Danna Ottová

"And when I was older, I had to help regularly, I even helped my mom at home. For example, when we were doing the laundry, I had to help until four o'clock and then I was free. In Bzí, when they came back from the fields, I could go out and play, but otherwise I had to be around the house. My uncle made me a toy cart out of a box. There were also a lot of beads. We used to string the beads. What was not good was used for filling up the roads. So my friend and I would pick out all kinds of beads and string them. I was able to string little flags, too, out of the so-called šmelc - that's what they called the tiny beads - and also little bags. So I helped to string them. That’s how they were making some extra money. You can't understand it, but they had no pension then, nothing. The grain they grew, they put it in the mill and then they went to get bread, I guess they paid something for it too. For breakfast they made this tall pot that was on the stove all the time to keep it warm. It contained ground rye, chicory, and they put goat’s milk in there because using cow’s milk would be a waste. The cow's milk was churned into butter and that was sold. The bread was not buttered. I used to go there all the time and the only time I had bread with butter was on Wednesdays when my aunt was churning it and there were crumbs left in the buttermilk. Otherwise, butter was used as fat because that's all they had. They used to have two pigs, but they always sold them. They didn't slaughter the pigs- they sold what they could to get some money. They didn't spread butter on bread. They put it into coffee and ate it with a big spoon. No, no butter on bread, no!"