Vladimír Fejfar

“Pepík was older than us and he was a bit strange. He worked in Vysočany and on principle he always walked all the way to work. On Sunday evenings he would arrive from home with a suitcase full of baked sweet buns, and he managed to live on them for the entire week. He did not know pubs, he knew nothing, just work. He would always come back late in the evening when we were already in beds, he would take a sweet bun, eat it and go to bed. His blanket was so worn that he had difficulties to cover himself properly so that he would not suffer from cold. In the morning he would always get up before dawn and go to work. One day we reset his alarm clock. We waited until he fell asleep, and we set the alarm clock to midnight. The alarm clock rang, Pepík did not look at it at all, he got dressed and off he went. After some time he returned and as soon as he opened the door, he shouted at us: ‘You scoundrels! You villains!’ When he calmed down after a few days, we asked him: ‘Pepík, so how was it?’ He told us: ‘I walked all the way to the factory’s gatehouse, and the guard stared at me as if I was a ghost. Only then I realized that you tricked me.’”

“Then there was the year 1948 and problems came. Only communists were elected to the action committees. Since Bělohrad is a small town, everyone who had passed more than a higher elementary school then became marked as a capitalist and reactionary. It hit my father as well. At first he was dismissed from his position and he had to begin working as a cashier. Shortly after he was transferred and he had to commute to work to Dobruška, I think. Eventually he was fired from the job.”