Karel Bazika

"That's a nice story. Unlike kids today, we were allowed to move about freely, we used to go from Žižkov to the swimming pool in Podolí, and my brother and I were actually alone at that time. When we were in the pool, my brother surfaced and somebody called, 'Look, a frog,' because he came out of the water, his head slipping out and his eyes rolled back and him sputtering, so they said, 'What, a frog!' We got talking to these guys and it turns out they came from a troop that used to be boy scouts in Strašnice, and we joined them by next week."

"What is certain is, no one cut anyone any slack. Bullying was normal. We were all rascals. The way it worked, starting from home, I think my mother tried what you call 'small town education'. For example, she wanted to teach us to eat decently, so we had to to eat with our hands close to our torsos, and to achieve that, she inserted toilet paper underneath our arms and we had to eat like that. Unlike kids today, we had to help out at home from a young age. I remember washing dishes off the stool because I couldn't reach the sink. We wiped dust. We'd go knock out the carpets. We even cleaned the carpets with foam from the spring. We had to just go hang laundry in the attic. It was just chores. There were a diverse bunch of kids in the building, and we mostly played in the yard. Every house had a back yard. We had to go get coal for heat stoves, and we were always scared to go in the basement but we just had to. Then when school came, we would usually come home from school, throw our bags briefcase under the nearest car, and just run outside. When it was getting close to the time for our parents to come home, we'd grab our school bags and pretend we were doing homework and learning."