Oldřich Vytvar

“Well, a tailor needs to spend his working time sitting; sitting and sewing. His back is bent over is work. In the past you did most of it by hand and you only had a sewing machine for sewing some parts, but the rest would be all done by hand. You know, the boss would stand above you and tell you: ‘It’s not straight!’ And I don’t now what else. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it went as far as that. Or take another thing. My father always used to say: ‘I would like to know whether you will be able to earn your living by this trade. Whether you have customers at all. The way you do it, phew, you don’t do it like… This is not tailor’s craft what you are doing here…’ I can tell you something: the years passed, and then dad died, and then the manager of the Vkus cooperative died, and I actually took his position!”

“When the currency reform took place, I was doing my military service. You can find it strange, but I was at the state border and I didn’t have a clue what was happening. We were only told about it when the funerals of the two [Stalin and Gottwald] were over. And when you are in the army, you have to obey. That’s how the army is like. We were there. I can tell you, when the currency reform happened, we in the army barracks were laughing at people who were bustling back and forth with wagons, and buying furniture and motorbikes and I don’t know what else. And they still kept telling us that nothing would happen. That was during president Zápotocký’s administration. And then suddenly an alarm was sounded at midnight and I found myself standing in the savings bank building with a rifle and we were guarding the bank because people were pushing in there and everyone wanted to withdraw their deposits. It was something so desperate. And I myself did not even have a single Czech crown to exchange.”