april 1960.
Fitting this by just the year on the negative's box and what the trees and I have on - me the đubretarac (so-called trashman's coat), with those loops and pegs instead of buttons, and the beret tucked low onto my head, the trees still quite sparse with leaves, so it must be before 10th of april.
This simple ferry operated between the Obala Sonje Marinkovic and Mala Amerika. The part behind the tall trees in the right is now somewhat occupied by a tennis court. There isn't much of a reason for the ferry, though, there's the Little bridge just 300m upstream. It surely went away when the suspension bridge, pedestrians only, was built a couple of years later, bare 100m downstream. But then the green market was on one side and lots of novogradnja on the side of Mala Amerika (that's how it got its name, the first high rises here), and carrying totes for an extra kilometer wasn't easy, and these folks didn't quite have the room for bicycles, and if they did, that'd be in the basement, where the space would be occupied with coal for the winter.
The ferry was dragged manually, there was a steel rope from bank to bank, which would go through two pulleys on the poles on the upstream side of the boat (why, wouldn't downstream make more sense?) and the ferryman would slowly pull the boat along it, using some sort of slotted bludgeon. I rode such ferries on Tisa later, much larger, pulled by at least two guys, which would fit two tractors with trailers.
Mom took me downtown several times, in the morning. The morning being time before lunch, i.e. before 14, and judging by the shadow angle on this shot, this was about noon, just enough time to catch a bus. The bus lines we could take were 1 - hospital to šećerana, 2 - leathara to šećerana, 8 - tobaccika to šećerana (the -ara or -ika being the usual suffixes for factories). The 1 was a double decker londoner, light blue, and its driver Kamenko was famous for his collection of canaries. One of his birds was recorded for the intro to „good morning, children“, which ran every morning at 7. Of course I went for the upper deck, that was some experience.
I don't really remember all the places she took me to, just that it included the city library a few times, in the old building on the bank, between Little bridge and the music school. Don't know why and when was that building torn down. Nothing was built in its place, there's a tavern and a childrens' derelict playground instead. Actually, even the tavern is deserted for several years now.
It's almost unexplainable how we don't have any shots of the Great bridge, aka Bečkerečka ćuprija, which was designed around 1904 by Eiffel's bureau (not sure whether the guy himself had his hand in it). Crossing that, on foot, is carved deeply into my mind, because of the staircase and the sidewalk. The stairs were made of some white stone, not the toughest, which was worn to the point that there were no sharp edges anywhere, even where nobody sets a foot, and where most do, it was not horizontal since long ago. Not much trouble when it was dry, but when wet or frozen, ouch... People stepped closer to the ends, where it was less worn out. Except these corners would be filled with refrozen snow. The fence was, luckily, solid. It was iron tubes of about 5cm in diameter, smoothed by palms, and poked into that stone somehow, they never moved nor bent.
The sidewalk on the bridge itself was planks, firm and thick, but they also dried and their edges rounded, and between them, in places, a gap appeared of about a whole centimeter. One could see water through it. How I feared falling through... they say that fear of falling is inborn, one does not learn it. I relied on myself being small, so if any plank means to break, it will be under someone bigger. The planks on the little bridge weren't any better, but we walked there less often. Regardless, for years after the removal of the Great bridge and replacement of planks with concrete and asphalt on the little, I kept dreaming incomplete bridges - either the bridge abruptly ending, or being lowered to a raft or ferry, or being partly under construction so the path across would zigzag. Part of it was the sense of falling into some hole, which was caused by muscle spasm, which I didn't understand until it once happened while I was awake, which I began to recognize in my sleep, but that will happen several years later. Amazingly, I'm almost 70 as I write this, and I still remember clearly many of those dreams. Just like many of others, just the same.
Mentions: novogradnja, šećerana, in serbian
8-II-2024 - 6-II-2026