11-VIII-2017.
Regular sitting with Marinko, this time at Debela mačka. Close enough for me, and he's friends with Smilja anyway, I think they were neighbors, so he gladly agreed on the location.
Smilja was in bad edition this time - the butkice looked like thrice reheated, the sour cabbage didn't smell well, and what horseradish was on the side was actually a „horseradish product“ by Centroprom, with 29% of horseradish and don't ask what's the 71% then.
During the dinner I spoke with Dragana, calming her angst, „don't give up, I'm not giving up on you“, elaborated some more on what dr Hamer found and what does that mean for her case. It ended up rather quietly, I guess I did calm her some.
Marinko and I have, as usually, go on with programmer talk, devil knew what this time, it's all one long chat, serialized.
Made no shots during dinner and the four beers (I'd say she had the czech, probably Kozel), because we were sitting in the outstanding corner towards the railway, which was rather dark. But I knitted a few along the way, in the street between the railway crossing and the busodrome, by the once bager.
This fence was made from rail tracks, long ago, when the railroad and the crossing were laid, and is surely older than me. It stood like that all the time, seemingly indestructible, even though two blocks beyond there's SIT - once kombinat's „saobraćaj i transport“ (traffic and transport), which launched around fifty eighteenwheelers daily, plus what traffic šećerana itself generated. And nobody ever slammed this fence. The crossing bar yes, it was slammed on the average twice a year, but the fence remained untouched. Until now. Someone finally managed to unweld the top bar from the posts, and bend it like this. I can't imagine how the truck remains looked afterwards.
There was never a house on this lot. It was someone's garden. Or perhaps one of those tiny houses of pressed clay. Whatever it was, it's unused for years now. Or maybe just a couple - after the experience with Klincaid and Lalinski, I'd say the tall weeds grow the first year when gardening stops, then gradually lower weeds take over, and around sixth-seventh year you get tall grass. Few years later, a new spin-off of once Čelik grew here, called „Čelik plus“, perhaps by one of their former workers. The original still exists in some shape, in part of the space their headquarters occupied upstairs somewhere amid main street.
The new house on the corner of our street now has a fence, made of laser carved sheet metal, as done by Zvezdana's company. There's half a dozen more like that in the street. Who is not a czar in his own village... And that house belongs to the concrete pouring company's owner's son... so, likewise, half a dozen driveways in the street are now redone in smooth concrete. Lacquered, at that.
Mentions: bager, butkice, Čelik, Debela mačka, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Klincaid, kombinat, Lalinski Konak, Marinko Protić, šećerana, Zvezdana, in serbian
3-III-2023 - 25-III-2026