Being completely out of the sports (specially ticketed), I put this into july, because I know it was summer, and I searched the timing of the event. Got the year, and given that this is sports, I don't really care for precision.
The booze shop in the corner of Đuđa's half of the house across was, as was said elsewhere, selling but not serving. There were no seats, no glasses. But the people managed. Her brother-in-law would be there, and a bunch of old farts from the area, mostly retired, and they would sit on the crates and mostly drink beer. Sunday afternoon was the „time of sport and entertainment“, as the afternoon emisija on Radio Belgrade 1st programme was called. It would have live reporters from some five or six most important matches of the day, plus brief reports of others, as per importance.
This time, it was that the local club, Proleter, was about to make it into the first league. And then there was a bet. Usually the bets among these guys, mostly grandfathers of my friends, would be into imitating a donkey, i.e. the loser should whinny donkey-style, which was some mild humiliation.
Not this time. It was the scalp, which meant the loser would lose his hair. One of the granddads (Tana Bakračev) ended up in american army in WWII somehow, and was taught to be a barber. He knew only one thing well, the zero-mark cutter (look up Slavko Vorkapić*).
The loser this time was Kljaka, a poor guy who lived alone in a small house by the railroad, in the backstreet. He even brought up an adopted son, who often played with us (and later finished high school but couldn't get a job, so eventually became a cop, „work or no work, I end up on the street“). He walked with crutches, something seriously wrong with one leg. They sat him on an upturned mortar bucket (Živa Sejin was a some mason), and the guy first drew a cross over his skull - one from brow to neck, one from ear to ear. Then they all had a beer break. Then he mowed two quarters - left front, rear left. Another beer break. Then eventually he finished him off, and the guy was allowed a beer.
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* close but wrong. I heard that on the radio, in a novelized biography of Vorky, and the story that he invented the trimmer was inserted by the writer. The actual inventor is one Nikola Bizumić from Neradin, who became very rich on it. At least they are from the same end.
5-III-2024 - 14-VII-2026