Josip’s water polo junior team

Photo of my water polo junior team on the beach, Makarska 1937. 

We fit in to life in Makarska and got along with all the youth there. We lived in Marineta and all of the kids from that part of town socialized together. There were no differences between us. We each had a nickname. I was Jozi, from Joseph. One Hungarian woman called me that and some one else heard it and the nickname stuck. Every month we played a new game until the swimming season began. We did not have toys like today. We would aim at a flat stone until we hit it and it fell over. We played "klic pic" we hit smaller sticks with a bigger and the one that went furtherest won. We played hide and seek. We all played together and there were never any fights between us. We were divided only by the different areas of the city. We also played war between different parts of town and while playing we would throw stones at each other in jest. We played football with a ball made from socks. All of this was until it was swimming season. Since the beach was for foreigners we swam on the side until we grew up.  We learned how to swim and we played waterpolo. We had a water polo team which gathered at one part of the beach colona. We had a wonderful time together, swimming and playing and it gave us health and strength. Nowadays, only Jure  Binic is alive and myself. He lives in Zagreb, Croatia. We had a rowing club where I went for years. We had a fourman boat and one helmsman. Once we went to Brac. This was very risky, but we listened to the weather reports and we believed that the sea would not overcome us. When we were a little older we enrolled in the "Sokol" athletic club, where we trained volleyball and practiced on different apparatuses. We also learned how to represent ourselves in public. Life was very dynamic. We all gathered on the seafront.