december 1978.
One weekend this winter Teatar Levo, i.e. Vukotić's team with rastibuđilizovane klejbezable held a show here in the city theatre. Of course we heard about it and procured the tickets on time, for the first show, on friday. The theatre was chock full, all the seats were taken, even the third gallery. The whole building echoed with laughter.
So they decided to run it again on saturday, though they didn't repeat it, they played some other pieces. There are about thirty klejbezables, at nominal five minutes each they can do three evenings without repeats, about hour and a half, given enough time for the audience to be silent again, so they easily picked some others so we didn't see anything we saw on friday. Now if on friday the hall was chock full, on saturday it overfilled. The lodges seat four each, now they had four seats and two-three stands, and the aisle around the parterre also hosted many standing spectators.
On sunday the record was surpassed again. Nobody knows how many people were in the lodges, the ancient woodwork heroically passed the load test, the aisle around parterre was full, several guys had to keep their girls in their laps, and about sixty people sat onstage, leaving only the middle half for the actors.
While I dug the webs for traces of this, I found that the show was eventually played 1500 times. This was only the third season.
We at DC-99 were approached from above, via Narodna tehnika, to organize a photography course for the Nigerian students in mašinska. We agreed for the sheer hell of it, and I, with my thorough knowledge of enlish (including the terminology of the trade), got the honour of actually conducting the course. This generally took place once a week in the evenings, in the club itself (most time consuming part was the lab). Got a bunch of photos with them. One of the guys was allegedly a local prince.
This room doesn't belong to the club, it was some kind of classroom - note the exact same kind of desks that we had in just about every educational establishment out there - where various lectures were held. The dark box with stovepipe in the back was the oil heater, a better model, an „Alfa plam“ (plam being flam, i.e. a poetic abbreviation of plamen, i.e. flame) from Vranje. It didn't warm us at all, because it was useless for this one hour that I held in the classroom, where I brought them just to see how much they know and understand and to lay out the basic terms. It would take almost two hours of burn to heat up the space. The rest of it we did in the lab or the club room. Or maybe I didn't have the key to the club that day, and this was open.
The club itself was in a smaller place, left of entrance, behind the shops facing the Žitni. Had two rooms, of which one was the lab and the other a sort of a lounge, where we'd sit and talk, weed out the pictures for exhibitions. The Narodna tehnika (people's tech) was not downtown anymore, in the building where the measures' control was, but upstairs in this building.
For a number of years the traffic police would punish the first driving offence with mandatory attendance to a traffic education course, which was held in this same room. Sit through it and get a paper, or pay the fine. To avoid dry lecturing, they had educational films, so the dumb bozos behind the wheel would see how their stupid moves look from the outside. The projector would be brought from the cops HQ, right across the bridge, or it was held upstairs in Narodna tehnika.
The word would be „and how much did they fine you for that?“ - „well nothing, five hours of movie“. If I remember it right, even Arpi once got this kind of movie ticket.
The pictures for the month show also many of Tejka's nephew. Her sister was married with some guy in Belgrade, so when the kid was visiting it was somehow natural that I'd be invited to make at least a couple dozen shots, for the merry grandparents. Along the way there were Ivka's daughters, who were also often pictured the same way last couple of years, now in the same scene as this kid.
At home, there's a few shots of her taking blood pressure of my parents and granny. We probably played cards before or after that. With the next exams scheduled for late january, we were sort of cramming, but mostly kept going out several evenings a week. But it just didn't feel right as much as before. Most of the old gang were still in Novi or Belgrade or went off to serve their term in the army, some may have had jobs already. So we mostly went to my place. Don't know what we did, though, to pass the time. Talked a lot, I guess.
So one evening I decided it was time, and when I proposed we should get married, she agreed right away. We were, IIRC, walking through my street and were just about to cross the railroad. The weather was icy, no snow yet but almost.
We went into trouble with my parents immediately. They wanted a big wedding. We wanted none - just the inner gang, no cousins, no neighbors, probably just a simple house party with lots of booze and rock music. But that was not to be.
(... 23 words...) The engagement was scheduled for mid-january (probably around 21st, but can't remember for sure) and the wedding for march, on dad's birthday. Still trying not to occupy too much of the calendar.
(... 70 words...)
About this time there was a story about S. from DC-99, who got an order from the socks factory to find a model and make high quality shots of the best pair of girl's legs he can find in town. He got it done, and the big prints of it soon adorned their shops all over the country. The girl was a bit too young for us to know, being four years younger, but we knew her by fame, as she was a sports representative of SFRY. Should have gone to the 1980 olympics in Moscow, but was already pregnant by then. Became wife od Đorđe Balašević.
S., on his side, gained some fame, and I guess the fame didn't materialize in wealth, so at some point in mid eighties he went to Canada, with Stana and her husband (another veterinarian).
Mentions: Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), DC-99, Ivanka Tomašić /Čardić/ (Ivka), MPSŠC (mašinska), Novi Sad, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Stana Čopanja, Žitni, in serbian
17-X-2013 - 10-III-2026