the blacktop - finally a smooth surface where you can run without having to watch your step.
The asphalt was smooth and it stuck to our bare feet. Mom got mad seeing me come home like that, good that she caught me before I made too many steps through the house, who knows what I could have smeared. I remember there was trouble getting the tarred pebbles off my heels in the evening. Of course, there was no gasoline or kerosene in the house, so mom had to apply lots of hot water, soap and scrubbing brush.
They bought me a bicycle for birthday. A soviet thingy, sturdy and unbreakable, a bit heavy, and a bit smaller - 26" wheels when the standard was 28, which was enough to call it trofrtaljac (threequartered). It had a braking rear head, i.e. reversing the pedal engages the brake, and the front brake was a rubber pad which pressed on the tire from the top. At least it was wired, not the classic lever, the lever was something for the old bicycles for grownups.
During the next few days, before the road was officially open for traffic, I learned to drive the bicycle, on that 80m stretch between our corner and the railroad crossing. The ramp was down, so mom pushed me along the middle of the road (which was rather wide, because three blocks down there were the gates to nutritional-industrial kombinat, so lots of tractors and trucks were expected on it, and the pavement is almost a meter thick, starting with cannonball sized stones). At about 20m before the fender, I turned my head to tell mom that we should slow down now... but she was a dozen meters away. Ah, so I drove this by myself? Then I know how! So I stepped down (didn't fall!), turned the bike around and drove home (no, we don't ride bicycles, though we mount them - we drive them; it's not a horse, it's a vehicle).
This picture was taken a few days later. The sacks of the bone powder are still on the curb. Behind my rear wheel there's Danka Sejina, the fat lady from the 'hood, carrying a bucket of water from the well.
Around the same week they planted pine on our lawns. We now had to have lawns. Before this, there was a macadam road going between two rows of acacia trees - two rows on our side of the street, one on the other. We had a big fat acacia right in front of the house, with a bench attached to it, which gave equally big fat shade, and we played around it a lot, specially in the summer.
The rest of the street, beyond the railway, got planetrees. The pines took 30+ years to grow enough to cast some shade; the planetrees did that in 4-5 years. The pines were previously exhibited on the road from the Surčin airport to the city, in wood boxes, as decoration for the 1st summit of the non-aligned aliance (starting with then Egypt, India, Ghana, Yugoslavia, Marocco and a dozen other decolonized countries). After the summit, the then šećerana director, Učubić, managed to get these for our part of the street, because his garden had conifers, so the street would fit. He also diverted the pavement to his side of the street, while ours stayed unpaved until, I'd say, 1975 or so. Thaw time, it was rather muddy.
Mentions: kombinat, Sejini, šećerana, Učubić, in serbian
29-IX-2013 - 6-II-2026