08-IX-1977.
In the back pantry, cutting the meat.
Passed the Numela exam (numerical methods of linear algebra), which would make me eligible to enroll regularly into fourth year, but I still didn't pass the multivariable functions and complex analysis from the 2nd year, and the rule was upheld that you can't drag any exam further than next year. So I can't get into fourth year, so formally it will be repeat third. Except that I'd have to switch programs, because there's no rerun of this program, the boss (i.e. the old algebra professor) wouldn't allow the waste of money such as this, where all 38 of us were on computing course, and only two guys on teaching. The decision to revoke the courses was made in march, and I don't quite remember what happened with the extra five or six weeks, did we have these courses to the end or not. Probably did, because not much was left, and one of the courses (theory of algorythms and automata) was held by the Boss himself. But no special courses in fourth year - we all get to do the same stuff.
This is when freezer boxes got popular. The favorite method of getting stocked with meat was to buy half a pig, pay a butcher to chop it, stuff it in bags, shove into freezer. Dad had no problem to find a guy, and he previously did, but now it was a matter of household pride to be able to do it oneself. So he did. Don't know what he used to crack the ribs - chisel or axe - but it was a few years until someone sold us the trick to debone them: a piece of twine, wrapped around two fingers on each end, would be hooked under the rib's end. Then gradually, pulling the twine left-right and generally towards spine, the thread would cut through the meat and membranes, bare the bone and in the end it would take just a simple knife to sever the cartilage on spine end of it. But back then we didn't know this trick.
The way to buy the half was either to arrange straight with a peasant, or via trade union. Being left out of their main reason to exist, the struggle against the capitalists, the unions were mostly ceremonial but still managed to do a few things for the working class. One of them was to bypass the retail and get the winter stock straight from producers, and to make it exempt from any taxation, as it was "workers' standard" and thus considered just a replenishment for the wear and tear in the production.
It didn't stop at meat - the trade unions would get mandarines, oranges, apples (by the crate), flour, potatoes, onions, carrots (by the sack, and the sacks were the big 50kg ones, smaller ones weren't made yet), and in latter years even coffee.
The news from the city passed me by, and I only much later heard that around this time the Omege band finally disbanded, with the kernel of it reshaping itself into the band „Tetka Ana“, named after Ana Vukotić... who will once merit a separate article somewhere around here. They published a couple of singles, but as Bogica Mijatović from radio Novi said, „had they been from Belgrade or at least Novi, they'd have surpassed many bands in higher orbits, but they weren't“.
Looking at their photos now (january 2024) I see I know three guys, perhaps four: Deja from „Pa šta onda“ (also disbanded at this time), Neša Čurganov (was a friend of Pop and for a while was coming to DC-99, maybe not as a full member but helped around with few things; Ilija Hot (who was also a friend of Pop and was around back then when we made that movie in 1971 - if that's him on the picture), and their singer, whom I met a few times, in the next century.
Mentions: DC-99, Marko Popović (Pop), Novi Sad, Omege, Pa šta onda, in serbian
10-III-2020 - 16-VII-2026