“I had a sweetheart, he lived just across the street. He was a single child and he didn’t do well at work. It was nice, you know, the young years, for the dancing and the entertainment. It was nice, but it wasn’t much for life. He started a job, it had dust everywhere, so he got dust in his lungs. He was during the five-year plan in Šomberk [Šumperk - trans.]. So he died. Well, it wasn’t pretty, no it wasn’t. I had the girls, and to tell you the truth, the way everyone keeps on about those children. I married, and he was an only son. When I was pregnant with the second one after four years, and I told it to his mother, that we’re expecting, they snapped straight at me: ‘What, again?!’”
“I know everything from school, I really enjoyed going to school, except I wasn’t allowed to, dear children. My sister failed a year, we were a year apart, I had to switch from fifth grade to sixth so our parents wouldn’t have to buy two sets of books. So I only have two [years] of town school. For instance, I know all the countries, but not Europe, that was taught in the third.”
“When it was after the first war, back then they sold fields by allotment. There was that Žerotín Estate off towards Bludov, and so they made the rounds with a hat, and everyone who chose a number got the plot of field it designated. So my parents got a patch all the way by Bludov, near to Habermann’s Mill. And we had a meadow over here, along the way to Šomberk [Šumperk - trans.]. That was Desná, and so I remember that Dad and I always had to dig banks into the ground so the water wouldn’t wash the meadow away.”
I wanted to know everything
Marie Čmakalová, née Holínková, was born on 20 October 1923 in Sudkov, Šumperk District. Her parents owned a fruit orchard three kilometres away from their house. Marie trained at Bludov Manor and worked in the fruit sector her whole life. She married, but her husband died at the age of 35, leaving her a widow with two small daughters.
