The grand moba for Brane Simonović, somewhere on Bagljaš. The houses (then just in blueprints) were in a row (am. townhouses), with semidug-in garages - where else when there's no yard on the side. I rode, of course, my bicycle, got there rather early in the morning. The plan was to pour the slat on top of the garage. Everything was ready, the mixer, gravel, cement, water, power, food, booze, coffee... With a wee shot of rakija and coffee, we sat for more than half an hour, planning how to lift the concrete, because we saw there was no mechanical aid for it, no pulley, no elevator. And we needed to get it to the meter eighty height. To throw it up by spades would be screwy and we'd croak fast.
So we sat and played a brainstorming committee. Four mathematicians and one physicist, the gang from mašinska. Having had some experience with pouring concrete myself, we did the foundation already and maybe the bottom floor by now (or was this the year later? more probably now), I somehow came across as expert, compared with others. And we thought up a way to do this. We made a slope, of a couple of 2" planks, with support in the middle to prevent any rocking and wobbling, with smaller slats nailed as steps near the bottom, so the guy pushing the wheelbarrow would have purchase for his feet. We also made an S shaped hook for the other guy, who'd pull it. It'd hook into the frame around the wheel. I was mostly the pusher, sometimes pulled, and when I croaked, I switched to feeding the mixer. The effort is spread more evenly there, easier for me. By then my clogs' soles were rather eaten around the inner edges, as there'd always be some concrete droppings, and the gravel first ate the edges of the rubber sole, then the wood. Never mind, I intentionally came shod in old clogs, discardable.
But we got the job done, still within the daylight. We even had time to have another rakija, sitting in the sunset and admiring our work. There, whoever said that mathematicians lack the practical mind. And the physicist wasn't in the way either.
18-III-2026 - 18-III-2026