Jana Pokludová

“When grandad died, they drove the coffin in a fire engine. The engine was red. Before the engine arrived, my father and one more gentleman went to Prague to get the engine that had been assigned to them. It was just a chassis really, and it was in the winter. They came back from Prague with a new fire engine in December and fitted a new body to it. Eventually, they drove my grandad in his coffin to the graveyard in the fire engine. It was moving. They stopped at the crossroads where you turn towards Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí and to the town, and our musicians played him a song. The last two apprentices, Václav and Pavel, were in the shop and just pounded the anvil. The song the musicians played was like this: ‘He hammered the steel merrily, but the sledgehammer will not ring anymore.’”

“The horses were tied up in front of the shop, and dad had this special tripod stool on which the horse’s leg was rested and then he filed down the hoof. At first, he had to trim, then file, then scrape the hoof. And then the horseshoe that fit the hoof had to be heated in the furnace. The furnace burned coke only. The farrier type of coke was hard to get in the 1950s, so it had to be used sparingly. Then he hammered the horseshoes on – it was all done outdoors. That’s the way it went.”