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.”
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