This is a photo of my grandfather Alois Brod's store as it looked maybe still during the time of Austria-Hungary, perhaps shortly after the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic.
The store was located in Vrdy-Bucice near Caslav, and in fact when I went there long after the war to have a look, the building was still there, and you could see my grandfather's name on it. Now it's of course redone. They used to sell mixed goods.
For sure it was a very large store, perhaps the largest in the region. You could get everything there. Fabrics, shoes, tools, pastries, groceries... There were also stables behind the store, and also many fields belonged to it.
Grandpa had many employees. Actually, everything that I know about my grandfather and life in Vrdy-Bucice, I know from one of his employees, from Mrs. Anna Kopska.
As a girl she began working for my grandfather, then was a cook with us and finally after the war she lived with me and took care of my daughter.
Mrs. Kopska for example used to tell me that my grandfather used to sit in front of the house, and on Sunday, when children would be on their way to church, he would give out sweets to them.
And he used to say, look, what a grimy child that is, if it washed itself, how beautiful it would be.
When my grandfather died in the mid-1920s, my father sold the store and moved with my mother to Prague.
