Thus a retired teacher in Motovun when I asked him how many children there were when he was still teaching in the town. In his eighties, he retired some twenty years ago. The town itself had close to three-hundred pupils at one time, whereas there are only six now. The whole municipality has less than ninety pupils, but it had close to one-thousand some fifty years ago. Now the municipality has as many people all told.

Addendum (September 10, 2015)

I was talking with Miho Sviličić, known as barba Miho by all. He died a few years after I moved to Motovun. But now I talk to his son, Davor, known by all as Mihec after his father. “Mihec” would translate into “little Miho” in the Croatian vernacular spoken in these parts. And I talk to his grandsons, Mihael or Miki, Laren, and Mario. Barba Miho is still alive, as it were, and he comes up in conversation often enough. It takes a long time to die in small towns. To be a bit more precise, it takes four to five generations.