Then, as now, wood fires are burning. Unfortunately, (steta) the beautiful, old cast-iron and ceramic heat workhorses are gone, replaced by ugly “modern,” furnace, or grejalice in copper and brown metal. Thankfully, I can dry my underclothes on these new furnaces without scorching them and even lie down on the top of the stove in the middle (srednja soba) room at night to soothe my aching back. But the romance of the woodstove is gone. There is no grate to open and read and dream by late at night; no villages of red hot coal to watch crumble and remake themselves in front of your eyes.

The people who live here are older now, in need of much care. They are bent and crooked, moving slowly with stapic (cane). Even the young couple whose presence animated the wide yard in December 1968, who danced kolo in the snow and feasted with their guests, have changed. We are older now in 2006 than were the villagers who threw us one of the last great Macva weddings in the three-day, three-night Serbian tradition of wild abandon and indulgence.

Deda Anta -- a survivor of WWII prisoner camps who lived communally ( zadruga)with my husband’s clan after the war and long gone now to greener pastures – kept a list of donated livestock, sweets and other gifts consumed at the wedding. He counted 55 pigs, most of which were roasted and grilled in furuna (the field oven), then eaten or given away to parting guests; several oak barrels bure of plum brandy or sljivovica, 20-plus wedding tortes; but also shirts, towels, blankets, pots, plates, glasses. The cooks made kettles of varenika or sumadijski caj; miles and miles of noodles for soup, mounds of stuffed cabbage, and cups of beets with ren (horseradish). Fragrant rounds of bread came straight from the field oven, cut in wedges and passed along, just before cauldrons of steaming noodle soup were placed on long tables. Much to my amusement some guests also brought live geese, chickens and ducks, submissive and silent under their arms, something that would NOT be welcomed today.

And of course there was wine, a kind-of-light-on-the-brain apricot rose wine, the last of a harvest made by one my husband’s uncles. Our cheeks got rosy after several toasts, but neither our minds nor our footwork became sloppy. At least that’s how I remember it.

Lipolist in 1968 was a village of about 3,000 households, famous for the linden trees that still line its main street, famous for its corn harvest, its poetry and its cultivated roses. There were hundreds of guests the wedding. Many more villagers came to the yard out of curiosity. They wanted to see the first-ever Amerikan to set foot in these parts close to Cer. Many were then invited to sit down and partake of the feast.

This unasked for celebrity was an awesome responsibility. I was only 21 and had never before been to such a hospitable house, albeit one with neither running water, central heat or a proper inside WC. Every half hour or so I would come outside to the yard – festooned in my bridal finery – and wave to the gathered crowd, much like I’d imagine an English princess might do. Then I would abandon all formality and run out to dance a kolo in the falling snow with the scores of villagers who had come to gawk. Mirko, a storied violinist and his handpicked local band, accompanied the circle of dancers.

This fest went on for several nights and days. I was a wreck. Finally, after propping our drooping eyelids open with toothpicks or cackalice, we retreated to the bridal bedroom – a modest room down the hodnik of a typical three-room Macva farmhouse – for some much needed SLEEP. The gypsy band followed. The musicians waited outside the bedroom door, for what I was not sure. They kept playing their fabulous tunes. People were thumping, clapping and shouting in rhythmic solidarity. When one particularly rousing song finished I felt I must clap and whistle my loudest in appreciation of this mighty musical effort. My new husband silenced me with his hand. “If you whistle now, the gypsies will burst into the room!” SO, like any good, new, obedient, peaceful snajka, or daughter-in-law I learned a powerful lesson: how to shut up. (Cutilasam kao dobra, mirna, nova snajka.)

The villagers in Lipolist gave me a first-class welcome. Something I will never forget and for which I can never repay them. This was a time when the world community still admired – even liked the Amerikanci. Kennedy had been dead only five years. American astrounauts were circling the moon and we watched and cheered their crazy skywalking stunts in the starry galaxy above on Kum Rajko’s tiny black-and-white TV, the only one in the village in 1968. This same Kum Rajko gave me a ride on his horse-drawn cart that was straight out of Tolstoy. He stood on the front wooden seat pretending to lash the horse team and cracking his whip with great gusto. I sat petrified in the back, a wool blanket over my lap, as we thrashed our way through the winter forest and down the mainstreet to the bent old acacia stari bagrem – on what I found out later – was sort of a wild pre-nuptual initiation ride.

Kum Rajko is gone now as are most of the people who threw this great party; the backbone of the village is broken. How village life will continue is a big question, veliko pitanje, and surely one discussed in EVERY village across the Balkans, and the globe.

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Lipolist today is a barren place, a village of octogenarians, a few young, ambitious agricultural hangers on, and several families of rose growers. There is no butcher, no cheese shop, no Internet café, just a Saturday market in summer with slim offerings of mostly Chinese-made goods. What Lipolist does have in abundance is pubs and kafanas and places to gamble away one’s time. And, yes, a radio station and the bus, which still marks the hour for villagers, with its arrival from Sabac several times a day.

What bright, young, educated woman in her right mind would chose to work like generations of women before her, bent over in the fields, sowing and reaping raspberries or plums, or making cheese by day, warming beds by night, and waiting for men to return month after month from the fields, the vineyards, the krcma, or tavern or from war?

Many young women with educations have left already to nearby Sabac, Loznica, or Beograd to work in retail, at professional office or pharmacy jobs, or to help keep the two sections of Fabrika Zorka that still work afloat. The rest eek out a village existence in the same hard way their parents did before them: working the fields and orchards, tending to livestock, selling cheese and trading with neighbors for the things they need to survive.

Village life today is not the romantic, naïve slika, or picture I saw in my 20s. It is hard work to chop and carry wood, to light the stove each day, to feed the chickens and clean the pig sty, to shear the sheep and card the wool, to bring beets, potatoes and carrots from one root cellar to the pantry, to the kitchen. That is not to say there are not still high moments – times when villagers gather to feast, to tell stories or to share the latest political jokes. BUT rarely do villagers break into song like they did in the era before television ruined the musical culture. Now television is king, blaring, non-stop in the living room when one visits another family. Television is like the loudest, uninvited guest. It erases the need for communal talk, much less song or old-fashioned music and merry-making.

As an outsider, a foreigner, but also as a snajka or daughter-in-law, I feel Serbian village life needs an infusion of aid – some kind financial investment or subsidy like Italy, Switzerland, Austria and France make their farmers— some kind of attention so that all will not be lost. For decades, the cities have depended on peasants to fill their marketplaces – Kalenic, Bajlonova, Zeleni Venac and others with the cheap fruits of their labor. I am not sure what form this “attention” to the villages might take. But I do know that more and more developed countries today lament the loss of green areas.

Before it is too late, before stari village life is just another dream buried in the snow, it might not be bad idea to think about creative ways to preserve its vestiges for generations
to come.

Copyright© Joan McQueeney Mitric, 2006