šećerana

(Place, tavern, firm, Yugoslavia)

The sugar refinery, the starting point of the kombinat. More than a century old. It's just two blocks away from my parents' place. Next to its gate, to the left, there's a bowling lane and a kiosk. To the right, the kantina, the kombinat's library (which everyone called "šećeranska biblioteka") and in the rest of the building, the movie theater, called Kristal (after chrystal sugar).

The bus stop at the kiosk was also named šećerana, and all the bus lines going that way were also called so ("šećeranski autobus", aka "šećeranac" - the bus to/from šećerana) even though this was not the last stop.

It would employ a lot of seasonal workers during the campaign, which would start in september and sometimes stretch almost into winter. The weigh station used to be right behind the gates, and there'd be a long queue of tractors and trucks, sometimes stretching for two or more blocks from our house. The booze shop in Đuđa's house (held by her brother and his wife, actually selling the wares of some destillery in Serbia proper, plus local beer) would sell a lot, and many a peasant would miss the moment the queue moved because they'd be lying drunk on the lawn.

During the campaign, the workforce would grow from the skeleton crew of few dozen to something around a thousand, and they'd rush the gates each day on 14:00, completely jamming this side of the street. The 14:05 train would cause the fender at the crossing (3rd block from the gates) to make the jam spread across the whole street.

In the 1990s, in the years of great robbery aka transition, it was sold to someone who didn't feel like making any sugar here, so the production completely stopped. In 2012 it was sold to some group, who have put their logo on the gate, and painted the kiosk in their colors, but planned to convert the factory into starch production (and the old starchery, also part of kombinat was just on the other end of the same factory yard). Almost two years later, no sign of production yet.

Ah, and when I meet someone just as old as me, and the question "from which end [of town] are you" comes up, I'm a šećeranac. Though, there were Šećeranci, the folks from a block of houses on the other end of the industrial zone, the so-called kolonija (colony). There were perhaps six or eight ground level houses with two or four apartments each, and lots of space around. Initially they were built for the factory staff; later they were at kombinat's disposal. Of the folks mentioned here, several used to live there: Milosava (mom took me there several times), Sredljak (visited him too a few times), Oli Boj (briefly, they moved to ruža as soon as it got built) and Borče (the longest, until 1980).

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Mentions: august 1957., july 1959., december 1959., april 1960., june 1960., august 1960., 14-I-1961., may 1961., 03-VIII-1961., 03-IX-1961., april 1962., 22-VI-1962., 26-VII-1963., september 1963., august 1964., još, june 1965., 20-VI-1965., july 1965., december 1965., december 1967., 06-I-1968., 17-VI-1968., 20-VI-1968., 24-VIII-1968., 25-I-1969., 08-II-1969., 03-IV-1969., 18-V-1969., 20-I-1970., november 1970., until 18th, 01-XII-1970., until 17th, 15-I-1971., 12-IX-1971., 19-XII-1971., 26-VI-1972., 01-IX-1972., 17-XI-1972., 06-V-1973., 05-VI-1973., 16-VI-1973., Kragujevac, 20-VI-1973., 20-IX-1973., 29-X-1973., 01-V-1974., 23-V-1974., december 1975., 21-V-1977., More photos, 20-III-1980., june 1980., 07-XI-1984., april 1986., 04-X-1988., june 1989., july 1990., june 1991., 23-IX-1993., 27-III-1995., 13-XI-1997., 23-VIII-1999., 26-XI-1999., 02-X-2000., 03-VIII-2005., 04-II-2009., 03-VII-2015., 11-VIII-2017., 11-XI-2018., 25-V-2019., 22-VIII-2019., and the next two days, 24-VIII-2020., Officially retired, 20-X-2020., 09-VIII-2021., 20-XI-2021., Walnut, gone, 31-I-2022., 26-IX-2022., 21-VIII-2023., 10-XI-2023., 02-IV-2024., 05-V-2024., 26-V-2024., 21-X-2024., 09-II-2025., Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Gradivoj Sredljev (Sredljak), Kantina, kombinat, Kristina Birčanec /Lungur/, Lajoš Gunaroši (Lajči), Lesnina, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milosava Pajdački, Olivera Stojanović (Oli Boj), radna akcija, ruža, Sejini, Smetovački, Šanta, Učubić, in serbian

15-II-2022 - 15-IV-2026