The day of the big earthquake in Skoplje. All the building materials were redirected south, there was a sudden shortage of everything.
And our house was wide open. The holes in the front, where the new big windows will be were huge - the windows will have three panes, there will be a stone (well, the small grade gravel, smoothed) sill on the inside, and the concrete beam above the window should have some serious purchase on the sides... there was perhaps a quarter of the wall left. It was rather hot, and dad was sleeping in the living room, as a sentry, because staying so open we'd be an ideal target, anyone could just walk in and take whatever he wants.
To make it worse, ever since we got the mercury lights on the street (powered from šećerana's heating plant, so it would happen that even in a total blackout we still have lights - on the street), and those pines will take a couple of decades to grow a crown, both rooms were brilliantly lit at night. He wedged a long slat into each opening, to hear if anyone moves in, but then the slat was also well lit. Luckily, nothing happened at all.
We were sleeping in the rear - luckily, the new floors, ceilings and the repurposed windows from the street were in place, so granma's new room (former stable) and my new room (former granma's) were already in use. The floorboards were simple pine, with groove and feather fitting, but they weren't dry, and then in the following years they began to dry, specially in the area closer to the new cocklestove furnace, so the gutter between them grew to a few millimeters. I amused myself by rolling the iron marble (actually a ball from a bearing) down the groove. And these furnaces were built at this time, though it was a special majstor who did those, it's a special skill, the fire resistant mortar requires something called glass water (found it, it's a solution of something sodium based, aka glass jelly or liquid glass).
Dad doesn't even remember how he managed to find more cement, bricks, lime and whatnot to complete the construction, which favors and acquaintances he had to pull, how many "just tell X that Y is sending you" he had to carry out. The house was ready before autumn.
19-III-2014 - 6-II-2026