june 1965.
The old kiosk by the gate of šećerana has a bit of a terrace roof, where maybe 20 people can find shelter from the rain and keep an eye on the buses coming. The bus stops actually a dozen meters to the left of it, but this roof is a better place, as it's facing the keramit (as granma called the yellow brick and that street paved with it) and the bus when it starts from its other end. There was the final stop for three lines, only the kožarac (koža - skin, leather, kožara - leather plant) went to the other end of the industrial zone.
The shot is from 2008.
In the righ corner, behind the pillar, is some kind of cupboard, guess it was the kiosk's storage. In all the years when I hung around the place, maybe twice I observed it being open, and it was full of paper.
The cabin, taking up the left half of this edifice, belonged to the kiosk. There we bought newspapers, cigarettes, matches, later gasoline and flintstone, even later liquid gas. In the back, behind the pillar, there used to be a bench, to sit while waiting for a bus, same kind as benches in the park across. Those benches would be stored for the winter, under another roof in the space between the kiosk and the bowling. The path to the bowling went through that wannabe door, of which only this arch on the right remained. The bowling had two lanes, surrounded by two pedestrian paths, where we'd stand and just watch or sometimes root for someone. Later, when I stopped visiting, they made that into four lanes and no paths, when they could assume everyone had sneakers and there was no danger for the hardwood floor. None of us bowled, but we always had someone who had someone who did. We entered freely, and just watched how it was done, rooted sometimes. We liked to drop by in winter evenings, because it was heated well. The kombinat had its own heating plant, worked on steam. Behind a kiosk a piece of tube hung out, and all winter steam would come out of it, guess it was some overflow valve. And there were steamducts all around the kombinat.
The frame by the kiosk's door was some kind of message board, where they'd put announcements, though I don't know exactly whose - the kombinat had its own board bare twenty meters to the right, on the wall of the low building leaning on Kantina, where the porter was and the little post office (where Đuđa used to work once).
We'd wheedle our way through those heaped up benches a few times, at night at that, practicing maneuvering through tight spaces. Gives me chills now just thinking where I got, but okay, the benches were laid solid, heavy and leaning on the ones below, no rocking. I exited each time the way I entered. The more screwy version of it was climbing the construction of the auditorium of the basketball playground on the Radnički stadium, because it was all wood. But that also passed without problems.
This terrace got an icecream stand now - the common fridge box with a lid that is locked off hours. I kind of liked the girl who sold it, and found excuses to just drop by, looking at whatever was in the tiny window of the kiosk, or the posters advertising the movies in the glassed frames hung on that bit of railing between the kiosk and the gate. Much later I realized I was somewhat aroused by her, but didn't understand why. Once or twice a week, I'd have some pocket money and actually buy an icecream. Occasionally, there would be cars parked in front of those poster windows, and we were generally ogling them, specially the more expensive ones, coming as close as we dared without actually touching them. We really thought the speed gauge was made for exactly that car, so whatever the max figure there was engraved on the dial was the actual speed the car could make. So once there was some sports coupe, perhaps an Aston Martin or whatever it could have been (who knows who was visiting whom at the kombinat), and that was probably the first time I saw such a car close. I think it could make 180 or 220, or so the dial said, and we were astonished.
This was actually the first such icecream stand that I ever saw, and from what I know, the only one around for a number of years. If you wanted ice-cream, you had to go to a cakeshop - there was one just 300m away, but that's about four blocks from home, and on the other side of a nasty crossing over the old Belgrade way, a bit far and I'd have to go by the kindergarten, which I preferred not to. And I actually didn't like his icecream, it was sort of thick. This was the best vanilla on a stick and was chocolate coated. I did remember that it was also good at Prleski, but that was not on a stick, but rather from those glass bowls, eaten with almost flat spoons (or were those stainless steel bowls and others had glass, or the other way around?), off those tiny tables with marble top in dark hardwood frame, and those old austrohungarian chairs of cooked bent wood (we had a few such chairs, they lasted a few years beyond this).
In the backyard I was sculpting mountains and rivers out of mud, using the coal spade and an old dull knife as a spatula. Special considerations: the roads must look realistic, be in proportion, and have bridges and tunnels. The tunnels were fake, I couldn't get the mud to stay up, it would fall in before it dried so I gave up. For bridges, I used icecream sticks.
For a while I was thinking of enlarging the things, so I may have a lake of maybe 80cm in diameter, where my raft, made of nine interwoven icecream sticks would actually travel from one coast to the other. I would pump the water, no problem when it comes to a project of this kind, but my granma didn't want to put up with more mud than I already made.
Mentions: Đurđa Rođanović (Đuđa), Kantina, kombinat, Prleski, šećerana, in serbian
26-XII-2013 - 14-VII-2026