june 1960.
This is about the time they first sent me out to buy something. The shop was only two corners away, but there was a railroad to cross, with a proper fenderman with his little cabin (actually, a small 4x4m house, still standing 50+ years later, although now it houses some electrical devices), his little red flag and lantern (for the night). These lanterns are my internal proof we always knew of canola oil - that's what the fuel was, it shone better than petroleum. Decades later they tried to convince us that it's better than sunflower oil, as food.
The purchase was "for five dinars of yeast", for which I got the little package, perhaps 1,5x3x5cm with raw live yeast inside, wrapped in the so-called greasy paper. The counter was probably a head taller than I was, but the shopkeeper recognized me and asked me what I wanted - and so I bought the thing and brought it home alright. That was, as far as I remember, the first task I accomplished on my own. The only other thing I remember was the excellent weather, the very nice bright summer morning.
It crossed my mind now that dad mentioned the expression „colonial goods“, which I thought was a catch-all phrase for soap, shoe paste, spice and a bunch of other things not classified elsewhere. Now that I searched a bit, I see that the expression is still in wide use, the state puts it in public procurement tenders, where it means flour, rice and other basic staples. Still sounded funny to me when I remembered that, because... goods from colonies? Gimme a break. Our colonies they surely weren't.
There seems to be always some kind of shop in that house. Although, nowadays (2013) almost each house on that stretch of the street is a shop. I once counted, among those between the start of the street and the last pizzeria on that side of the railway, only four houses are still not shops. That happened throughout the nineties, though the novogradnja across the street sprouted in 1970 and 1980 (25. maj and its extension). On our side (of the railway) there was a butcher's shop at Krpara's, right next to Učubić, where the wieners were excellent and had the taste of wieners and were all pink, and the bologna (called parizer here, i.e. parisian) was the same pink stuff, just wider. Then in the sixties there was a drink shop just across from us, in Đuđa's corner room, though it was not held by her but rather her husband's sister with her husband, who had the right wing of the house. This was not a tavern, there were no glasses, so the gang boozed by the bottle. Specially when there's a crop campaign in šećerana, and the tractors and trucks line up from its gates, where they weighed them, half street long, and tractor drivers just lie on the lawn and hit the beer. The transformer tower, right there on the corner, was always peed on from behind. Good twenty years after it still stank so, the brick soaked it.
And then there was the newspaper kiosk at the gates of šećerana.
Then an old woman from the neighborhood, granma's friend. Unusually fat for the times. I remember her for bulging eyes, a strange name (Dalmatian, I seem to remember) and a weird cut of the jaw and mouth. This is probably her dalmatian sunday wear. The other one, with shades, I sort of remember, but not clearly. I think she also worked with grandma.
Note the guy in swim trunks in the background. He was probably going home from a swim on bager. Walking around in just swimsuit, or riding a bike like that, barefoot or just in flipflops*, was quite normal throughout fifties to eighties, then all of a sudden you needed at least one more item of clothing, even though bobody made a remark. The normal just changed.
Around that time dad and I went to visit his older sister, fifth village away from Zajač, some Žarnjevo or summat. The aunt was a fresh widow, someone shot her husband last winter, a delayed revenge from something from the war. They even knew who did it, but nothing happened, or at least nobody told me, even today I don't know who was on which side at that. From the looks of it, my uncle was a richer guy, man of the house, which was large and solidly built, all about it was twice as big as what my grandfather had. On the few remaining shots, he comes across as a largish guy, with longer hair, mostly with a disarming smile and life-is-good-here demeanor.
He left four children - Jara, who was a head taller than the others, blondish brunette, a real beauty; a son, a bit older than me; another daughter, younger and fully blonde, and another son whose age I could never guess, because he had some disturbed development, could be anywhere between six and eleven but couldn't even speak, not even walk. He was gangly, very thin and eventually ended up at some clinic. Last shots of him were from 1972, I think, and there he looked just the same.
There's a longish series of shots from this visit, dad did give it a long shot... There are too many faces to blur on each, and very little ambience, unless we count those fences and one corner of the house. And one bull.
Dad's grandmother was there, don't know why, she usually stayed with her other son, in Zajač. I remember the bus took us only to Valjinac, and then we two had to walk a couple of kilometers, on a country road, and it never crossed my mind to complain or cry. Must be that air.
I do remember the big rooms they had in the house, I guess used as a barn or storage, the steppers to cross the fences (a horizontal slat, a foot above ground, and protruding as much on either side of the fence, supported by spikes on each side, to step on instead of trying to jump the fence). There was a fenced in area in one of the rooms, where the poor kid spent time when others were busy, and there was a long meadow, sloping slowly downwards behind the house, where I played with the three. That is, Jara was already a tad old for us, she went to school, who knows which grade, and these two were even a bit dumb for my measure („lemme tell you a story, where oxen roar, and the cows shit, for your dinner“ - it rhymes in serbian, but only when you switch the accent on the last word to the completely unliterary, peasantly last syllable).
On the way back we went through a third village, where dad had an aunt, on a horsecart, someone was just going that way. While we were there, a huge storm came by, with plum sized hail. It so happened that a wasp stung me above the right eye, and they immediately wrapped a nice large chunk of hail in a handkerchief and pressed it against the sting. Didn't swell at all.
----
* the flipflops just started appearing - I think I had first ones in 1964, when almost everyone else had them, courtesy of Jugoplastika Split. We called them apostolke (as if apostles wore synthetic soles strapped with synthetic straps) or japanke (but that name was more westerly, Croatia and thereabouts). They didn't last, the strap would break where it connected to the sole, or would just pop out of it, which was often fixed by a piece of wire or a small nail.
Mentions: 25. maj, bager, Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Jara, novogradnja, šećerana, Učubić, Zajač, in serbian
10-XI-2015 - 6-II-2026