Sacrificing FAME for FREEDOM

By Vlado Kolenic

      Life as a musician behind the Iron Curtain is anything but free. One record company, one booking agency, one radio station, and every aspect of your life is controlled by the Government.

       Before you wa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vladimir Kolenic
• Release date: Jul 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735214610

Book preview

Prologue

To je Amerika! That’s America! Growing up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1960’s these were the words we used to describe anything that was great or something that went well. Everyone was saying "To je Amerika!"

I don’t know why it was so widely used, but I guess it was associated with greatness. Everything made in America in those days automatically had a stamp of quality.

***

As I am living in New York City now, it is hard for me to even imagine that I once lived behind the Iron Curtain.

Most things I had to endure through are inconceivable by today’s generation. But despite the Government control, its ridiculous laws and illogical rules, I made it.

I was a rock star, I had money, fame, women, everything that most people desire, everything except freedom. It could have been a great life if I’d only shut up and gone with the flow, but that’s not me. Only dead fish go with the flow.

I was born not knowing anything so I questioned everything and still do. When people ask why I left it all behind I just say, You wouldn’t understand, because my father didn’t either.

Telling my story, I can only hope that it will open the eyes of those who think it could not never happen here.

Chapter 1: Our Family

I was the kind of kid that ate an onion like an apple and took off on my tricycle alone to the patisserie. I would stick my hands everywhere especially when I was told not to.

I got burned by ashes, shocked by electricity, broke my fingers, and ripped a chunk of meat from my thigh. I got stitches on my eyebrows, leg, head, and bottom lip. When the time came for me to attend kindergarten, my grandma had to drag me kicking and screaming all of thirty feet.

I lived right across the street from the school.

For my first lunch there, they served us tripe soup. I took one look at my bowl and started to yell, There are caterpillars in my soup! Of course, after I said that, everybody else refused to eat it too. The teacher took me by the ear and made me stand in the corner. I guess she thought I would eventually go back and eat it. Well, I am an Aries and very stubborn. I stayed there until it was time to take a nap.

I don’t know what it is with me but even now I am unable to take a nap. The kindergarten teacher was standing over me waiting for me to fall asleep. I just looked at her. When she complained, my grandma told her; It’s been like this since he was born.

One particular memory from my time in kindergarten stuck in my mind. I didn’t realize the implication it would have on me until later in life. We had a costume contest and I came dressed as a cowboy. My aunt Camille, who escaped to America in 1960, sent me a complete outfit. The fake guns, hat, pants, vest, the whole nine yards. It was definitely the best costume there but did I win? No!

The kid portraying a Russian cosmonaut dressed in sweat pants with cardboard on his head got the first prize. Why he won, dawned on me many years later. Bloody commies!

Our family could have been classified as an upper middle class if there were castes. Under the communist regime everyone was equal but you could tell the difference.

We lived in the heart of the city, one block from the City Hall. Our apartment was in a three- story building in the Belle Époque style like those that line the Champs Élysées in Paris. It was attached to the remains of what used to be the town wall, built in the 9th century. Each apartment had 44 windows, twelve- foot ceilings, three bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, and one bathroom. We were on the second floor; the Straka family lived above us.

Mr. Straka was the chief editor for Pravda Newspaper, the New York Times of Czechoslovakia. Pravda means Truth which was ironic because all they printed was government propaganda and lies. The top floor belonged to Mr. Cervencik, the rightful owner of the building. Because we lived in a Socialist country, he could ask for only as much rent as the Government allowed. The first floor used to have retail stores before the communists turned it into a cafeteria for the elementary school across the street.

My parents, Anton and Anna Kolenic, worked in the restaurant business. They met two years after WWII ended. My dad saw my mother entering a trolley. He ran after it and caught up with her at the next stop. It was love at first sight. Six months later, they were married. At the beginning they worked together but when the communists took over in 1948, they had to separate. Family members were not allowed to work at the same location. They lived on my mom’s family farm with her parents, grandparents and aunt. It was located alongside the Austrian border and has been in our family since the early 1800’s.

***

My mom was plump in stature. She loved her clothes, money and Elizabeth Taylor. Was she happy? I think she was. Every time she got new clothes she was glowing. My mom worked as a director/manager in different places throughout the years. The one I remember the most is the Yalta night club because from 1967 through 1969, it had an actual strip-tease show. In the mid 70’s the Government built a Port Authority on the Danube River. The main floor was for customs. The trendy restaurant Danubius, which she ran until her retirement, occupied the top floor.

My dad was a good-looking man. He stood 6’ 1’’ tall, with a thin mustache. He looked like a combination of Sean Connery and David Niven. My dad also loved his clothes. Every chance he had he would say to me, Clothes make a man. In some way, he was right. When you are dressed in expensive clothes people look at you differently. Well, you can be dressed in fancy clothes but it doesn’t mean that you are not an asshole. He was remarkable businessman. He would always find the way to make money even if the places he worked at were owned by the government. The one he was known for was Buffet - a sort of fast food joint in the heart of the Bratislava. His office in the back was a real gathering place. Many times, I saw sports figures and politicians that I recognized from TV and newspapers in his office. It looked like a ‘Soprano’ hangout, a little Slovak mafia. It had nothing to do with gangsters it was just people with connections. He was offered a director’s job at some of the best hotels with the proviso that he joins the communist party, which he refused to do. The funny thing is, he used to tell me that if I want to live with wolves, I have to howl with them. When I asked him about him joining the party, he just shrugged it off and said that I would not understand.

He fought in WWII against Nazis, was shot and had medals for bravery. Maybe that had something to do with it. I tried to get some answers but he did not want to talk about it. As far as I know, my dad loved my mom but he apparently cheated on her. I never saw him with another woman but there were rumors.

As a little boy, I was very afraid of my father. He used to spank me for any stupid reason. For example, I did not like tomatoes. Every time I tried to eat a tomato, I puked. That did not matter. He forced me to eat them and when I threw up, he smacked me. Was I abused? Oh, give me a break! Sometimes kids need a firm hand, especially boys. We will always try to push the boundaries. It’s in our nature. Nowadays people who know everything are telling us it’s not the proper way to raise kids. Yeah? Look where it got us. I think that lack of spanking coincides with the behavior of today’s kids.

I know my dad loved me even though he never said it. He bragged about me to all his friends but not once did he say to me, Son, I am proud of you. I guess that was the way fathers were those days. Our relationship got somewhat better as I grew older, but it always stayed an eternal tug of war.

I wish I knew my grandfathers. That would have definitely shed some light on my parents’ behavior. My paternal grandfather died of diabetes when I was four. I have one picture of us together but I don’t remember him. My maternal grandfather died before I was born. I always joke around that all the music in me I inherited from him. He was deaf from birth.

My parents worked 12 hours a day so I was raised pretty much by my maternal grandmother, Mary, who lived with us. She was a magnificent woman. At five feet tall she was a little busy bee – always doing something. We used to play cards and watch sports together. Whenever Czechoslovakian hockey teams played against the Russians she would curse at the TV. She would get up at four am because of the time difference and watch Mohammed Ali fights. That is something I’ll never forget. She would yell, Knock that son of a bitch down! It was truly bizarre because later that day I saw her selling flowers smiling like a picturesque granny.

She was an entrepreneur, having her own little business which drove my father crazy. He’d say, Mary-mama why do you sell those flowers? I make enough money. You don’t need to work. People are talking about it and putting their spin on it. Look at that poor old woman! I bet Kolenic is making her work. Grandma just turned and winked at me. When he could not see her, she would stick her tongue out at him. He didn’t get it. It wasn’t the money. It was in her blood. She grew up in a society where it was normal to have your own business. There were a few older folks selling flowers, homemade cheese, fruits and vegetables. We had street markets which the Government only tolerated because it helped to fill the void for some things that were not always available. The little money she made went to me. You can call it an allowance. I never heard of an allowance growing up. Don’t get me wrong - I had everything I wanted, as long as it was what my parents wanted.

When I was about 12 years old, I became an entrepreneur. Grandma gave me some money and I would buy newspapers at the kiosk for fifty halierov (half a krone). Then I would sell them in barbershops and salons for one krone. In a couple of hours, I made eight krones. All excited, I ran home. Meanwhile somebody already called my dad. He was furious and began yelling at me, What do you think you’re doing? How could you do that? It’s not bad enough that they’re already talking about your grandma and now you?!

Instead of embracing my entrepreneurial spirit, he gave me another spanking. It must have been his pride or the typical what would other people think that blinded him.

My grandma’s sister-in-law Ilonka also lived with us. As a child, she got meningitis and lost her hearing. She had her own made up language - sort of Hungarian that strangely we all understood. Her walk was something to see. It was walk four steps, jog three steps and two shimmy dance moves. She was the innocent one in our family. I was her favorite and she was my way out of trouble. Every time something went missing or was misplaced, I blamed her.

Dad would say, Did you see my pen? Where are my slippers? Who took my paper? Without missing a beat, I’d say, Ilonka took it.

When the Government confiscated our farm in 1952 and kicked everyone out, my dad took both women under his wing and cared for them. The farm was destroyed and later the Iron Curtain was built on it. Come to think of it, maybe that was one of the reasons he never joined the communist party.

My sister Viera is my only sibling. She is six years my senior and the most important person to me in our family. In the early years we lived in peaceful coexistence. We had our episodes of yelling and screaming but I can’t recall any fighting. Viera was tall and very beautiful, and she still is. She has a face that never ages.

There were many boys knocking on our door and when I found out she fancied some, I became a little extortionist and tried to milk them for anything I could. She bailed me out of trouble and when I was little, she protected me against bullies. Whatever differences we had we would never snitch on each other. I could tell her anything. At a younger age our interests were different but the older we got, the closer we got. One of her fondest memories of my childhood is the time when grandma was sick laying in the bed, too weak to get up. Viera saw me dragging an ax that was too heavy for me to lift and yelling at Grandma, Get up and make me a tea or I will kill you!

I love my sister.

Chapter 2: School

Schools in Czechoslovakia were very different from schools in the U.S. Elementary school was first through ninth grade, high school was four additional years. There was no such thing as a multiple-choice test. You got a question and you’d better know the answer. Homework was brutal. It would often take the whole weekend to finish it. Talking during the class meant bending over and being whipped with a long ruler on your butt or on your hands.

When I complained to my dad about a beating I got at the school, I learned my first universal line, Stop crying or I’ll give something real to cry about!

Hopefully there is one teacher in your life that makes a lasting impression on you. For me it was Mr. Smolenicky who was my teacher from first through fifth grade. He looked like a bookie from the old Hollywood movies. He was stocky, had shiny slick hair, sported a thin mustache and was very loud. You could hear him 300 feet away. Everybody was afraid of him. Those days teachers had power to impose discipline, which he practiced on me daily. Through those five years, I got lots of slapping and yelling from Mr. Smolenicky but until this day, I remember the things he taught me.

One time, Mr. Smolenicky took me aside and asked me to talk to the children about an upcoming trip. One of those dreaded must see trips to some factory that nobody wanted to go to . He said, Tell the kids it will be fun, they will listen to you. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I did what he asked and to my surprise, everybody got excited. When I talked with him later in life, he told me that from the first day he met me, he knew that I would achieve something.

I was a wiseass and got into trouble daily but I was also a straight A student up through the ninth grade. Probably it had to do with me living across from the school. There was no need for a PTA. My parents knew everything that was going on.

In upper class families it was expected to give your children cultural lessons so, when I was seven, my dad enrolled me in music school. Twice a week I had piano lessons and music theory. My sister Viera was the one with the great ear but her teacher used to hit her hands, which consequently ruined her interest in piano. Me? I hated it. All my friends were playing soccer and I had to practice piano. Grandma used to go with me to the music school and sit by the door so I wouldn’t run away.

I love sports, any sport. I wanted to be a soccer player. I was good at dribbling and kicking the ball but I could not run! When I ran, I looked like someone on muscle relaxers. In the seventh grade I found out that Viera’s high school had a swimming team. Finally, a sport where I did not have to run! The coach knew my Dad so I was able to join the team. I shaved my head (someone told me that I would swim faster) and began training. Maybe my life would have turned out completely different if I had stayed with it, but my Dad had different plans.

The swimming team trained in the morning and late afternoon. The days I had my piano lessons, I was so tired I could hardly play. One day, I think out of mercy, my teacher told my dad that I had to make a choice - piano or swimming.

It’s a waste of time he’ll never be a piano player, she said. I agreed with her one hundred percent.

The swimming coach said that I had potential because I was skinny and tall for my age, but of course, my dad decided on piano. I did not see the logic in it, but like they say be careful what you wish for…you might get it!

It’s funny how one decision changes the course of your life. It was 1968 and my last year of my music school. Seven agonizing years! I could not wait to stop playing. Then life threw me a curve ball.

Viera’s new boyfriend Leo, was a guitar player in a band. His brother Ali played piano. One day she took me to their rehearsal and suddenly my view of playing a piano changed. I was exposed only to classical piano until then but when I saw Ali playing an old ragtime tune Bonnie and Clyde, I was hooked. Classical music was boring but this was fun.

I came home and went straight to the piano. Grandma looked at me and said, Are you alright? It was the first time that I had played the piano without anyone forcing me to do so. Then a couple of weeks later, the strangest thing happened. The philharmonic orchestra from East Berlin came to Bratislava and our school had to attend their concert.

I don’t know how or why, for whatever reason, but all of a sudden, I could hear the music from the composer’s point of view. I was able to separate all the instruments in my head and I could clearly hear chord progressions. I read about people who came out of a coma speaking foreign languages. Was it like that? I had no idea but when I got home, I sat down to the piano and started to play. I could not stop. I wouldn’t move from my piano. I ate my breakfast, lunch and dinner at it. The piano became my best friend and what a piano it was! A concert grand made in the 1800’s. It had a fantastic deep sound. Real ivory keys that had little dips in them from years of playing. The moment I came home from school I went straight to the piano.

My father was intrigued but then became furious. What’s that? Play something people know. Nobody knows what you’re playing. Go out with your friends, go play soccer or something!

Now he wanted me to go out?! It was too late. I was cursed! Yes, cursed because an artist or a musician is usually not appreciated or paid what they deserve.

It would be much easier for everyone around you if you had a real job, but you just cannot do anything else. I did not have these thoughts then but I was fourteen years old and I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Then everything came to a screeching stop.

When you are a kid you do not really care that much what is happening around you. The big issues are not your concern; those are adults’ worries and you have your own world. That world changed for many of us overnight.

In the wee hours of August 21, 1968, I woke up to the sound of tanks rumbling down our street. The Russians had just invaded Czechoslovakia. At age fourteen, I could not fully comprehend what effect it would have on my life.

People were running, screaming, throwing anything they could get their hands on at the tanks, some people got shot. It was surreal. Road signs in the countryside were painted over to read Moscow. Other kids and I were breaking the mirrors on the Russians trucks and tanks. Those poor bastards in the tanks did not even know why they were there. I remember one of the soldiers could not have been more than 18 years old, and he had his head sticking out of the tank. Everybody was yelling at him and asking him questions he had no answer to. He got so scared that he started shooting into my school. Thank God, his senior officer stopped him before he shot any of us. You could see the holes in the building for many years.

There were troubles all over the world. America had civil rights, Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Czechoslovakia was on its own. Our country’s leader at that time, Alexander Dubcek, was put under house arrest and subsequently taken to Moscow.

He was a symbol of freedom and change for the Czechoslovakian people. To me he was just my Dad’s friend who used to go fishing with us, and who showed me how to cut the grass with a hand sickle.

It’s funny how the brain works. I can vividly see the smoke from cigarettes that came out of our living room each time someone opened the door. Our neighbor Mr. Straka, the chief editor at Pravda, was printing daily newsletters that would definitely land him in jail during normal times. It was the first time in my life that I saw in print what were people saying. There were nightly meetings at our home with people I recognized from TV. I had never heard my parents curse before but there was a lot of it those days.

A week passed. Tanks and soldiers disappeared from the streets. New politicians, Russian pawns, took over. TV and Radio was regurgitating the same old propaganda. It seemed as everything turned normal but still no one knew what was going to happen. Tens of thousands of people took advantage of the chaos and defected to the West. Viera was one of them. She went to Vienna but my dad and her boyfriend Leo brought her back. I did not even know she was gone. Why she never told me is still a mystery to me.

One good thing came out of it for me. As I was entering the last year of elementary school Dad told me that I didn’t have to worry about a grade in my Russian language class. It sounded good but after seven years of mandatory Russian, it did not make much difference.

The school year went fast. There was less pressure because the teachers were confused and afraid. For years, they’d been telling us that the Russians were our brothers, our friends, our liberators. Then overnight, they became our occupiers. Everybody hated them. Our regular Russian language teacher defected to Canada. The substitute Mrs. Kalinak, a die-hard communist, told us we should be thankful to the Russians for saving us. When I asked her what for, she walked to me, leaned over and said, From people who want to destroy our beautiful country.

What are you talking about? Nobody called them, I snapped at her.

You ungrateful little shit! Bam! She slapped me.

I told my Dad what happened. Normally I would not do that but I knew how he felt about the Russians those days.

I could tell he was upset. He mumbled something, told me to leave and picked up the phone. I could not hear who he was talking to but the next day Mrs. Kalinak did not show up. The rumor was she got reassigned.

Five months after the invasion, Jan Palach, a student in Prague, set himself on fire. He was protesting the demoralization of our people. A month later another student did the same thing. It got lot of attention from the Western press but nothing was done. From then on even decent people started to make compromises.

That year our parents left us alone many times and we took advantage of it, of course. We would slip Grandma a few sleeping pills so we could stay out late and party.

I experienced my first hangover, smoked my first cigarette and was making out with Viera’s girlfriends. Fourteen going on fifteen with no responsibilities, life was good. As I was getting my sex education, I could hear in my head a familiar childhood phrase "To je Amerika!" That’s America!

Chapter 3: Socialism 101

It was the summer of 1969, my last vacation before entering high school. I spent it at home playing the piano, totally immersed in my music. That helped me deal with the outside world. On the surface everything looked normal, like nothing had happened. I slowly became aware of small discrepancies. What I observed was not what I was hearing from the media.

When you look at a map of Europe, geographically Czechoslovakia is right in the middle. Politically we were in eastern Europe and landlocked between Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia