Novi Bečej, unlike most places in Vojvodina, celebrates in this year, 1991, nine hundred years since the first written record of its existence, although there is fairly convincing evidence that it existed some fifty or more years earlier.
In the desire to contribute, in my humble way, to this grand celebration, I wrote this book as the second part of my memoirs (the first part is the book “The Charm of Days Gone By”) about life in Novi Bečej and Vranjevo over fifty years ago.
There will be readers, especially younger ones, who might think that my nostalgia for a bygone way of life leads me to portray the recent past unrealistically. They might say that, in my view, everything was in superlatives (the best, the greatest...), even though it is well-known that this was a time of relative poverty, which necessitated a modest way of living and warmth in relationships.
There is no doubt that I, like all people, select from the past only what was beautiful, as it seems that human nature is such that we often return to the joyful moments of life, especially when it comes to our youth—a time that is inherently beautiful. Back then, everything around us also seemed mostly beautiful. Moreover, I want to depict the aspects of life in Novi Bečej and Vranjevo that I found appealing. These are the memories I still cherish, and they lull me to sleep at night when my dreams are disrupted.
The only exceptions are two or three events on the Tisa River that do not fit into this vision, which I highlight more for comparison with today’s schooling conditions.
In essence, my wish is to present what was beautiful in our towns and positive in the lives of our fellow citizens. Let the police and war chronicles tell the stories of politics, conflicts, and unpleasant events.
To these memories, I have added my recollections of Bogdan Čiplić, a great figure of our town, which somewhat deviates from the book’s title. I decided to include this because his passing in Novi Bečej was not commemorated in a lasting way. My aim is to preserve at least a minimum of information about him and his rich creative work, offering it as a modest contribution to the biography of this remarkable man.
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