Tag #138985 - Interview #100840 (Bedrich Hecht)

There were no markets held in the village; we used to go to the city. My father would go to the market in either Topolcany or Nitra. But most often he’d go to Topolcany. There he’d buy geese from village women, and those would be then fattened up at home for our own consumption. Then our father used to go to fairs to buy cattle. He took me with him a couple of times. When he had bought everything and one piece remained to be bought, he let me do the negotiating. He’d just walk behind me and laughed at my bargaining. He didn’t care at that point whether I bought something for more or for less. We went to the fair every year in the fall, in October, when the cattle were being driven from the pastures to the villages. The purchased cattle were then transported by rail to us, and were fattened up. The fattened cattle were then supplied to slaughterhouses in Prague. There wasn’t any interest in other types, because everything else could be bought in stores. My brother didn’t go to the fairs with our father, because he wasn’t interested in farming. He wanted to be a lawyer, but then the era of the Slovak State [8] arrived, so he couldn’t become a lawyer, and instead studied to be a veterinarian. So then he did that for a living, but he wasn’t interested in farming.