It was the time when I was working in Zlín at the Centroprojekt company as a joiner at the maintenance department. I started to move about the town. Once in a while I went for a beer and I met certain people who meant a lot to me in my life and still do. First it was Jaromír Němec who introduced me to Pavel Záleský, Pavel Dudr, Bob Obdržálek, Standa Devátý. All of them were involved, in one way or the other, in producing samizdat because Zlín was one big factory for making samizdat. It was something fascinating how much had been printed here and how much Prague had been supplied from here. When later they showed the documentary on samizdat, I had a feeling as if Zlín had been wiped off the map of the world. I don t´ remember Zlín being mentioned as a supplier at all. And here we were just rolling it out.. I myself had my share too, of course. I made an attempt to type a bit. Mostly information about the Church, as this was up my street, then some Infoch (information on Charter 77) and I know I took part in typing a few books too as these were always shared by more people, it usually worked like that. But there were the likes of of us such as Pavel Dudr or Pavel Záleský who knew how to get things rolling, they definitely did. But those less important, like me, we only participated in the process. We were given some 50 pages or so to type. I was freshly married with a baby in the cradle and the wife crying You´re driving us into trouble. When I sat down to type, it was in the evening, during the day I was at work, it always seemed to me I heard as if clatter down the stairs and I simply got frightened. So I decided not to type anymore, had the typewriter moved out of the flat and said to myself It doesn´t make sense. I would end up in a madhouse. It doesn´t make any sense at all. I started to make frames, cut out small boards and pads for those who worked at home duplicating the material. My task was to supply them so that more people could have their own home duplicator which was easy to operate, only by rolling over it. According to me, it was a wonderful thing, well-thought- out. This was my little share for the samizdat production.
As I said before, I spent my childhood with my parents in Uherské Hradiště. We lived in the centre of the town. My father was originally a barber and a haidresser. As they kept winding the up gradually, the large ones, larger, smaller and finally the smallest ones, it was his turn to be wound up too. They dissolved his firm, confiscated the whole equipment and allowed him to choose: either steel works or mines. The third option was up to him to guess. He decided for the mines because it used to be somehow common then that lots of men went to work in mines. He simply made his preferences. So the reality was that we saw our father at weekends at the most. He would come on Saturday evenings and leave on Sunday evenings or afternoons back to work. But our mother stayed with us at home all the time. There were seven of us. In fact eight were born but one little boy died after a few days so seven have survived from the oldest born during the war to us the youngest ones. I was born in the year 51 and my sister in 52. This meant that my mother had always lots to do and that´s why she didn´t go to work. She stayed with us at home and, of course, they made it hard for her when she was supposed to become a pensioner.
The time came when I was to be enlisted in the army but somehow, no idea why, this dragged on. Then I was summoned to a military office together with loads of other men. We were told that we should expect to be summoned to do the military service in the uranium mines in Příbram shortly. Well. Uranium mines, of all places. Uranium mines, it´s a place for murderers and political opponents of the Communist regime only, that´s what was going through my mind. I never heard of anyone else to be working in uranium mines. It was always a punishment. But we all accepted it somehow. Nobody protested but as we were allowed to leave, I came up to the short major who had been lecturing (today I know he was a major. At that time I was not interested in their ranks). I approached him Sir, sir.. He replied Here we address each other Comrade. I continued Mister Comrade, excuse me but if I refuse to work in the uranium mines.. Well, my father worked in Ostrava in the mines and already when I was at school, they wanted me to follow in his footsteps. To carry on the torch they put it. The torch after my father the miner. I used to say my father was a barber and a hairdresser and he didn´t work in the mines out of his free will and I never ever thought I would be a miner. Somehow I felt it was impossible to say no bluntly. It was my mother who backed me up athough she was otherwise strict to us. When we had wanted to skip a class, once in a while when we hadn´t been prepared for lessons, or we hadn´t felt like doing something for school, she had been ever so strict At once, I say at once get moving to school or I´ll announce there you are only shamming. So at that time she went to school and said Well it´s true. I can´t force Petr even to bring coal from the cellar. He is that much frightened to go down there.
Petr was born on 5th August 1951 in Uherské Hradiště. He came from a Catholic family. Naturally, Petr became first an alter boy, later a tramp, a big beat enthusiast and then a long-distance runner. His six siblings, just like Petr, were not allowed to study. He was apprenticed a cabinet-maker and did no other work throughout his life, changing only places and companies. He was enlisted to enter an alternative military service at uranium mines in Příbram. That was the year 1970. It lasted 19 months and Petr was extremely lucky, he could work as a cabine-maker. He also had to go through a regular military service but only for 5months. He loves to remember the time when he was employed at the Slovácké divadlo theatre in Uherské Hradiště. At that time this was a place where lots of wonderful people landed after being thrown out of their jobs punished in political purges. This was also the time when Petr got married, had two children and after 10 years got a divorce. We are in the 1980s now and Zlín becomes a town with a samizdat mass-production. Petr and his friends participated, each of them with their considerable share. He was an enthusiastic student of Josef Zvěřina´s secret seminars of theology and continued keeping in touch with his friends, the Franciscans.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
