Ing. Jan Horník

"Jirka Frankovič had the signature sheet posted on a bulletin board in the waterworks in Myslivny and I had it on a bulletin board in my office in Neklid. To keep it handy so we wouldn't forget when someone suitable came to sign. Jirka Frankovič at the waterworks was exposed because at that time the Border Guard also had Border Guard assistants, which were mostly citizens of the village, who were pushed to do this, and then they had to go to the buses and report if anyone suspicious had gotten off or gotten on, and so on. And those two units, those helpers, were also supposed to take notice and were supposed to report suspicious things. And those border guards had us divided into these groups at Boží Dar, and they would come to us and to work and play this game with us, that they were friends, asking what was going on and what was new, get a shot, and things like that. They would come to our workplace and they would go to the waterworks, among other things. That's where they found the sheet. They took it, it was a big embarrassment at the headquarters in Karlovy Vary, what kind of employees they had there. Frankovič was threatened with being fired, but in any case, it turned out well in the end, because even the management of the waterworks didn't see it as such a misdemeanor that he had to leave the waterworks, so he got three pay cuts. Well, they started to go around and take a lot of notice of these operations, which were mostly vacation cottages, hotels, and these various company shacks. They started asking around for that paper, Several Sentences. That was copied just on that ormig machine. And I had it on the bulletin board, but I didn't know they'd caught it. Well, the cop who was in charge of me was a silly one, from Jáchymov. He came to see me one day, said he was coming to see me, that we'd have a drink together, what's new, and all that kind of talk. He sat down at the table with me on one side and him on the other. And there was a bulletin board, and there were a Several Sentences on it. Already signed, but it wasn't full. And he says, we were chatting, 'Hey, Honza, we have a little trouble here, somebody's spreading Several Sentences.' And I said, 'What's that?' And he said, 'Well, it's kind of anti-state, and there's a guy named Havel on it. And I said, 'You don´t say.' I found that the best thing to do with the cops was to play it down to a friendly level, but not say anything and made fun of them a bit. So we drank two shots, he stuck around for an hour and a half, and he kept coming back to it. And he said, 'Hey, Honza, if by any chance...' And I said, 'Sure, don't worry, whatever.' Then I was relieved when he took his hat, put it on his head, we said goodbye and left. The paper went right off the bulletin board. And I had the opportunity to hand it over, and he was collecting it, Jirka Kotek, and taking it to Prague."

"It started with... Actually, it started with the waiters from Karlovy Vary. The waiters had the advantage that western tourists also came to Pupp Hotel or other spa houses for treatment. And they were in close contact with them. Of course, they traded illegally with them them. They were waiters and baggage porters. These were the best places because they had money from the tips, they exchanged currency with them, which they then sold to the Czechs. They didn't care much about the salary. So they were kind of the carriers of the new things. And of course, skateboards started to appear on TV, the German one, and in magazines, so the first skateboards here were the waiters. I rode the first skateboard, it was borrowed from a waiter... We thought it must be a very steep hill. And there were two of them [in Karlovy Vary]. One was up above the Plague Column and the other was in Ondřejská Street. But there were cobblestones everywhere. So to ride on that, it was terrible. Ondřejská was worse. So we tried it right by the Promenade Hotel today. I have one picture of me, where I'm literally like a spa guy, where I'm wearing white jeans, white paper jacket, and I'm standing on it, going down the hill. But we soon found out that you can move around on that skateboard and that you can ride on flat ground. And we didn't have the good skateboards for that. As hard as our boards were, we didn't know how to turn it properly. So then we started making our own boards. The waiters were the first ones to bring it here, and that's basically how skateboarding started in Karlovy Vary."