Miss his sense of humour
While I have been following the board on and off for a few months, this is my first post so please be gentle.

I miss my father very much. While everyone thought of him as a very hard man, he was always very kind and loving to his family.

His early life was very hard and something that he never talked about. I did find out that he never finished school as the entire village he lived in was razed to the ground during WWII for helping refugees fleeing through the Sudetenland. His family fled in every direction and he and my Grandfather went to Yugoslavia. I later learned from one of my surviving Aunts that my father, who was still very young at the time, was shot and captured for smuggling messages and food for the Yugoslavian underground. He had spent the rest of the war in a forced labor camp under very harsh conditions. He was liberated by the British Army where he spent years working in a worn torn country before he could escape to work in the steel mills and coal mines of South Wales before meeting my mother.

While he never did get a chance to go back to school, he always prized a good education. He spoke several languages fluently but his English was broken and heavily accented. I have many fond memories of him always taking us kids to the used book stores and the public library anytime we wanted. His passion was reading books on philosophy, science, and politics.

When I was a teenager and a full of my own conceit, I remember the time he sat me down for "The Talk". He told me that for a man to achieve contentment in life, he must always follow the "Three Most Important Rules". I remember rolling my eyes, thinking childish thoughts and being such a know-it-all. He gave me a that look that said that he knew what I was thinking. While holding up each of his thick, calloused fingers, he counted.

"One, a man must never guess a woman's age."

Huh? What is he talking about?

"Two, a man must never guess a woman's weight."

Ok, now I'm really confused here. Where are the birds in the story?

"And three, a man must never upset his Urologist". With that said he had the biggest grin on his face while I stood there looking like the some confused idiot.

"Of these three most important rules", he continued, “Breaking the first two will cause you the most misery in life".

It has been many years since he passed. I wish that he was still alive today so that I could tell him that I have tried to live by these simple rules and that I would ask him if he would consider adding to the list "Never ask a woman if she is pregnant" just to see his funny grin.

As a side note. I did ask a woman if she was pregnant. She wasn't and I had the bloody nose to prove it.
(Sapience Free I have the mind and IQ of a sponge, Wed 1 Dec 2010, 1:56, 3 replies)

Ludice?
Ludice was a village in czechoslovakia raised to the ground. Was he Czech? My grandpa was and he had similar experiences. Similarly he gave me grave and stern advice when I was 18 leaving for london. "Stay away from Mariana, it's bad for you"...never did find 'er.
( spitsticker is not working on, Wed 1 Dec 2010, 7:05, closed)

I thought they liquidated that village in revenge for the shooting of Heydrich?

( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Wed 1 Dec 2010, 8:46, closed)

My mind is a blank...
I’m trying to remember the name of the village, but I’m drawing a blank. Sad, but I never paid much attention as a kid about… Quick! SQUIRELL!!!

The village was on the Danube around the area where it curves from west-east to turn south. It was part of Hungary before the war, but the border shifted after the war and it became part of Czechoslovakia back then. I remember when we went to Hungary as a family in the late 70’s when I was still a kid. We took a long day trip up the Danube to the see the area. I didn’t fully understand at the time, but I do remember my father being very emotional. I always remembered him as the solid rock that could never be phased by anything when I was growing up.

Yes, he was very stoic, but with a crazy sense of humour. I remember he used to tell Romanian Jokes. “How many Romanians does it take to screw in a light bulb?” he would ask me.

“Don’t you mean Pollocks dad?”

“What? No, I said Romanians. Everyone knows that Pollocks are a very smart and brave people, but Romanians…”
(Sapience Free I have the mind and IQ of a sponge, Wed 1 Dec 2010, 13:59, closed)