Bohuslav Rychlik was born in Krnov, Moravia, in 1950. His parents, Bohuslav and Františka, had moved to Krnov after WWII, because their home in Pustiměř had been destroyed by Americans who were bombing a nearby airport. Under the communist regime, Bob’s father lost his job as a senior office clerk and began working as a laborer, while his mother stayed home and raised Bob and his two sisters. Bob’s father, who died when he was 10, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and passed his talents on to his children. Bob was taught piano first by his sister and later in music school, and taught himself to play the guitar. Although he was fond of filmmaking, Bob says that he had ‘no chance’ to pursue this interest, and that he went to a technical high school in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm to prepare for a career in electronics. After high school, Bob says he decided not to attend university, as he did not want his mother to sacrifice anymore for his education. He got a job at the TESLA factory in Rožnov where he held several different positions before leaving the country.
In August 1983, Bob and his wife, Vilma, decided to leave Czechoslovakia with their two young sons when they had the opportunity to vacation in Split, Yugoslavia. While there, Bob tried to buy tickets for a day trip to Italy, but says he was denied because his passport was valid only for Yugoslavia. They traveled to Belgrade where they learned about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office. After an interview and a 6-week wait, Bob and his family were given papers allowing them to leave Yugoslavia and enter Austria. They spent about seven months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Ramsau before receiving permission to move to the United States. Bob and his family arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 17, 1984. Having learned English at school, Bob says he was able to find work fairly quickly, while his wife took English classes at a community college. The Rychliks became American citizens in the spring of 1990.
Bob says that he is very proud of his sons, who were both valedictorians at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned full scholarships to college. He continues to play music, and more recently has focused on the fujara, a large, flutelike, traditional Slovak instrument. Bob engineered the first fujara workshop in the United States, which he held at his home, and included participants from several different countries. He frequently performs around the Washington, D.C. area and, in 2010, Bob presented a lecture at the Library of Congress for the American Musical Instrumental Society. He has returned to the Czech Republic several times and currently lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, with his wife, Vilma.
Bob’s lecture on the fujara at the Library of Congress, 2010
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Bohuslav Rychlik was born in Krnov, Moravia, in 1950. His parents, Bohuslav and Františka, had moved to Krnov after WWII, because their home in Pustiměř had been destroyed by Americans who were bombing a nearby airport. Under the communist regime, Bob’s father lost his job as a senior office clerk and began working as a laborer, while his mother stayed home and raised Bob and his two sisters. Bob’s father, who died when he was 10, was a keen musician who played piano and violin and passed his talents on to his children. Bob was taught piano first by his sister and later in music school, and taught himself to play the guitar. Although he was fond of filmmaking, Bob says that he had ‘no chance’ to pursue this interest, and that he went to a technical high school in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm to prepare for a career in electronics. After high school, Bob says he decided not to attend university, as he did not want his mother to sacrifice anymore for his education. He got a job at the TESLA factory in Rožnov where he held several different positions before leaving the country.
In August 1983, Bob and his wife, Vilma, decided to leave Czechoslovakia with their two young sons when they had the opportunity to vacation in Split, Yugoslavia. While there, Bob tried to buy tickets for a day trip to Italy, but says he was denied because his passport was valid only for Yugoslavia. They traveled to Belgrade where they learned about the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office. After an interview and a 6-week wait, Bob and his family were given papers allowing them to leave Yugoslavia and enter Austria. They spent about seven months in refugee camps in Traiskirchen and Ramsau before receiving permission to move to the United States. Bob and his family arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 17, 1984. Having learned English at school, Bob says he was able to find work fairly quickly, while his wife took English classes at a community college. The Rychliks became American citizens in the spring of 1990.
Bob says that he is very proud of his sons, who were both valedictorians at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned full scholarships to college. He continues to play music, and more recently has focused on the fujara, a large, flutelike, traditional Slovak instrument. Bob engineered the first fujara workshop in the United States, which he held at his home, and included participants from several different countries. He frequently performs around the Washington, D.C. area and, in 2010, Bob presented a lecture at the Library of Congress for the American Musical Instrumental Society. He has returned to the Czech Republic several times and currently lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, with his wife, Vilma.
Bob’s lecture on the fujara at the Library of Congress, 2010
“There were parts of the factory where I couldn’t go, that were marked secret. I don’t even know what they were doing. I started to work in the industry in TESLA and I found out, as we were saying in Czechoslovakia, that we were 100 years behind the apes in electronics. Because what they were doing, they were actually doing reverse engineering. They took a transistor, American-made or some other made, or integrated circuit, and they took it apart to find out how it was made and then they tried to make the same thing. But we were running a huge operation. I was a supervisor for a while on the epitaxy, on silicon wafers which were for power transistors. After I was offered membership in the Communist Party and I very politely refused, I was no longer supervisor. I worked as a technologist in integrated circuits and then I left the area to work in the office for inventions and patents – it was still in the same factory, but a different place – and improvement suggestions. I was there for a couple years, and after that, just took off.”
“Tramp here means somebody who lives on the street; this was completely different, they just used the word – they were like Sokol, but unorganized. There were no leaders. On weekends, they went out and got on trains. Usually they had on soldiers’ dress, like old-time uniforms from the first World War, even backpacks and stuff. And they would sleep outside without a tent, because a tent was considered to be, I don’t know the word for it, but like spoiled. For people who really don’t belong in nature – they sleep in tents, they could as well stay home, or get in a car, drive somewhere and then put up a tent – it was like, no. You have to get on a train and walk. And it was really nice.
“It was just singing songs. I was even collecting tramp songs for a long time. I really liked it, because those are truly, truly romantic songs about America, which people in America have no idea. It’s just funny how people romanticized this country.”
“The five-string banjo, actually, I just fell in love with it – I was already playing the guitar. There was a movie, one of the movies they let through, because the movie didn’t contain any scene about a private [swimming] pool. There was a commission approving the films for distribution and one of the things, which I found out, if there was a private pool, the movie was out. It couldn’t be shown. This was not the case; the movie was Bonnie and Clyde – there were no pools in Bonnie and Clyde, just some shooting. And there was this track when the cars were going, it was a chase and there was this track. It was Earl Scruggs playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” That was exhilarating. We went to see that movie maybe four times, just to hear that. And I couldn’t believe it. I was playing at the time the four-string banjo which is a completely different instrument, and I thought, how is his picking so fast? I was trying to copy it and there was no way.”
“So we have hidden all the documents in our luggage. There was a piece of luggage, it was this bag, and it had an inforced bottom. It was like thick paper. So I took it apart, sliced the paper apart. I dug out space on both sides, and our marriage certificate and documents which we needed to have with us, I put there, glued everything together, put it overnight under a piece of furniture. I also made it black on both sides, inside and outside, in case they would use some light or something, I thought maybe that would help, the black color would block it, and put it back together. I wouldn’t believe that it was there. And the money that I bought on the black market, where do you hide the money? Well, our son who was nine years old, Bobby, same name as me – our older son’s name is Mark, Marek – so Bobby had a little [stuffed] doggy. And I thought that the doggy, he had a inforcement in the neck, to keep the neck up. So Vilma carefully cut an opening in the bottom of the dog, we took out the inforcement and rolled the money into a roll, put it back on the inforcement, and she nicely sewed it back. So our son had the money all the time, in his doggy.”
“There was so-called isolation. They put everybody who was new in so-called isolation. You couldn’t talk to anybody else, you were going to meals at different times from everybody else, and we were not allowed to open a window and talk to anybody. The reason for that was that they needed to first separate any people who were escaping from the law, who killed somebody, and in those couple days they hoped they would be able to find out. But also, most important, there was an interview after those three days, and they didn’t want people to get smart, to know what to say, because based on that interview, the Austrian authorities decided if they give you political asylum or not. So if you got political asylum you could stay in Austria, if not, you had to go somewhere else.”
“We came to Baltimore, and I was here for just a couple years, and I heard that my huge idol, Pete Seeger, who I admired so much playing his five-string banjo and how he played guitar – just a tremendous influence on me, and he was in Baltimore, so I had to go see him, even when we didn’t have much money, but this is something I would regret for the rest of my life if I missed it. So I took my two sons and we went to the concert and I was so happy that he was there. But then, President Reagan was president at the time, and Pete Seeger started to sing a song – “This Old Man” – [which] was making fun of President Reagan. I couldn’t believe it, and I noticed all the policemen standing there and I thought, what are they going to do. They’re going to climb on the stage and take him down or turn off the speakers or something. And then I watched – they were standing with their backs to the stage, only watching the audience so nobody would cause any trouble. They were protecting the singer; they were protecting him if somebody didn’t like him so nothing would happen to him. That was just unbelievable. I saw democracy at work. And I was really impressed by that, even when I didn’t like the song.”
“I started to play at festivals, and right now I have about 80 performances behind me. I started to make workshops. The first American fujara workshop was right here, at this house. After that, I did a workshop in Rožnov where I used to work in the TESLA factory. It was just three years back. It was also a two-day workshop and I was playing at a concert. Of course, the most important thing was last year, about one year ago in the Library of Congress. It was really a highlight of my life so far because it was for the American Musical Instrument Society, and they were of course recording it and it’s ‘forever’ in the archives, I mean, the archives of Congress. And I knew it, unfortunately, ahead of time. So you can just imagine the pressure that I had performing in a room full of experts on instruments and music and they wanted me to talk to them about the fujara and about everything concerning the fujara and the overtone flutes. And then it was recorded and everybody will be able to see it on the internet, all my friends. It was really a lot of pressure, but I somehow got through it.”
In April 1949, Eda’s future wife Alice (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in expatriate tramping circles. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.
Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.
]]>Eda Vedral was born in České Budějovice in 1927. His mother, Ludmila, was a teacher and his father, also named Eduard, was a journalist. When Eda was six, the Vedrals moved to Mladá Boleslav where his father worked as writer and editor for the local newspaper. Eda says that the year before he graduated from gymnázium, his class was sent to dig trenches for the German war effort. Since Eda had knee problems, he was sent back to Mladá Boleslav and became a firefighter to provide assistance in case of a bombing. At the end of WWII and in light of his training as a fireman, Eda took part in watching over and transporting Nazi prisoners. In the summer of 1945, Eda’s father again changed jobs and became a political writer for a newspaper in Liberec. Eda graduated from gymnázium there in 1946 and began studying journalism at Charles University in Prague. After the Communist coup in 1948, Eda switched his course of studies to law; he says he was eventually kicked out of university in 1949 because of his father’s political background. Back in Liberec, his uncle helped him to find a job as an accountant in a factory. He was fired three months later, but soon became an accountant for Liberec’s municipal services [komunální služby města Liberec].
In April 1949, Eda’s future wife Alice (whom he had met in Prague while she was at business school) escaped from Czechoslovakia. He spent the next several months attempting to join her. On October 14, Eda crossed the border into Germany with 12 other people. He was sent to Ludwigsburg refugee camp where he was reunited with Alice. They soon married and had their first child, Alice. In early 1951, Eda joined the ranks of Radio Free Europe as a writer on the Czechoslovak desk and moved to Munich. In June 1952, the Vedrals received visas for the United States and arrived in Chicago. Eda says that they were helped by the Czech community there and he quickly found a job in a steel factory, which only lasted a short time. He then started working on the assembly line at Hotpoint, making washing machines and dryers. The Vedrals moved to Cicero, Illinois, and Eda and Alice had seven more children. Eda says that he made a point to speak to his children only in Czech; today, most of them still speak the language fluently. Eda also became very active in expatriate tramping circles. He has been the ‘sheriff’ of a group called Dálava for many years and has traveled to places like Canada, the Czech Republic, and the American West for tramping get-togethers.
Eda became an American citizen in 1965; he says that he waited so long because he believed he would be returning to Czechoslovakia to live. In 1972, he made his first trip back to visit his mother in Písek. His father, whom Eda had not seen since he left the country, died shortly before his visit. Eda says he feels at home in both countries and, if not for his children living in the United States, would consider returning to the Czech Republic to live. Now retired, he lives in Cicero with his wife Alice.
“I remember that, yes, for sure. We remember the Nazi occupation for sure. Even as kids, we know how the situation is, we understand it. Even if we were young kids, it didn’t bother us much, but we knew it was a really serious thing, especially after the Heydrich assassination and so on. ‘Keep your mouth shut and be careful.’”
“The end of the War came, so we, who were working for the firefighters, we got this stuff [weapons], and we started taking the Germans together, something like that, so I had a machine gun.”
So, were you rounding up Germans at the end of the War?
“Well, they wanted some of those prisoners, they have to move them to other cities for example. So we have to accompany them, watch them, or watch them at the barracks in Mladá Boleslav, so that’s why we had to have guns. And I had it at home, and my brother almost killed me.”
Did you use this gun? Were you shooting people?
“Well, I started to. Once, one of the prisoners tried to escape and I saw him. Now, you are a young man, you never had something, and he’s an old soldier, he knows what to do. I didn’t shoot him, exactly, I shot over his head. It was nothing funny, I tell you. Now I make a little fun out of it, but at that time it was nothing funny.”
“Some of those people [from RFE] went through those camps, Czech camps, looking for editor-writers and so on. I had luck – it was luck – they thought I was my father, because [we have the] same name, and the guy was from Mladá Boleslav, he knew my father. He knew me personally, so he said ‘Hey, this is it.’ He said ‘You have to go to Munich and have an interview.’ So I went over there, I interviewed in English, he spoke a little bit of Czech, this English guy. ‘Ok, dobrý.’
“I was an editor-writer for announcements in between [pieces], continuity. You have to find out what the guy wrote about, say it in two sentences, and they put it between programming. So the people in Czech Republic will know ‘Hey, tomorrow will be this,’ because they don’t want to listen to it eight hours a day; it’s dangerous. But if you are interested in this program – that was my job, to tell them what the program practically is.”
“Tramps are practically wild Scouts. The Scouting organization is organized. Tramps, not. Everybody knows about everybody or what’s going on, but you have no organization. That’s why the Nazis and Communists could ruin up Scouts or other organizations, but they couldn’t ruin up tramping. So most people going with the tramps enjoyed themselves or covered what they were doing, because nobody could catch them, even the Communists. And when they sometimes went over there and beat the people, they wondered ‘How come there are so many people here? How come you know there’s something here?’ Nobody had to send anything because everybody knew from Czechoslovakia, from the First Republic, every Sunday, every second Sunday in April, we’re going there. But otherwise, it’s like Scouting. But it’s wild because there’s no organization. You can change it, you can switch it, you can close it up, you can start a new one. There can be one man, there can be two, there can be thirty. Nothing’s written either. But you love nature. The real tramps, they really love nature and enjoy it. And clean up after themselves.”
(Video courtesy of Studio Na Koleni, Chicago)
Jarka and her husband were planning on taking a trip to Yugoslavia in September of 1969; however, her brother-in-law warned them that the borders would be closing soon, so they decided to leave for West Berlin, where Jarka had friends, in August of that year. The pair lived in Germany for two years where they applied for a visa to the United States. In 1971, Jarka and Mila settled in Cleveland. Jarka remembers that finding their own apartment was difficult as they had no credit when they first arrived; however, they soon were able to rent a place. After a few years, they bought a house in Parma, Ohio. Jarka worked in accounting at American Greetings while Mila was an electrical engineer who had several jobs. Jarka says that the two traveled throughout the United States, especially to Colorado and the Southwest, as Mila was fascinated with American cowboy culture. Jarka has been back to the Czech Republic many times, although she says that after her first visit back in 1978, she was subsequently denied a visa for about ten years. She says that after being in the United States for 40 years, she feels more at home here than when she is in the Czech Republic. Today, Jarka lives in Parma, Ohio.
]]>Jarka Stepina was born in Prague in 1944. She lived in the city’s Žižkov district with her parents and younger sister until 1953, when her parents divorced and she moved to the Letná district with her mother and stepfather, who worked at the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior. Jarka’s father also remarried and, as he lived in Prague as well, she saw him often. Although it was her desire to become a pediatric nurse, Jarka attended business school at her parents’ behest. She had a variety of jobs over the summers, including caring for children with Down syndrome and working in a factory and at a camp. Upon graduation, Jarka started a job as a payroll cashier. As a young adult, Jarka was involved in a youth group which afforded opportunities to travel to places such as Austria, West Germany, and Yugoslavia. It was through her activities as a young woman that she met her husband, Mila Štěpina.
Jarka and her husband were planning on taking a trip to Yugoslavia in September of 1969; however, her brother-in-law warned them that the borders would be closing soon, so they decided to leave for West Berlin, where Jarka had friends, in August of that year. The pair lived in Germany for two years where they applied for a visa to the United States. In 1971, Jarka and Mila settled in Cleveland. Jarka remembers that finding their own apartment was difficult as they had no credit when they first arrived; however, they soon were able to rent a place. After a few years, they bought a house in Parma, Ohio. Jarka worked in accounting at American Greetings while Mila was an electrical engineer who had several jobs. Jarka says that the two traveled throughout the United States, especially to Colorado and the Southwest, as Mila was fascinated with American cowboy culture. Jarka has been back to the Czech Republic many times, although she says that after her first visit back in 1978, she was subsequently denied a visa for about ten years. She says that after being in the United States for 40 years, she feels more at home here than when she is in the Czech Republic. Today, Jarka lives in Parma, Ohio.
“Some people at that time of my age, we loved country music, and we had tramping. We’d go to forests, which belonged to everybody, nobody can shoot you – there was no private property. We had campfires and the boys played guitar and sing old kind of country songs, so that was kind of our weekend. In Europe, everybody had weekend houses – most of them, like 95% – or you knew somebody who had a weekend house. In the wintertime when parents stayed home, then we’d go to a weekend house in the winter and have fun there. So it was just a different life, and I would never change it. I’m glad that I had it, and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
“They let me go back, in 1978, to the Czech Republic. So I was there for six weeks with my three year old son, and I had a good time. I went to my old company and saw my old friends and everything. After that, I never got a visa for ten years. I got a feeling my [former] supervisor found out I was there and I think she went to the secret police and made a report of some kind and made sure I was never granted a visa. My husband went every year – he could twice a year – and he never had a single problem. I was the only one they told was a danger to the government. I was marked like a terrorist – I’m a danger to government and I am not good for the country.”
“My husband met, in Europe, some kind of famous country music group, which was KTO with Waldemar Matuška, and then he met Fešáci, and then he met Greenhorni (Zelenáči), and then he met Šlapeto, and all these men came. So first thing was Petr Novotný with Karel Poláček from Fešáci came to America by themselves, kind of snooping around, and my husband took them to Kentucky and showed them all kinds of things and they had a concert there later on. I had a tape but somebody borrowed it and never returned it, but I definitely have a couple of tapes in Europe. So they came as whole groups, and we always had concerts in Karlin Hall; the boys stayed at our house. When Waldemar was here with Olina, they stayed with Daša Poseděl; they came here for the picnic, so we had a concert in my backyard and we invited my neighbors. So I told Fešáci learn some Škoda lásky and all kind of old polka which people know. So he sang for them and a whole bunch of people came.”
Peter Vodenka was born in Prague in August 1955, but raised in Mníšek pod Brdy where his father, Stanislav, worked as an industrial designer at an iron ore processing plant. Peter’s mother, Jarmila, worked in the same processing factory. In 1970, Peter moved to Prague to attend trade school, where he trained to become a plumber. He graduated in 1973 and remained in Prague, living in the city’s Vinohrady district. Unhappy with his job three years later, Peter moved back to Mníšek pod Brdy and quit plumbing to become a lumberjack. It was at this time that he met his future wife, Ludmila – the sister-in-law of one of his colleagues. The couple were married at Karlštejn Castle in 1978. A lover of nature and an avid ‘tramp,’ Peter moved to rural southern Bohemia to work on a collective farm. It was there, in Hrejkovice, that he and Ludmila started raising their two children. Peter says he moved to southern Bohemia, among other reasons, so that he could have his own horse; he bought a mare and called it Nelly Gray, after an American song he had heard.
Peter says that he has always been fascinated by America: while still living in Czechoslovakia he and his brother Stanislav owned a U.S. military Jeep dating from WWII, set their watches to reflect American Eastern Time and formed a horse-riding, tramping group called the Corral OK. In 1983, Peter decided to immigrate to America with his family. He drove with his wife and two children first to Hungary and then to Yugoslavia, where they left their car at the border and made their way into Austria by foot in the middle of the night. According to Peter, the crossing attracted the attention of patrolling Yugoslav border guards and the family was pursued. They made it, however, into Austria where one of Peter’s cousins, who had emigrated some months previously, picked them up and escorted them to Traiskirchen refugee camp. Peter and his family were there for three days until they were moved to Ramsau. In September 1983, the Vodenkas arrived in America. Peter and his family were sponsored by the First Lutheran Church in Beach, North Dakota, where they settled for a couple of years. Today, the Vodenkas live in Scandia, Minnesota. Peter regularly speaks publicly about coming to America and, in 2007, he wrote a book about his experiences called Journey for Freedom. Today, he runs a construction company and still enjoys outdoor pursuits, such as hunting in the Black Hills.
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Peter Vodenka was born in Prague in August 1955, but raised in Mníšek pod Brdy where his father, Stanislav, worked as an industrial designer at an iron ore processing plant. Peter’s mother, Jarmila, worked in the same processing factory. In 1970, Peter moved to Prague to attend trade school, where he trained to become a plumber. He graduated in 1973 and remained in Prague, living in the city’s Vinohrady district. Unhappy with his job three years later, Peter moved back to Mníšek pod Brdy and quit plumbing to become a lumberjack. It was at this time that he met his future wife, Ludmila – the sister-in-law of one of his colleagues. The couple were married at Karlštejn Castle in 1978. A lover of nature and an avid ‘tramp,’ Peter moved to rural southern Bohemia to work on a collective farm. It was there, in Hrejkovice, that he and Ludmila started raising their two children. Peter says he moved to southern Bohemia, among other reasons, so that he could have his own horse; he bought a mare and called it Nelly Gray, after an American song he had heard.
Peter says that he has always been fascinated by America: while still living in Czechoslovakia he and his brother Stanislav owned a U.S. military Jeep dating from WWII, set their watches to reflect American Eastern Time and formed a horse-riding, tramping group called the Corral OK. In 1983, Peter decided to immigrate to America with his family. He drove with his wife and two children first to Hungary and then to Yugoslavia, where they left their car at the border and made their way into Austria by foot in the middle of the night. According to Peter, the crossing attracted the attention of patrolling Yugoslav border guards and the family was pursued. They made it, however, into Austria where one of Peter’s cousins, who had emigrated some months previously, picked them up and escorted them to Traiskirchen refugee camp. Peter and his family were there for three days until they were moved to Ramsau. In September 1983, the Vodenkas arrived in America. Peter and his family were sponsored by the First Lutheran Church in Beach, North Dakota, where they settled for a couple of years. Today, the Vodenkas live in Scandia, Minnesota. Peter regularly speaks publicly about coming to America and, in 2007, he wrote a book about his experiences called Journey for Freedom. Today, he runs a construction company and still enjoys outdoor pursuits, such as hunting in the Black Hills.
“I was always dreaming about being a cowboy. And I wanted to be in America, because my dad was always talking about being in America and he was singing songs… My dad played guitar and he was singing songs and we used to go out camping, sleeping under the sky and we’d go camping for a vacation and so I was always dreaming of America, and of course the romantic parts about cowboys and Indians, which we read about in the books of Karl May and others, about Winnetou and others – this was really intriguing me. I always wanted to be a cowboy. But because we were living in the town, there was no place to have a horse, and eventually when I got married and had children, we moved to southern Bohemia and I started working on a government farm (JZD) and that gave me a chance to actually purchase a horse, so we had a horse over there and for two years prior to my defection I was living my dream; I was riding a horse across the countryside.”
“Tramping to us was really special, of course you know I was thinking about that when I came to America because the name ‘tramp’ in Czech was somebody who was noble, it was a noble name; it was somebody who was good, a right person, a true patriot, a person who knows nature and loves nature. Of course, in America, tramp is a degrading word, and I didn’t know that until we came over here but the tramping movement was very strong and very big, and like I said, my dad was involved in it, you know, since WWII pretty much. And then of course he lead us that way also.
“The OK Corral was a group which was my brother, myself and a friend of ours. Of course, we read about the battle of the OK Corral and the shoot out at the OK Corral – again that was a part of American history which we really ate up, which we admired and thought was very interesting. So, we named our group the OK Corral, of course we didn’t do it right, we named our group Corral OK, but that was all that we knew at the time. We didn’t speak English.”
“No actually it didn’t. It was totally different. The cattle – I was feeling sorry for the animals – because they were chained to the troughs all the time. They were not grazing outside. They grew up chained to the trough until they died. But of course when the calves were young and little, they were separated from their mothers and put in the one building, and when they came to a certain age they moved into different buildings, and when the cows became another age, when they were impregnated for the first time and started having milk, then they were moved to a different place where they were milked. So it wasn’t really the way I was picturing it – the romantic way. There was one time, there was one occasion, when some calves, actually some steer – it was steer – broke out and they ran out. And now somebody has to go and find them. That was my chance, I jumped on my horse and I ran across the countryside until I found them. And I was trying to push them back in, and it didn’t work because they were scared themselves, because they had never been outside. I was trying to push them back in and soon I realized that they were actually trying to follow me. When I was trying to push them they were trying to get behind me, so I ended up just trying to ride my horse back to the village and they actually came with me, they were actually following me all the way to the building. But it was the one occasion when I actually did some cattle herding.”
“We left that letter in our living room on the coffee table. And we were thinking that if we do defect, if we find a way, we’re going to call them and tell them to go to our apartment, because we gave them keys, and that way they’re going to find more. We didn’t want the government to hear our conversation, so we just told them ‘Go to our apartment and you’re going to find more.’ And if we don’t find a way across the border, we’re going to come back, burn the letter and it’s going to be done and over with. Well, unfortunately what happened is my wife – she had plants, and she was afraid the plants were going to die. So she put the plants in the bathtub and talked to our neighbor, because the apartment was set up that when you open the front door, you walk into the hallway, and when you are in the hallway, you can go into the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room and a bedroom. So, she put all the plants in the bathtub, and we locked all the other inside doors and we told her ‘Can you water the plants twice a week’ or whatever they needed. She [my wife] said ‘You don’t need to go anywhere else, I put everything in the bathtub, and all the other doors are locked, so you don’t need to go anywhere else.’
“Well, the nosy neighbor came in, and she tried the inside keys from her apartment on our apartment doors and of course, they opened. So she walked in the living room and she saw the letter. And she had the news that nobody else had. She felt like a big shot – we were living in a small village – so now she’s walking through the village telling everybody ‘Don’t say anything, but the Vodenkas defected, they are going to America.’ Well, we hadn’t, we were probably just barely across the border. Of course, it came to our employer and our employer had to report it to the police. They immediately called the border crossing and said ‘Arrest these people, stop these people with this license plate, with these passports and with these names.’ Well, luckily for us, we were across the border in Hungary by then, so it didn’t stop us but, again, if we didn’t find our way and we just came back acting like nothing happened, we would have been arrested and sent to prison immediately, so…”
“We were not really seeking Czech people, and we also heard in the refugee camp, there were some people who had friends who had actually been sponsored to come to Boston, and they were telling – they were sending letters back to their friends back in Austria and they were saying ‘There’s a Czech community, you don’t even need to speak English over here. There are stores, owners of stores speak Czech, and in the church they speak Czech and in the houses and everywhere, they speak Czech.’ I was actually afraid that we were going to get sent to a place like that, because I wanted to be in America. Because I want to learn English, and the sooner, the better. I knew the sooner we spoke the language, the sooner we could get on with our lives.”
“Everybody’s changing their watch to the local time, everybody takes their watch and changes it to the local time. And I took my watch and I want to change it to the local time and I realize, I have the time on my watch already. For the last eight years, my brother one time figured out that in America (of course in America there are a different four zones, time zones, but we didn’t know it then) in America – because America to people who don’t know too much is New York City and pretty much the East Coast – so in America the time is six hours behind our homeland. So he and I changed our watches to the American time. For eight years we had that time on our watches. It kind of helped us get closer to America, because if you look at your watch and know that in America it is 7:00 in the morning, you kind of can picture what people are doing at that time. And if you know that it is 5:00 in the evening, you kind of know that people are coming home, eating dinner and you get a little bit closer a feeling. There were times actually when we celebrated our new years, and then we would wait until 6:00 in the morning in Czech time to celebrate the new year in America, New York City. And we’d celebrate a second new year coming six hours later. So while I was standing over there with those people I just automatically grabbed my watch and I wanted to change it to the time, and I had had that time on it for eight years. And again, I became really emotional because I realized that with my life I had finally caught… I had finally arrived at that right time in which I wanted to be all my life.”
“Our American friends for 20 years were telling me ‘You need to write a book, you need to write a book. This is an interesting story, people in America need to hear that, they need to know how some people come over here.’ And this is recent also, this is not 100 years ago. People picture this stuff like it was happening decades or maybe even centuries ago. But it’s not, it’s 1983 and people go ‘Oh yeah! My second son was born’ or ‘I got my new job’ or ‘I graduated from high school then.’ So people can relate to it because it’s not a long time ago. And so people were telling me ‘You need to write a book.’ And for 20 years I was saying sure, sure, you know… how am I going to write a book when I don’t even speak proper English? So I was just ignoring it. I didn’t even want to talk about that, I was even getting tired when someone asked me where I was from. Because it was asking too much because of our accent. But then 9/11 came, and suddenly I felt and I was told it was my obligation to talk to people and tell this story. And the idea of the book was brewing in my head. And of course people were pushing us all the time, telling us that. It took 20 years before it actually crystallized, but about two and a half years ago, in the middle of 2007, I started writing that book. I had a helper with me – a lady friend of ours who was doing the grammatical corrections – and I started the book and finished it, so the book is written.”