Kale was my best friend then. Our houses are at adjacent corners of the backstreet, which is a dead end, cut short by the railroad. On the other side of the rails is bager. Their house was of a somewhat weird build, primarily because of the portura (I later heard it called bordura in some places) made of fine gravel, pressed and smoothed to gloss, which his mom would polish with something to shine, some chestnut color. Even though both houses are on the corner and without a gonk, ours had, in the back wing, one room which was entered straight from the veranda, and behind that a stable and a shed, which were entered from the back. Theirs, however, had a gap between the front part and the rear one which was facing the backstreet, which was entered from the yard. The first room there was the workship, then summer kitchen, one or two sheds, chicken coop or whatever, just like everyone had. While the kitchen door faced the yard, the workshop was entered from that pass, where their main entrance was - there was none of it on the main street.
The front part is, as a rule, higher above the ground than the rear. The rear also has lower ceilings. Ours was much flatter - the rise is just one step, theirs was three; their rear had lower ceilings, ours had all at the same height.
His father was away most of the time; few years later I learned that he was working in Germany, whatever that was, as a janitor and hauzmajstor (house majstor) in a hotel there. Didn't know what hotel was, either, just that it must be a larger building. His dad being a locksmith, he had a vise, a hand grinder (interesting mechanism which I could turn myself), an amerikaner (hand drill with cogwheels), various pliers and files. I guess he could weld too, but don't remember ever seeing a welder in there.
Bread. The topic could go anywhere in the sixties and even seventies, so then why not here. We ate a lot of bread, just like everybody else. The breakfast was always with bread, with something to spread on it - first the butter, then we switched to margarine, specially since (in the seventies) they invented the type with some water added, which made it less hard and easier to spread, as its melting point was a bit lower that way. Instead of that we often had pašteta, in a gut.
We didn't make sandwiches, but instead, while I was still a little kid, mom made me markets, i.e. she'd chop the slice of spread bread into cubes of about 2x2 cm, and would put a bit of bacon or salami or whatever on top of it. Those would be called canapes nowadays, I guess. When I became skilled enough with the knife, I continued that way, that's how it's done here. With breakfast I'd drink half a liter of milk, that was my norm. Dad insisted that I should, as a baby, suck for as long as possible, probably more than a year, „for breeding“, as a cattle grower he probably knew that the best.
The dinner was same as breakfast, except when it would be same as lunch, i.e. when someone would take the lunch leftovers, „may it not go to waste“.
For lunch the bread was not eaten only with a soup, though at times there would be some čorba with which it went. The bread would be dipped into gravy but not into varivo*, paprikaš, and not into that čorba either.
Which is why I thought it funny why granddad, when he'd come to visit, ate bread with soup, and dipped each piece. And how clumsily he handles the spoon and fork, almost as if they were hoe handles, and how he doesn't know how to scoop the noodles with a spoon and has to pick them with a fork. I was grown up enough not to comment aloud. Few years later mom told me how they in Zajač didn't even know what a soup was, she taught them how to cook and eat that.
There was a cult of fresh bread, the crust had to be crunchy and the inside it should be soft but not malleable, it had to yield when pressed and then push back when released. Which was mostly done by one or two fingers, a slight press sufficed to know whether it's crunchy and whether it's elastic, which meant the bread was fresh, for both properties would vanish in a couple of hours. The shops would usually post a note „do not touch the bread“, everyone condemned bread touchers but also nobody said anything to them on the spot, because they knew these would be chided at home if they brought bread which wasn't fresh. Well, happened to me a few times, until I gained some experience.
The highest pleasure is to pinch the butt end while it's still steaming. The butt end was almost a privilege, which somehow tacitly went to me. When I grew up enough to be sent to buy bread, I'd go by bicycle, I'd hang the tote with the loaf on the handlebar, and pinched along the way. It sometimes happened that the whole but end was missing by the time I delivered.
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* boiled dish of some vegetable - green peas, green beans, spinach, beans, thickened somewhat by a zaprška (fry-in) of usually onions, maybe some carrots, sweet paprika, parsley, flour. Ingredients may vary, but this mix is almost mandatory for most of the gulaš, paprikaš, varivo, most of čorbas.
4-III-2020 - 6-II-2026