16. THE TICHYS’ HISTORY BEFORE WORLD WAR II - PART 3/3

My Dad’s narrative continued:

I will tell now how and when I learned to save money and not spend it unless necessary. On a certain occasion my mother was notified that a small packet arrived and had to be claimed at the train station.  She sent me to go and get it. There was a fee to be paid, so I got some money for that and left. On my way to the station, while I was walking I found a coin probably equivalent to a US five cent coin (nickel), and just for the fun of it I threw it into the air and looked how it landed somewhere in the bushes. When I got to the station and asked for the packet I realized that the amount to pay was exactly the amount I had taken from home plus five cents! Since our family was known in that town, the clerk told me that it would be fine to take the packet and on the weekend, when my father would come to town, he could pay for what was missing. Then I told him how amazing it was that the exact amount that I was short was the amount of that change that I had found and threw away when I was coming. That was when I learned a great lesson, as the clerk looked at me and said, “Ah son, money is not to be thrown away,” and he took the packet back telling me to go back home and get more money so that I could pay for it in full. Well, it was probably a half and hour walk back to my home. Since there was no option, I had to do it, and for the rest of my life I remembered that valuable lesson, that we should not throw away any money that we find, even if it is a small change. It can be always useful. And everyone who knows me knows that I always abode by this rule: money is not supposed to be thrown away. This is an important principle that has been very helpful throughout my entire life.

I served only for six months in the army, instead of the regular 2-year term. That happened because I was assigned to a special task where I could serve as a driver using our own family car. But then during the following three years I had to go once in a while for some additional training. However, because I didn’t complete the full training on a regular basis, I was always assigned to some office, to work more on paperwork than on real military exercises. It was on one of those occasions that one day I woke up in the morning and realized that I was in jail. The problem was that the night before a group of soldiers went with their sergeant to the small town nearby to have some fun at the tavern. After drinking for a while, we went out and were involved in some disturbances in the village. I could not remember what happened, and was ashamed for having done that. It was at that time that I decided that I would never drink again, because I learned that I could even kill someone without knowing it. As punishment, during one  week I had to spend the nights in a special dorm used for those cases, although during the day I was allowed to go on with my own business. And sure, I never drank any alcoholic beverage again. I felt really ashamed of losing control of my mind to a point of having no conscience of what I was doing. 

There were always some funny things happening in the military. One of the commanders of my division didn’t want to use tap water for his personal use and hygiene. He wanted water brought from a river close to the camp. I was in charge of bringing him that water every day, but when I was not around, other guys would do it; and it had to be brought not in any container but in a special container that had to be cleaned very carefully. After a while, though, it became obvious that the commander couldn’t tell the difference between the two waters; so, instead of going to get water from the river, the soldiers brought him just tap water. This way he was happy, and we didn’t have to keep doing that annoying job.

Our family business was operated on a basis that every year someone was sent with supplies (ammunition and other accessories) to some competitions and hunting events happening on a routinely basis. I used to go every year to one of those places, where I became good friends with most of those who were participating. On one of those occasions, however, I had to attend the military exercises and couldn’t go. My brother Gustav went that year to do the job in the locality called Pistaneh. Then, the following year, when I went to that event again, I noticed that everyone was acting very unfriendly to me and nobody was buying supplies from us. I couldn’t figure it out at the beginning, but very soon I learned that the year before my brother Gustav had made fun of a very prominent person, a mayor of a town in the vicinity, and the man felt very offended by that. As a result, all people participating in the event resented the offense and took it personally, too, thus deciding to boycott our particular business by buying from a competitor instead. It took me a while to regain their friendship and get their business back. It shows how irresponsible Gustav was, putting the business in jeopardy just for the pleasure of making fun of others.

It was dealing with one of those customers that I learned how rich people sometimes can abuse others. On a certain occasion I was invited by one of those participants to visit his Castle, and the man took me to the roof of the Castle, showing me that all the land around that could be seen from there  belonged to him. Then the man expressed his dissatisfaction for having received a reminder note from our office asking for the payment of a bill that was overdue for at least ten months. Then the man told me he would never buy from us again, because he was a rich man and he paid his bills only after two years. He had also resented receiving the letter through the office of a lawyer. 

The scenery around our city was nice. There were some mountains, the Tatras, very close and we used to spend some time up there especially when there was snow. I remember that one time I went with some friends to those mountains. We were walking in the evening and suddenly we were in the middle of a snow storm. We finally made it to one of those small hotels and were glad to be in a warm place.  But after a few minutes we noticed that one of us was missing so we went out to look for him. The storm was heavy but fortunately we found him very close to the hotel. He collapsed when we were walking in the snow storm and was laying on the ground unconscious. We were glad that we noticed him missing because, had he stayed out there during the night, he would most certainly be dead in the morning. 

We used to go to the Tatras very often, to play hockey and also to watch the international hockey competitions taking place. Every year many teams from other European countries came to that place and we always went to watch those games. Actually, I was part of a local hockey team, and once in a while we played against some of those international teams. Of course we never won against them, but it was a great, fun experience because our team was often mentioned in the local newspapers and we felt very good about it. It certainly boosted our egos.

I had much fun traveling with my hockey team. We went several times to Germany and Poland to participate in competitions there. I remember one time in Poland I had a bad time because of the fun the audience made of me. Although I was still young, I was already partially bald and when I had the ball the adversary’s audience were yelling, “Hulla Daddy, Hulla Daddy”  as if I were the other players’ father. Calling me an old man was their satisfaction, though. Actually, in one occasion I could have scored a point but I missed it, and they yelled, “It’s sad Daddy, It’s sad Daddy.” But I had lots of fun doing all that.

I also played soccer in a team at school. During the Summer vacations, which last for about 2 months, we used to spend three to four weeks on a “soccer tour” We usually invited a couple of very good soccer players who played in a professional team, to go with us to Slovakia as we traveled from city to city and played against the local teams. We won very often because we had those professionals along with us. Those local teams liked playing against us, but very often we had to make a deal with them, which was that we would play if they kind of sponsored us. Sponsoring usually meant to give us some money so that we could make it to the next town. They had to feed us, too. We never made any money, but we had lots of fun…

Now I will tell you how I was drafted in 1939. At the time of those difficulties with Hitler I had to go and present myself to the army. But that was a tough task for me, because I had never been trained in the army prior to that, and now suddenly I had to be able to be part of the army. That was a big obstacle for me, besides all the inconvenience it caused to my personal business. But I was lucky that on my way to that recruitment place I met a friend of mine who told me that there was a way to arrange things in order to get a job as a janitor, and, sure enough, I got that work instead of bearing arms.

We always had confusion in Europe, and it was a very difficult time when in our country we had the Nazists on one side (Germany), the Fascists on the other side (Italy), and many other groups fighting everywhere.  Our country was always at a disadvantage because the population was very small compared to Germany, and, still worse, there were some three and a half million Germans living as citizens in our country. Those times were very disturbing, especially when everyone was preparing for war. We were preparing for war, too, but obviously in a different way because we didn’t have the same resources and capabilities as the Germans did. It was in those times when I had to go and work as a soldier, as I described above. At one time we went close to the border with Germany (which was so close that we walked) and there we stayed aligned in the position of fighting - but it certainly was  just a small symbolic group if compared with the German army. We stayed there for about one week, doing absolutely nothing but sometimes going at night to the woods shooting bullets into the air.

After a few days we were told that we had to go deeper into the woods and also to some mountains; but after walking for some time and each soldier carrying a backpack as heavy as 45 kilos, we were told that we should return. On our way back we stopped in a village to spend the night, and I remembered that one of our customers lived in that town, so I went to visit him. He was happy seeing me and insisted that I spent the night with them, which I did. In the morning, however, when I was looking for my division I realized that they had already left early in the morning and I missed them. So I just took a train back to Ostrava. Later on when I went back to return my uniform I was informed that I had been considered to be a defector, which was a serious violation. But after explaining what happened I was excused with no further consequences.

This concludes the comments on the times before WW!!. In the next segment I will return to our life in Brazil, with a few more interesting stories.”

(All rights reserved according to the Law)

15. THE TICHYS’ HISTORY BEFORE WORLD WAR II - PART 2/3

Please remember that it's still my Dad, Alexandre Tichy telling his story:

“There was always something dramatic going on in my brother Gustav’s life. Funny things happened, and people laughed; but there was always someone who would be victimized by the situation. Gustav had a very intense social life, especially at night. He was once riding his motorcycle carrying a friend on the back seat, at night, and they went through a place where some thieves had set a rope across the street so that whoever was passing on a motorcycle would fall, thus being easily robbed. Which certainly happened that night, and once Gustav and his friend were down, two individuals came out of the bushes running in their direction to rob them. They shot Gustav’s friend in the stomach and started looking for his money. Gustav had fallen farther and since he always had a pistol on him, he immediately started shooting at the thieves and they had to retrieve quickly, and ran away. His friend was treated in the hospital and survived. Everything looked fine, but after a few days a detective and two police officers came to our home looking for Gustav. It was early in the morning, and he was still sleeping when they arrived. The family had a good relationship with the police because we serviced all their arms in our shop. 

Gustav would not come out of his bed, so the three men were invited to his room to talk to him. First they talked about some generalities, but then the detective suddenly asked Gustav about that “shooting incident” that had happened a few nights before. Gustav told them that they were assaulted, the guys were armed and shooting, so he also shot at them, and they ran away. Then the detective asked if Gustav had a permit to carry a pistol, which he obviously didn’t have. He said that, because he co-owned a shop that had a license to sell firearms, he didn’t need a permit to carry one. But it was not true, so the detective informed him that he had to confiscate the weapon because it had been used unlawfully without a permit. The pistol was actually placed on top of a dresser very close to them at that moment, but they had not noticed it. The detective asked where the pistol was, so Gustav indicated where it was, and the detective tried to grab it. Gustav warned him not to dare to touch the firearm; but the detective grabbed it anyway. Gustav reacted immediately and with no fear because he was a very big guy compared to the detective; he jumped quickly from his bed,  grabbed the short detective by his waist and neck (in the back), took him out to the street, and just threw the poor guy on the sidewalk covered with snow - and told them all not to ever come back!

That was crazy, and would certainly have grave consequences. I was kind of happy with the incident, because Gustav might finally get some punishment for his always challenging and defiant behavior. We were all wondering when he would be finally arrested and taken to jail. But nothing was happening, which was intriguing. A few weeks later, when I went to the police station to deal with some business, I asked a friend of mine who worked there about Gustav’s situation regarding that incident. But my friend didn’t know anything about it. When I told him the story, however, he started laughing and told me that most probably nothing would ever happen. The detective that was thrown on the street that day became famous for capturing a very dangerous killer some time before, and would certainly not expose himself to the ridicule of telling  others that a man wearing pajamas threw him out of the home, in the snow, when he was trying to confiscate a gun. And again, lucky Gustav escaped from the consequences of assaulting a police detective.

Gustav smoked a lot, more than 40 cigarettes a day, and the results appeared early in his life. At the age of 30 he got tuberculosis and died after a short period of illness. In a sense, he had had a lot of fun during his short life. When he went to Pištaneck, to manage our company’s branch there, one night he went to a tavern and introduced himself as Lord Parfy. Important people used to do that, and then a public announcement was made informing who had just arrived. Gustav was introduced as being Lord Parfy and was having much fun. Until suddenly another announcement was made: “Lord Parfy just arrived.” This time it was the real one, though. But everyone made fun of him, telling him that Lord Parfy was already enjoying  the party, and showed him where Gustav was seated. Of course the man was infuriated and the situation became very embarrassing. However, situations like this were very common in Gustav’s life; but, at the end of the day, Gustavalways had a lot of fun with those incidents. On that occasion he was just kicked out of the party, with the compliments of Lord Parfy!

We had two stores and sold all sorts of guns and ammunition.  But the forte was mainly hunting rifles. Every year the hunting season was very active, with people coming from several parts of the region for the competitions. My father and I ran the main store and Gustav went to take care of the branch, which he did for approximately two years. When he contracted tuberculosis the doctor’s prognosis was that he had only about two months of life. And sure enough, he died after two months. That was something very difficult for my father; he was devastated since he liked Gustav very much, but absolutely nothing could be done. 

We were four siblings. Karlicka was born in 1898, Gustav in 1900, I in 1905, and the youngest was Zdenka, born in 1906. Karlicka worked in the store with my father, while I was in school. She was a very beautiful girl, but something bad happened; she met a young guy from Prague and started a relationship with him. My father was strongly against the relationship, and she committed suicide. I was still very young and don’t remember exactly the details, but I know that she ingested something, apparently some pills in excessive quantity. The first time she was rushed to the hospital and they saved her, but after three days she did it again and at that time she passed away. It was a devastating tragedy; she was very beautiful and very liked by everyone. My father experienced extreme suffering for the loss, and for about three years he completely lost interest in any kind of activity. It affected him so badly that he even neglected his own business. He would not open any letter received in the mail during that time. And, of course, the results were not good - as it happens when the owner of a business does not care much about the business. We all reminded him constantly that although this happened there were still the three of us and he should be happy for having us. It took him a long time to recover from the loss, but little by little he got better. The loss of Gustav later on, though, made another horrible impact on him.

When I was 18 months old I got pneumonia and the doctors said that I would not make it, that there was no hope, and that I would die soon. It was then when a lady who worked for my mother told her, “Look, there is no hope, so why don’t  we try to do what my mother did?”  Then they obtained lots of a type of cheese like ricotta cheese. They just wrapped me into some sheets along with that cheese so that I started sweating a lot. After a while I started coughing very strongly and all that “stuff” ” came out of my lungs. I had just been saved by natural medicine. To date I still like cheese!

Although my health was not good when I was little, it gradually improved as I grew up. I was practicing several sports. However, when I was 20, one day I had a terrible stomachache and in the evening I had to go see a doctor. Only later on I remembered that when I arrived at the hospital, and before he even examined me, he told the nurse, “prepare him for a surgery.” The doctor was our client in the store and we were confident that he would do a good job.  The next day in the morning, when I woke up, I noticed that my belly had been cut in several different places instead of only one incision. When my father came to visit me, he asked the doctor what happened, and he replied, “Well, my diagnostic was appendicitis, but when we opened him up we realized that that was not actually his problem; then my assistant suggested that it could be something in the intestines so we operated there; but again, there was no problem in the intestines”. When my father realized that he had to pay for two surgeries, he said to the doctor, “I am glad you didn’t have five assistants with you in the room, otherwise I would have to pay for six surgeries..” My recovery from the surgery was very slow, and actually I could not recover at all. I was always feeling weak and indisposed. I was then taken to a different doctor, and this one concluded that I had tuberculosis, too. I could not believe it, so I looked for a second opinion - which confirmed the first diagnosis. 

Treatment for tuberculosis was not available in Ostrava. The only place for that was in the Slovak region, in the mountains called Tatras (Czeskie Tatry), where the weather was appropriate for such a treatment. So I went there and spent three months receiving treatment. The scenery there was very beautiful and the air was very clean. It was not actually a treatment for me, it was basically a vacation. However, after three months we felt the financial burden of the treatment, and one day I talked to the treating physician telling him that I could no longer carry the financial burden. At that time he told me to go home because I had no illness. Isn’t it Interesting that when I ran out of money I was suddenly cured? I even suggested that I could move to a family home and go to see him only occasionally to be checked, but he just insisted that I could go home. Which I did.

I surely got better after staying in the Tatras village for that time. Once back at home, I continued practicing several sports, studying just a little (as usual...), and my health improved sensibly, although for the rest of my life I had a cough that resulted from tuberculosis. Every time I coughed my mother was in desperation, thinking that I too could die from it - as did my brother Gustav. 

My mother had a golden soul. She always took good care of us all. I don’t remember much about her extended family. They were from the country, and one time I went to spend my vacation with her relatives. They had a nice farm and I enjoyed the experience of being there, although I almost died when on one occasion I fell in a manure container. Luckily someone noticed it and took me out of it. When they wrote my mother a letter telling her what happened, she immediately came to pick me up and I was never allowed to return to that place.

Later on my mother bought a property in the city of Hranice, with a nice home. The land was as big as 16,000 m2 and located next to the Becvi river. It was a nice place in the middle of nature, and ever since we would spend every vacation at that place. We also liked going there on the weekends.

We were Catholics, but even being a devout Catholic, my mother didn't go to church. On Sundays she stayed at home and prepared a nice meal for the family. When I was little she used to send me to church with my father, which we did for a while. To protect my head from the cold I used to wear a nice cap made by my mother; one time I lost the cap at church - or maybe it was stolen! Of course she made me another one, but the next time we went to church, my father said to me, “Oh son, if we go to church again, someone may steal your cap again, so why don’t we just go to the tavern where some people of our business association meet every Sunday morning? I can hear what is going on and spend some time with my friends and you can enjoy some of the games they have there. And nobody will steal your cap again” . His argument was very convincing to me, so … from that time on, we always went to the tavern every Sunday morning instead of going to Church... Of course we never told this to anyone at home! My mother always thought that we were faithfully going to  church every Sunday…

My father was an easygoing person, and always resolved problems with some humor. Our shop was in the same building where a shoemaker had his shop. We kept wood logs in the attic, and when the weather was cold we used those logs to warm up the store. But we noticed that someone was stealing the wood, and after observing what was going on we concluded that the shoemaker was taking it for his own use. I wanted to make a report at the police station, but my father told me to forget it because he had a better idea. He took a piece of wood, drilled a hole into it, filled it with gunpowder, closed it under pressure with a piece of wood, and put the log back into the attic. And sure enough, one day the shoemaker’s heating system exploded! Interestingly enough, the shoemaker went to the police station to report that we threw that piece of wood on the floor close to his shop, but my father explained to the police what exactly had happened and there were no consequences from that. We had authorization to store gunpowder, which was used as part of our business.

Now I am going to tell a little bit about my Grandpa on my mother’s side. I will tell you about the strange conditions of his death. He used to work on a farm and liked to drink a combination of a couple of alcoholic beverages which he mixed himself together. At a certain time he was living in our home in Hranice, close to where another of his daughters was living as well. He was a poor man who lost his wife and had no personal resources. So every once in a while he asked his daughter for some money  to buy his drinks, always saying that he had a back pain that decreased when he had a drink. It was certainly just an excuse. His daughter always gave him some money for that, but on one occasion she refused to give him the money to buy alcohol; coincidentally, he passed away on that very night. I can't imagine my aunt's feelings of guilt that she probably experienced for the rest of her life.

At the age of 70 he moved to Hranice, but at that time we didn’t know him much, neither did he know us;  he always lived in a country town far from us, and we rarely met him. On one of those weekends when our family went to Hranice, it was a time when the cherry trees were full of fruit, and we immediately climbed on one of those trees as we usually did, to eat cherries. Well, he didn’t know who we were, and when he saw us on the trees he thought we were just some kids from the neighborhood and told us to come down and leave. In defiance and thinking that an old man was easy to defeat, we told him then, “If you want us to go down, then come up here and get us”  Which, for our surprise and astonishment, he had no problem doing it promptly: at the age of 70 he climbed on that tree without a ladder, caught us, and gave us the deserved reward: a good spanking! Only later on would he realize that we were his own grandchildren!

In 1991, when my son Alex took me  back to the Czech Republic for a visit, we looked for my Grandpa’s grave at the cemetery but, unfortunately, we couldn't find it.”

 

(All rights reserved according to the Law)

14: THE TICHYS’ HISTORY BEFORE WORLD WAR II - PART 1/3

Before I (George now) pick up the narrative of the years in Brazil, I will post my Dad's description of the Tichys' history starting as far back as possible. There will be three parts for this matter. 

Alexandre Tichy, on the family's past history:

“I actually don’t know much about our ancestors, because there were not many people who could tell me the story. The city where our family lived was Ostrava, in the former Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic. My grandpa worked for an important, rich person who lived in a castle; he had an interesting job, brewing beer.  

My father, Gustav, had a very difficult childhood.  When he was two years old, his mother died and his father remarried.  My Dad and his brother (uncle Jenik) had a hard time with their step-mother, because she didn’t like them. And they didn’t like her either.  My mother had some information on that family situation and she told me that when the family went to visit someone my Dad and his brother were not allowed to accept anything to eat or drink from the people they were visiting.  When they did accept something they were spanked when they returned to their home because they supposedly were, suggesting to others that they didn’t have enough food at home.’

Then my Grandpa died, and soon my step-grandma remarried. So then my father was actually an orphan, becoming poorly treated by the step grandparents. When my father turned 14 he was literally banned from home and had to take care of himself in all ways.  He was offered a job by a person who used to manufacture firearms, so he learned much of it when he was still very young. When he learned quite a bit of that profession, he went to Austria because there was more work there at that time. He was still young, though, so he also ended up serving in the military in Austria. In those days, as soon as the kids became grown up enough to be able to work, they used to go to Austria to make some money since the wages were higher.  My mother did the same, and it was during those times that they met each other and married.

At that time, Ostrava was only a small village, maybe with a population of only 500 people.  But a big reserve of coal was discovered in that area, and soon people from everywhere came looking for work. It didn’t take much time for the population to reach 20,000 people.  My parents came back from Austria looking for new opportunities as well.  He started a small business, manufacturing especially hunting guns, and my mother was sewing women’s clothing.  Both made pretty good money with their business since the population was growing so rapidly. 

My father, Gustav, and his brother had inherited a big sum of money from their father, and each should receive ca.  20,000 golden crowns; However, it was stated in the will that their stepmother should receive the interest on that money while she lived, so they couldn’t actually get the money.  However, she died only after  World War I and that money lost its value completely.  They had inherited a beer factory in Ukraine, too, but the person in charge of that business was embezzling  all the money and the business went broke.

Despite the hard circumstances, my father was a happy person who worked hard and was a very good gunsmith. He spent some time in Prague where he passed through the famous Frantisek Faukner's shop as a journeyman. He didn’t like the managerial aspect of his business, but loved to work making shotguns himself.  He could always recognize a shotgun that he had built, even many years later. Same thing with any small part he made for a rifle. Once he and I went to Brno to an exposition of firearms; while visiting another gunsmith’s booth, he noticed several of his rifles.  Suddenly my father said, ‘Do you see that rifle? It was stolen from my store by an employee 15 years ago.’  My father became very angry and asked to talk to the owner.  He actually did talk to him, explained the situation, and that person gave him the rifle back for free! 

Although my father was an expert, the business was not doing so well.  We always had enough for our daily living, but there was no big abundance. of goods. Since I was a small child I always had serious health problems, especially with my tonsils.  Any change of temperature was enough to make me seriously ill.  Because of that, during vacations my parents always sent me to some nice places to recover my energies.  I went twice to Yugoslavia and very often to the mountains not far from our town.  One of my father’s clients lived up on the mountains and he always had me there for a month or two.

On one occasion when I was in Yugoslavia my mother was supposed to come from Moravia to spend a few days with me.  I was waiting for her at the train station, and the train was not arriving.  Suddenly we got the message that that train had suffered a terrible accident on the mountains, caused by a huge rock that fell down and hit the train hard, with many wagons ending up in a river - the report said that there were many casualties.  My feelings were the worst possible, and we were preparing ourselves for the worst. However, to our surprise, she arrived the next day.  She missed the train in Vienna the day before, and so her life was spared. 

I was a very good student during my first five years in school, but then I started to practice sports.  My both parents were working at their store and didn’t pay much attention to what I was doing, and because of a shift in interest I neglected my studying, getting just the minimum scores to pass. I was supposed to study to be an engineer, but the business was growing and new branches were opened in other cities, which needed proper supervision.  I worked hard in our business, but had little experience in management.  My brother Gustav was a good person, but didn’t like to work that much.  My father sent him to another city in Germany to learn more about the business, but in a couple of months he came back saying that the Germans were prejudiced and were mistreating him because he was Czech. Mere excuses for laziness! Other attempts were made to send him to other places to learn more, but all ended up being a failure. He would always come back home again, and would do basically nothing other than riding his  Harley Davidson motorcycle during most of the day, but especially at night. 

My parents were not too tough on my brother because he had had a bad experience when he was a small child.  He was born cross-eyed. There was a physician in Prague who became famous for correcting that problem with surgery. So my mother took Gustav and me and we went to see that doctor, who performed the operation on him within a few days. The tragedy happened when the doctor took out the bandages from Gustav’s face, to show the results of the operation; but what a disappointment and frustration it was to learn that the doctor mistakenly operated on the wrong eye and now both eyes had a problem. This had impaired Gustav's sight for the rest of his life. However, that didn’t prevent him from running crazily on his motorcycle. He loved his bike, which became part of his life and personality. The bike also became responsible for a great deal of his frequent problems.

On a certain occasion, there were some motorcycle races in Ostrava, and Gustav invited one of the competitors to spend the night at our house, to get a good night of sleep. At some time at dawn, the friend needed to go to the restroom; since he didn’t know where it was, he woke up Gustav asking him where the restroom was, and got the information. He went there but missed the right door and ended up outside the home; but the worst was that  the door locked itself after him and he was now literally on the street and still in his pajamas. He could not return and stayed in the cold outside, always having to hide himself when people came on walking on the street. Later on he started knocking on the door, wishing that the housemaid would come to open the door for him. The problem was that she was not aware that there was a guest spending the night in the house! Gustav and his friend went to a party the night before and came home very late, so obviously she would not let him in and closed the door leaving him outside. He knocked again, but she would not let him in either. Being afraid of having a stranger doing that, the housemaid woke up Gustav explaining what was happening, but being still sleepy and having forgotten that he brought a friend with him the night before, he told her to just ignore the guy. And the poor guy had to stay outside, suffering the cold weather for one more hour until Gustav finally realized that his friend was not in the room…  I will tell a couple more stories about him in the next segment." 

Legit GUSTAV TICHY piece of art

 

And now, five more pictures of a shotgun currently owned by Dr. Aaron Wallace (George's son in law, married to Lais Tichy Wallace). Aaron's children, David and Alex, are excited holding the gun as well. (Pictures taken on Jan 12th, 2022). 

 

 

(All rights reserved according to the Law)

13. RESCUE COMES FROM BELGIUM. THEN, LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE!

By Alexandre Tichy (Sr.)

“Yes, we were very happy to be back in our Country. However, we suddenly had to face the reality that our return to Czechoslovakia would not be long lasting.  I knew we would have to leave again.  After being back home for two and a half years, it was time to do something so that we wouldn’t be stuck there.  I honestly didn’t like the idea too much, because I would prefer to stay in my country, seeing my children and grandchildren growing up as Czechs.  But things in life don’t happen the way we want.  

Now it was time to leave again. But how to leave?  To do it may not be that difficult, but with a wife and three children, that would be another story - let alone leaving all relatives and lifetime friends behind!  That was a difficult task.  We were thinking a lot on how to get out of the country but couldn’t find out how. The Communist government closed the borders, and nobody could get out. People’s properties had been confiscated, and freedom of any kind was completely eliminated.

So, first we were hit by (German) Fascism; and now by (Russian) Communism?! I wish people around the world could understand how disgraceful those regimes are. We needed to get out at any price, however, we didn’t tell our wishes to anybody - it remained strictly between my wife and me. If we told our desire to anyone (including relatives) we would most probably have been denounced to the Communist authorities, and most probably imprisoned. In those days, nobody, absolutely nobody could be trusted. That’s when, again, something completely unexpected happened to me - as it had happened many times before. What could possibly be the odds that it was actually happening? Let me tell you another amazing story. 

One day I was working in my store and saw a familiar person coming in.  It was a man who had been one of our drivers in Belgium, Mr. Debuson.  I was stunned!  What in the world was he doing there in our town?  I asked him what he was doing there, and he told me that he brought us a gift and said that if we wanted we could leave the country immediately.  He had brought us Belgium passports that already had our photos in them.  I don’t know where they got those pictures of us. The Mayor that I became friends with helped in the whole process in an effort to extricate us from the (now communist) country. He said that if we wanted to leave we had to do it immediately.  It was Friday and we packed whatever we could and left for Prague as if we were going on vacation for a few days. We told the children’s school that we were going to the mountains on a vacation for a full week, to make sure nobody would suspect anything when they missed a few days of school. Those were days of terror, nobody could be trusted, no chances could be taken. Our own children were not told what was going on. And we were, for the second time, leaving all our possessions behind, caring only for our lives, and taking only a a couple of suitcases with a few clothes.

My wife’s name was added to Mr. Debuson's passport as being his wife, along with two of our children. I had the other child added to my (brand new!...) passport. There was a big problem, though: my passport had not been rubber stamped showing my entry to the country. How would I justify that I was in the Country (with my two children)  without an entry stamp in my passport? This became a real challenge. 

I had some rubber stamps made with those exact same letters on the rubber stamps used by the border inspectors. That’s all needed! I worked on it all night long, and it was not very difficult to forge a stamp on my passport.  I drew a fine line in the passport with a pencil and applied the letters one by one so that it would appear as having been stamped by  the same rubber stamp used at the supposed entry.  We spent about  three days in Prague and took the train to Belgium. We boarded in separate wagons, so if someone were caught, not everyone would be compromised. My wife had dyed her hair, to disguise it just in case someone who knew us were in the same train. However, as we will see now, something can always go wrong… 

It was actually a close call at that time; I almost got in big trouble at that time, because of that line I drew with a pencil in my passport.  I forgot to erase it after finishing the “rubber stampin job!”  If the police at the border noticed that line, I would be caught and possibly executed on the spot. I only realized that I had the problem when it was too late since we were already on the train on our way out. However, I always had the intuition of carrying with me something that could be of someone’s interest - as I did, for example, with those bottles of cognac when we drove from Belgium to Czechoslovakia after the war. Therefore, this time I had some American cigarettes with me, which I left on the top of the suitcase and at the checking point I just offered some cigarettes to the man in charge, to distract him. It worked perfectly! He took one cigarette only, and I told him to help himself with the whole packet.  He was so happy that he never noticed what I actually had on my passport.  He rubber stamped it and there we were in Germany again, out of our Country. What a relief, what an adventure!  Then we went to Belgium and quickly to Paris in France - our final destination at that time.

It was only then that we called our family in Czechoslovakia to inform them that we had fled. I know it sounds rough, but there was no other option. If we had told them our plan, we wouldn’t be able to leave, and may have ended up in trouble with the Communist government. We believed that freedom was worth any sacrifice, any risk, any sadness. Freedom is a concept that we reputed almost as sacred in our family.And it is, indeed, one of the most important possessions one may have. Therefore, any form of Fascism, or Communism, or Dictatorship was not an option for us. We would do the impossible to make sure that we all lived in freedom. Freedom was always on top of our list of priorities.

We arrived in Paris late in the evening and took a cab with the intention of finding a certain  hotel that we were looking for.  Unfortunately the driver fooled us as he kept driving everywhere in town as if we were on a tour.  Of course his intent was to rip us off charging for the whole time of his driving.  After half an hour he finally found the hotel and we had a good night of sleep.  I had left some packets in the storage at the train station the night before when we arrived, so in the morning I got up early with the intention of going to that station to get the packets.  There were some cabs in front of the hotel, so I talked to one driver asking him how long it would take going to that train station.  He looked at me with a funny look and told me that the station I was looking for was just across the street!  I then realized that the night before the cab driver took us for a half an hour “tour” just to drop us across the street… I felt welcome in Paris again…

The people in the hotel were giving me a very strange, weird look because my passport was for myself only, and my wife was in Debuson’s passport as if she was his wife, but he was in a room by himself and my wife and I were in the same room.  Of course it was difficult for others to figure it out!  One day the manager made a light comment that the hotel kept a high moral standard, so I finally explained what the actual situation was in our case, and everything was properly clarified No more weird looks after that.

We stayed in the hotel for about 3 weeks and visited many places, including some museums, and the children also enjoyed going to the big parks.  Ivan was still very small and he enjoyed seeing some children in their small boats as they spent long hours in the lake in one of those parks.  He asked me several times to buy a boat like that.  I couldn’t buy it, though, since we were there just temporarily.  I remember that one time he was sick and had to take some injections, but it was an ordeal because he would not allow anybody to give him the shot.  So one day I talked him into it by telling him that the shot was not painful and that if he allowed us to give him the shot I would buy a boat like those later on when we would be living close to the beach.  Well, he got the shot but unfortunately I still owe him the boat because I never bought it.  It would have been impossible to use a boat in the sea, especially with him being so small.  

Some of us had health problems while we were in France.  One time Alex had appendicitis and needed surgery.  On another occasion it was Gustav who had it and had a surgery too.  It all cost a lot of money and I paid it in cash, without knowing that the organization that was taking care of us as refugees would pay for all our medical and other expenses.

From Paris we went to South France.  I met a nice gentleman, Mr. Richard who lived close to the beach.  He had a textile manufacturing business.  They were nice people.  I didn’t want to be a burden to them, but they were very nice and took care of us, helping as much as they could.  They even invited us to move in with them, while we waited for visas to move to another country.  So we finally decided to go to their town.  On our way to the train station my wife still needed to go to some place before embarking, so we agreed to go separately and meet at the train station later on.  Alex went with me and Ivan and Gustav went with her.  When I got to the train it was already packed.  I could hardly get in.  But before I got in I started looking for my wife everywhere, calling her from the outside, but couldn’t find them.  So we finally went back to the hotel for one more night.  Only the next day we learned that there were so many people traveling the day before and a second train was added for service.  I had looked for them on the wrong train.  My wife didn’t have any tickets.  She just got into the train, and actually she never paid for that trip.  It was a 1,000 kilometer trip, but the train was so packed that there was no way for someone to check people’s tickets.  In the morning I called Mr. Richard in Frejus and learned that my wife was already there with the other two children. So we ook the next train and went to meet them.  When we arrived Mr. Richard was already waiting for us.  Unfortunately one of our suitcases was stolen during that trip, but we were reimbursed with a good amount of money.

Mr. Richard had already found a home for us, which we rented from an engineer who had been sick for six years; he could not walk and was always moving only on his knees.  His father, Dr. Medavar, was a physician, but could not help him with his illness. One thing he knew well though, to charge for a rental home; he asked for FF$1,300 per month to rent us his home - which was very expensive. I took the place because it was the only viable option at that time   There was another person, Mr. Sali, who lived close to us on a big property.  He had some money but was going broke because the maintenance of the farm was very expensive and he was not keeping it productive.  Later on he moved to Paris, where he had a closer friendship with a married acquaintance and he asked me if I wanted to move into his house so that someone would be living there, thus preventing people from burglarizing the place.  That was helpful because I could then save the money I was paying for rent.  He had several kinds of vegetables planted on his property at the time he left, and for a long time we had enough of those for our consumption.  It was a great deal for both parties, and we enjoyed living in that area for about two and a half years. 

Mr. Sali’s idea had been to make the property productive, but he had no experience with that type of business.  The property was actually a vineyard when he bought it, but his plans were different.  He eliminated all vines - which were very valuable at that time - and prepared the soil to plant vegetables.  He actually hired several Bulgarians to be in charge of the plantation but the business didn’t take off.  He was just losing money on a daily basis.  On one occasion he shipped a wagon full of tomatoes to Paris but then he had a price dispute with the buyers since they could not agree on a final deal.  So, at the end, Mr. Sali finally agreed to the price they were offering him for the goods. But it was too late; the tomatoes had deteriorated and were no longer good for consumption. On the top of it, he received a bill from those people to reimburse them with the expenses to dump the whole lot of tomatoes. 

At another time Mr. Sali had the idea of starting a shoe factory.  He bought all the expensive equipment and the raw material to start his business.  But the people he hired didn’t actually know how to make shoes,  and the venture ended in failure as well. Mr. Sali had a big dog which stayed with us.  Well, we were vegetarians, and the dog was fed only with vegetarian food, the leftovers from our meals.  Sometimes he ate, sometimes he didn’t.  But we noticed that he had good health and actually his hair was very nice and shiny.  We used to brag to our neighbors telling them how good a vegetarian diet was, that even our dog was benefiting from it. Only some time later we realized that the dog was actually going every day to a nearby butchery where the butcher was serving him a daily “non-vegetarian”  meal…

We were enjoying the French Riviera very much. In August of 1950, our younger son, Georges, was born in Saint Raphael.  We had a very kind neighbor who had a car, and for three days he was always ready so that he could take my wife to the hospital to deliver the new child. We lived in Frejús, but the hospital was in Saint Raphael, about 4 miles toward the beach. After a few days, for our total surprise,we received a nice letter from the Mayor of Saint Raphael congratulating us and stating that it was the first time ever that a Czech family had a child born in that city. Therefore the City would pick the hospital bill and pay it in full. We thanked him a lot since it was a great help.

I had filed an application with the IRO (International Refugee Organization), an entity that helped refugees to move on with their lives.  I stated that we wanted to move either to Canada or to Brazil, whichever visa would be approved first. I knew that Canada was probably no longer an option considering my prior experience at the Canadian Embassy in Brussels (as I described before). I had a few friends that moved to Brazil, and they were encouraging me to move to that country. Brazil was accepting immigrants with experience in farming, so I suddenly became, again, a farmer on my application… After a while the IRO called us to Paris to continue the procedures for immigration to Brazil.  We packed all our belongings and were ready to go to Paris when my wife suddenly decided that she wouldn’t go.  At the time of the departure to Paris, she said that she was sick and she would not go.  But I finally talked her into it and we went to Paris where we stayed for about one week before going to Bordeaux to finalize paperwork.  The IRO paid for all expenses at that time, including the traveling tickets.

A new chapter in our life was starting. Our departure took place at the Port of Marseille, where we embarked on an old merchant ship that was on its last trip before retiring.  After about 18 days, on July 9th of 1951, we finally arrived in Brazil; first stopping in Rio de Janeiro, and then, after a few days, reaching our final destination, the great City of São Paulo, in the State of São Paulo.  The trip was good except that Georges became sick and my wife had a hard time with him.  Actually, all of us except my wife became sea-sick due to the ups and downs as the old ship went through the gigantic waves in the Atlantic sea.

So now we were, finally, far away from where we experienced two world wars and a Communist regime. We wanted to stay away from the area that for us appeared to be a melting pot, endangering not only our freedom but our lives. The expansion of the Soviet Union was a constant threat, but in Brazil we felt safe, and had no plans to ever return to Europe.

The challenge was not small, though. I was already 46, and my wife 41; and we had four sons!  Re-starting one's life in a different culture, learning a new language, figuring out a new source of income - all that was in front of us now. Well, this is another story, the next story.”

 

Alexandre Tichy (Sr.)  ca. 1950

 

George holding a legit Gustav Tichy shotgun. 

Family members currently possess two of them

 

Another Gustav Tichy piece of art

For more images of Gustav Tichy shotguns/rifles, visit:

Images of GUSTAV TICHY shotguns

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12. NEW HORIZON,... BUT WITH MORE DARK CLOUDS AHEAD!

Alexandre Tichy continues his story:

"Right after the end of the war the inflation in Germany was very high; it was actually skyrocketing very quickly.  The currency was changed some time later, but I kept a bill of 50 million Deutsche Marks - yes, one single bill that at that time had become nothing but just a souvenir.  Unfortunately, years later in Brazil, I forgot it in one of my shirts and it was destroyed when the shirt was washed.

I remember that during those days my father, mother and my sister went on a one month trip from Czechoslovakia to Germany, and my Dad took only 2 shirts with him because he intended to buy a few shirts in Germany taking advantage of the exchange rate, which was very advantageous at that time.  But it didn’t work well, because he was significantly overweight, and there were no shirts big enough for him.  So he ended up having only the same two shirts for the whole time of their trip; they were washing one shirt every day for the whole month.  He had bought many goods in Germany and on his way back he gave them all to a man who supposedly would smuggle them through the border without paying custom taxes.  But, apparently, it didn’t work very well because the man just stole everything and my Dad never saw his goods again.  We made fun of him for that for a long time, always reminding him what a “good deal” it was to buy all those inexpensive things in Germany…

During the war, I had been very successful with everything I did, and I always found some good business to make good money.  It seems that after the war things changed and making money became more difficult.  I remember that one time I had an opportunity that could have been a gold mine.  A friend of mine told me that Skoda, a Czech car manufacturer, was having difficulties and would probably be forced to stop their production of cars because they could not find a supplier for a certain type of parts.  I knew that probably those parts could be found in Germany so I contacted a friend who actually found out that SKF in Germany had 2 million of those parts still hidden from the Americans.  In those days the allies had confiscated all factories that could produce any type of parts used in weapons, but many of those factories had hidden part of their stock and were selling it to different places in small quantities. We were still in Belgium, but I was sure that I could make that transaction work and make good money.

I had bought a brand new Dodge truck at that time, and my friend Debuson was driving it, transporting all kinds of goods.  So I decided to send him to Germany to get those parts at SKF. Unfortunately something really bad happened, an accident in which a German man was killed when Debuson was backing up. The man was trapped behind the truck and Debuson didn’t see him.  Nothing happened to Debuson because the area was still controlled by the Belgian police and everyone was still mad at the Germans for what they did during the occupation of Belgium.  Therefore, they didn’t care about the incident that killed a German and just let him go back home without any charges being pressed against him. In the meantime, however, the Americans found those parts and confiscated them all.  That was the end of a business that could have been very profitable. 

The War ended in June of 1945 and we stayed in Belgium until November of that year.  Our trip back to Czechoslovakia was in a truck so that we could take all our belongings with us. I had a couple of trucks but kept only one, powerful American MAC. We knew that it would not be an easy trip due to shortage of gasoline; based on prior experience, I took several bottles of cognac with me, which was the best thing to have with me in case I needed some help. So we loaded the truck, and started our trip back to Ostrava. Every time I needed gasoline to continue the trip, I went to an US Army station and asked them for gasoline.  The soldiers would say that they didn’t have any gasoline available - until I showed them a bottle of cognac.  When they saw the “miracle bottle,” they immediately became very friendly and did the impossible to help me out - even making gasoline miraculously appear....  In some instances they took gasoline from the tank of their own trucks and gave it to me - just because of those bottles of cognac.  I was very short of cash at that time, so getting free gas was very helpful.  The trip was difficult due to road conditions, weather, shortage of food, etc. But after a few days we arrived in our beloved town, Ostrava. Back home again, ready to resume the business, and move on with our lives. 

Like everywhere else, our town was looking horrible due to the bombardment by the allies against the Germans who were controlling that area during the war. The situation was devastating but we reopened our store and restarted our activities. Unfortunately my Dad passed away before we made it back, so I had to do everything by myself now. I had brought many shotguns with me from Belgium in the truck, and that was a good starting point since there was a shortage of everything, including special merchandise like ours. It was at that time that I hired Maria, a young girl who was about  17 years old and who, 45 years later, I would meet again when as a widower I returned to my country after spending all those years in Brazil. My wife, Marie, passed away in January of 1990, and later on that year my son Alex took me on a trip to Czechoslovakia for a couple of weeks. Then, in 1991 I went there again by myself, and it was then that I met Maria during a casual encounter of a few people. She reminded me that she worked for me right after the war when I restarted my business. I was 86, she was 62 and also widowed… so we decided to spend a few years together. But this is a story for later on.

We had a good and peaceful life for a while after returning home.  Our children were going to school again, I was back in business, so we thought that, from then on, life would be normal again.  What did we know, though? Unfortunately, the political developments in the country took a really bad direction. Supported  by Russia, the communists soon took our government after assassinating our President, Jan Masaryk (Sep/14, 1986 - Mar/10-1948) who, inexplicably, “fell” from the 5th floor of a building. The Communists got the power and started taking people’s businesses and properties. People were incarcerated for no reason and terror was popping up everywhere.

In 1947 we suffered a horrible loss. Our 4th child, Jan, died at age of 3. He was a very happy child, always full of energy. On one occasion, he went with her Grandma (my mother in law) to spend a few days up on the mountains. While there, he developed suppurating appendicitis;  there was no physician in town in that small village on the weekend, and Jan succumbed to the terrible condition. We were devastated. There are some pictures of him below."

 

Jan (with hat) and brothers (from right) Gustav, Ivan, and Alex (1945-46?

Dad Alexandre and his four children (1946-47?)

Jan Tichy (1944-1947)

Mom Marie and her four kids (she is holding Jan)

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