Petr Hrabalik

"When I started high school in the autumn of 1976, Charter 77 came in January 1977. I remember that Kachur, who was the principal, came into the class and said that we had to sign something against something. I didn't really understand it, but as I had been brought up politely, I volunteered what we had to sign against. He said that a text had been written which was anti-socialist and so on. But I said I couldn't sign something I hadn't read and if he could read it to us. He started to babble and I have the feeling that they didn't even have the text of the Charter there. And he didn't even heckle me in any way, but just from the classroom... nothing was signed, I don't think. I feel like they didn't know shit either and were confused. Whereas in March, when the union guys got in, they were sharp and they already knew. And they were saying, 'Anyone who doesn't join the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union is out of high school.'"

"In August 1968 the Russians came here and I saw in my parents and in everyone how the atmosphere changed. The little man felt fear, it came from their eyes. I know that when I actually started first grade in the fall of 1968, my mother brought me there because she was afraid. I know that my father was handing out 'Idi domoj' leaflets and then he had some trouble in Sázava. I think they moved him down one place. But he didn't mind, because now he had to work with refrigerators and he enjoyed that. When he was manager, he had to do something in the office. In those days, they still had Saturday morning work, so he would come to work in the morning, and because my mother was selling, he would take me with him. I know that in the summer of 1969, a relative from Banov came, his name was Tonda Kočica, in a white Škoda, I remember that. The Kočicas had an uncle Bohouš, who had emigrated to New York after 1948, and that he was going to see Bohouš, that things would be bad here, that he was going across the border. And if we didn't want to go with him. I remember that all that night, I was never awake that long, there was a debate about whether Tonda Kocica and I were going to leave the country. It was probably decided that both father and mother would have to go without their parents and only with us, possibly with Uncle Franta. But they didn't want to leave them behind. In the morning the decision was made and Tonda Kočica left across the border, ended up in New York and we stayed in Havlíčkův Brod."

"So it was on the third of September, eighty-eight, that was the event in Osvračín, and on Lipnice was the Folk Lipnice, where Havel performed. Well, which was one of the reasons for the creation of Havlíček Youth, by the way. Because, of course, the Havlíčkův Brod Youth Club was involved in the Lipnice, where Pavel Šimon was the dramaturge and it was run by someone called Honza Hamr, I think. And they were involved in the dramaturgy or some kind of organization or something like that. Well, yeah, but the number one dissident just slipped in there and there was an official interview in front of, I don't know, there might have been maybe seven or eight thousand people there."

"And then I was still there on Thursday, when the biggest thrashing was on, and I was still there with my girlfriend, dumbass, dude. Of course I wore my anti-bush sweater, thick, and I had my leather jacket on and I was stuffed because I knew it was gonna be a mess, like yeah. Anyway, we actually got almost to the top of the Blaník cinema, where the white melons (Public Security, People's Militia) were standing. I called them white melons because they had white helmets. And as the attack started, as they were actually driving the people down from the Václav, a lot of people actually crowded in on us, to the Blaník cinema. And now there was glass, there was glass filling. So I realized for the first time what death was from being crushed by the crowd, because it was such a pressure. Now I thought, if I go through this glass here, I'm dead. Now there was this girl... luckily the onslaught only lasted for a moment. It was a matter of a minute before it just... as they ran on, the people just kind of dispersed again. So it was cutting there and I was like, I'm here with a girl... yeah, and actually the cops came over and they frisked me there."

"Well, so they asked me to pull all the stuff out of my pockets, so I pulled everything out and they said, 'Is that all of it?' And I said, 'Yeah, I guess so, I knew nothing.' 'You'll get hit for every thing I find there,' said the policeman." So he reaches into my pocket, pulls out a safety pin. Buum. And I had it. He reached into the other pocket, pulled out some paper that was left behind. Shh. Next. But they hit me smart, nothing in the face, more like in the head, so it wouldn't bleed. But it was like a decent punch. Then they took all the money I had. They said it was like a fine. When I asked them for a receipt, they gave me another punch and a lecture. 'We don't give receipts to junkie bastards like you,' they added. Well, now they split the money and threw it all away, and now get out. So I picked up the papers and I was actually staggering through Náplavka, and I was drunk, and I just kind of stumbled, and it wasn't from the wounds, it was more from being drunk. So I tripped and fell. And I'm trying to get up, and all of a sudden, dude, I feel someone running towards me. And they let a regular dog loose on me without a muzzle, and it bit into my side."

"So there was an event at Baráček, you saw the photo there, that was in December eighty-four, where it was quite interesting. It's a shame it wasn't recorded, it was just improvised, looking for different sounds. I was looking for different sounds because I had borrowed from 'Jerry Novotny' this... this copy of Marshall or something. Marta was humming something. And there were actually people from Prague there. Lubor Mata was there as a publisher, we've known each other ever since. And one of them was actually drumming on the boxes, like in the improvisation, which was Michal Strenk. Michal Strenk was there drumming on some boxes and so on, and then there was a violinist called Šura Mejstříková, who... we called her Šura. I don't know how... Šárka, Šárka, Šura Mejstříková, who played the violin and who Martin Šmíd was dating at that time, so it was a kind of improvisation and I know that Jarda Těsnohlídek was playing his films there, eight millimetre films that he was making. Štěpán actually brought in footage of The Primitive Groups and Plastic People, on eight millimetres without music, we just played it from a tape recorder as a background and it was just this... yeah footage of just Primitive Groups and Plastic People, so we watched Plastic People, beautiful. So the event was very successful, it was an island of freedom. "

"Only sometimes, when all the bands were more or less finished, I came down with something, so I was bumping around. I was bumping cold just and I was wrapped up in there. But probably some lone police patrol in Havl. Brod noticed that some of the people weren't going to Lipnice, but in a completely different direction, like, yeah. Well, yeah, but they were all on Lipnice, right, the cops were just on those roads and they were there alone. So they just funneled all kinds of forces that were there in Brod, which was one car of cops, one car of undercover, and one car of bad guys, which was some kind of railroad protection or something like that, like yeah. And with this cavalry of those three cars they drove up there, and now there were two hundred and fifty Máničkas, yeah, so they got totally freaked out because they just noticed that they were going into that quarry, so they drove up there. And now it was threatening to get them in the mouth, like yeah. Well, like, they disappeared and probably, like, alerted the police force, except we already knew which way it was hitting, so we immediately cleaned up the apparatus."