An Interview with Wesley Pustejovsky

Interview conducted by: Kyle Poedjono

In 1883, Wesley Pustejovsky’s grandparents came over to the United States and settled down in Central Texas in pursuit of land. That is where they began farming and started a family. In this interview, Mr. Pustejovsky shares with us his life experiences and the changes he has seen over the years.

Interview

This interview was made in collaboration with Department of History in University of Houston and Czech Center Museum Houston. The following text is the verbatim transcription of the oral history project.

October 21, 2019

UH Interviewer: So the intention of this was to share your experiences about coming to the United States and how things changed over the years.

Wesley Pustejovsky: SPEAK UP. For, I was born in the United States, you were asking about me?

UH Interviewer: Yes.

Wesley Pustejovsky: No, my grandparents came from over there.

UH Interviewer: OK, so then it is just sort of like what your experiences were and what your grandparents told you.

Wesley Pustejovsky: I tell you we’re having a bad time because I can not hear you. You will have to SPEAK UP.

UH Interviewer: Do you remember anything about what your grandparents told you when they came over and their experiences?

Wesley Pustejovsky: My grandpa Pustejovsky came over as a teenager. He was 15 or 16 years old so he remembered a lot of things that happened back in Moravia. He came from Mikulov and he used to love getting around, telling us stories about different things they did. People back in that time didn’t really own land because land was owned by Nobility. There were big hunting laws over there and it obviously was turned into a kind of disuse or a private sector. My great grandfather had a motel six in Mikulov, where they took people in for the night, fed them and they had their horses. They had stables and things like that over there.

UH Interviewer: So like when travelers would come through?

Wesley Pustejovsky: That type of thing is what they did and so that is what he remembers when he was growing up. When they left in 1883, I am not exactly sure about the date.  I guess people had come before and written how people can have land here, so they came over to the States and settled down in Central Texas up at Tours, which is right close to what is now West. And they most likely bought the farm and built a house. Now, my great grandfather was not a farmer, and from what I understand, he did not adapt very well to that, uh…

UH Interviewer: That type of lifestyle?

Wesley Pustejovsky: He would have much preferred to have been back and all, but I think my grandpa was young and everything was new, so they took over. They stayed as farmers until they retired and moved to the West. When my grandmother died, my grandpa moved in with us and that is when I heard a lot of stories about what they used to do back there, how they lived, what type of schools they went to and all kinds of things. So that kind of gives you a background. Do I need to go into my family more?

UH Interviewer: It’s really like what they told you and thn about you as well. So like how it mainly affected you.

Wesley Pustejovsky: Maybe we will flip flop back and forth. I think that the schools they went to, at least the high schools were German, which were obviously taught by Germans because he could speak German although he was not German. And he would tell stories about how in the wintertime, all the rivers and big streams would freeze and they would go cut ice and haul it into some ice-houses and put sawdust on it that kept the ice from melting until some time in the summer. Then he would get out there and tell us about how in the kitchen right where they had their cow right off the kitchen, which I’ll never forget that we always marveled at that since I was raised on a farm. Then they also raised rabbits for food there with the cow so they had a cowpen right next to the house. And of course everything was horse and buggy. And my dad is the oldest son of my grandpa and a Ludmilla Urbanovsky, who I think also came from the same area. So anyway, they had Five Children, two girls and three boys. My dad was the oldest one, born in 1893, and then it was Joe, Mary, Lillian and Amel, which would be my aunts and uncles. So I grew up there in the community with a great number, we always had cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents in the whole family. Everything was always family. You went to church and you saw them all, you went to school and you saw them at school, you went to town and saw them in town. My grandmother Pustejovsky never did speak English. She spoke only Moravian Czech and of course we at home did not speak English. We spoke Czech, which I dare say that our Czech was more of a Tex-Czech. We’d get out there and it would be kind of like the Mexicans do now. I mean you would speak in Czech and when you came to a word that you did not know you threw the English word in there and everybody understood what you said.

UH Interviewer: So you just kind of mixed the two together?

Wesley Pustejovsky: I didn’t start speaking English until I went to school in Abbott. We lived up in hill county at Abbott out on a farm and I had one sister and four brothers. I only have one brother that is still alive. We’d have big family get-togethers. There were no phones, communications, things like that. You’d just go see somebody by getting out there and saying let's go to Uncle Abel's. As for my mother’s side, it was the Bezdek. They came from French Tod, which is also in Moravia and they came somewhat earlier than the Pustejovskys did. I know very little history on the Bezdek side of the family because my grandpa Bezdek loved to play Taroky, which is a card game. So whenever there was any kind of a get-together, he had a table out there somewhere and they were playing Taroky. So he never had time for us kids. And of course grandma would get out there and pat us on the head but she did not have stories to tell like my grandpa Pustejovsky did. They were also farmers and they moved to Fadeville, which is up around La Grange. Then they moved up to West later and that is where my dad met my mother. During World War One, my dad was in the Army as a Stable Sargent, which is like a motor pool Sargent. He served in France and he was there for some of the battles, but he never really talked too much about what they did or how. He was in an Engineering Corps where they did a lot of repairing roadworks and building bridges and everything.

UH Interviewer: Telegraph cables?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right. And right after the war, he and my mother got married and raised the family up in Abbot on a farm, which is where I was raised.

UH Interviewer: What do you remember about your life on the farm, early when you were growing up?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Growing up on the Farm, one of the things that I remember is that everybody worked. Everybody had a job and had chores to do. It was part of the family. If you need to feed the chickens and the pigs, then you fed the chickens and the pigs. And we used mules before we got our first tractor in1938. Somebody had to feed them, so at a very young age we would start working with the mules. Everybody would hook in, if you were big enough to ride a rake, then you ran a rake. It was hot in the summer but not too bad, in the wintertime we coped with it. During what they call the Great Depression back in the 1930s, we did very well out on the farm. We never got hungry and we always had clothes to wear. We didn’t have fine clothes, but we had one nice set of clothes that we went to church with.

UH Interviewer: The church clothes.

Wesley Pustejovsky: The rest of it you wore overalls. We wore new ones to school and then when they got old, they were worn to the field. So, we did very well. We grew our own food, raised our own hogs, chickens so we had eggs. Then we had geese and guineas and everything because we were on a farm so we always had food on the table. We had a big orchard and canned a lot of peaches and pears. We had a big garden where we grew potatoes and green beans and everything. So we always had plenty there so that I was always thankful for. Most of the people from Moravia were Catholics, and we had the mass. All the prayers and a lot of nominatives, like the sermons and all. And they were in Czech. Not all of them but a big part of them were. And people went to town, Czech] was what was spoken on the streets. I mean you go to the West and everybody spoke Czech.

UH Interviewer: So there were a lot of Czech people who moved to that town?

Wesley Pustejovsky: In that community, yes, the West was. I would say about 75% or more Czech and we lived about 5 miles away from it. We lived right on the edge of the Czech community so most of our neighbors were Czech. But if we went to Hillsboro, which was the County Seat, there was no Czech spoke there. But you go the other way, go to the West, Czech was spoken there.

Wesley Pustejovsky: I was the middle brother, my sister was the oldest. And she was one of the first Czech girls to graduate from High School at Abbot. People at that time just didn’t go to school, especially girls. You go to 5th Grade and then you stay at home. You didn’t have to go to school. A lot of my cousins didn’t go further than 6th or 7th Grade and they quit school because they didn’t feel like going to school. And you didn’t have to go to school, but I enjoyed school. I did very well in school so that it was never a problem for me.. It was a problem for my two brothers, who struggled in school. But me and my younger brother, Clement, did very well in School. We both graduated from University of Texas. Education is one of the things that my dad was really strict about. A lot of people, even our kinfolks, were not really for education. Education was just about how to read and write and do arithmetic. I wanted to get out in the fields but my dad said no, so I was always glad to see that. We spoke Czech at home and we barely spoke any other language. Both of my grandmothers  did not speak any English, none. Both of my grandfathers did, but might not have been good English you know (Laughing).

UH Interviewer: So speaking English was like they come and are the first generation?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right, they did alright. When I finished High School, we were right in the middle of World War Two. One of my brothers, who is older than me, was in the Navy and I was in the Army. I was in the Paratroops. The war ended before we were going to be sent to Okinawa luckily. 

UH Interviewer: Especially with Japan.

Wesley Pustejovsky:  Yeah, I didn’t need to get out there. But when I got back, I went to University of Texas and got a degree. After I got out of school, there weren't a lot of jobs in the early 1950s. I graduated in 1950 and I spent one year in the Merchant Marines up on the Great Lakes on an ore boat. Then I came back and I kind of went down in the Houston area, looking for jobs and working a little bit.  I got a job on something that I knew absolutely nothing about, but I just needed a job. It was on a geophysical field crew, which is in oilpatch. This was in the potential fields on a gravity crew. So I was going to go on, they asked me would I go up to Dalheart, which is way up north of Amarillo.

UH Interviewer: Up in the Panhandle?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right, and I said, “yeah, I’ll go up there”. So I went up there and started learning different fieldwork. I started out in the surveyors and the meter operators, a computer. At that time a computer was a person. A computer was the one that did the computing and now computers are machines. I was a computer and then I became a party chief, that is where I met my wife, up in Dalheart. We had five children and this was in 1952. From 1952 to 2019, which was last spring when I finally retired and I just stayed in the oilpatch. I became a supervisor and then an interpreter. I used to get out there and call, go to conventions, make speeches and all. I was kind of, don’t mean to brag, but I did not get my geophysics from school.

UH Interviewer: All in the field?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right, right there on the job. In the early 1970s I had a chance to work as an interpreter with this company. They had kind of a shakeup and there was a place where I could come in and join to be a  part of the company. As we progressed, we became more and more of an oil company and less and less a geophysical company. We were about 80% of an oil company for more than 20 years. Then my role switched quite a bit. I still did a lot of mapping but we did a lot of drilling, so I would go out there and kind of supervise staking wells, buying leases, and this type of things. So I became an oilman from a farmer I guess. So now I am retired, we finally sold the company, which is the way I retired. My business partner is about four years younger than I am, and we both decided that we have got to get out of this thing. I didn't have time and I wanted to retire but he was always against it. He thought that he wanted to make that one more million. Well, instead of making one more million, a lot of the times you lost one more million. We had three daughters and two sons in my family. One of the daughters lives in Alabama, who is retired and she is the oldest one. My oldest son is retired too. He was in the construction business. Another daughter Terry, she has a real estate company up in the Woodlands and she does very well. My daughter Vicky is retired from the oil patch too. I gave her some leads and she did very well, when working with some geophysical companies. Then my youngest son, we had him working for us and he is still out in the field working for the company as a field supervisor in the oil patch. I have fourteen grandchildren, twenty great grandchildren. The oldest Grandson turned fifty and I think the youngest would be somewhere in the twenty five to twenty eight. The oldest great grandchild is about twenty four and she is a graduate of A&M, and the youngest one is about six months old. So it's of that big range. And a big part of them are living here in the Houston area, although I have one of my grandsons living up in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his family and one granddaughter up in Columbus, Ohio. Then there’s some scattered up in New Mexico and things like that, but most are right in the Texas area.

UH Interviewer: How would you say that things have changed from when you were growing up to your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? Like the culture and the language?

Wesley Pustejovsky: The differences? I think they weren’t that big. From what I can see, one of the big differences is that we were much much more independent as young people. I mean even including my children, we’d get out there and thought nothing of walking to town at night just down the country lanes and all. Or you didn’t get out there and have to be entertained, you’d make your own entertainment. In fact, when the work was done you didn’t get out there, moaning and groaning about not having anything to do because you might be assigned to something, so you just went and played. And for a lot of times, we built our own little toys and things like that. And I’m not talking about building elaborate toys, you’d take a little piece of two by four and cut it down and call that a car. So we did, we made our own games and we’d get together with our cousins, friends to play different little kickball type games. We’d have a thing called Andy Over. You’d have a team on each side of the house and you’d throw a rubber ball over the top of the house and then chase each other, silly little games like that. Now, today’s generation of kids would never ever ever think about doing that. We’d climb trees, we’d get out there and swing on swings and slides and all. Nobody thought about a helmet, nobody thought about …

UH Interviewer: Safety?

Wesley Pustejovsky: (Laughing) If you fell off a tree that was your problem. Same thing with my children, I know that we’d talk about that a lot of times. We’d get out there and you’d go somewhere and next thing you know they’d be out there with a whole bunch of kids playing and chasing each other. You didn’t worry about where they were, on a weekend when they weren’t in school, I mean they were somewhere but they’d show up when it was time to eat. Or kids would get out there and neighbor’s kids would come in and wander in the house and want some water to drink. I mean now, I’ve never heard of anything like that. And they did their own little games and they’d rode tricycles in the street and pulled the wagons in the street. Girls played with the dolls and all this type of thing whereas they don’t do that today. You never see any kids playing in the neighborhood. They are all inside somewhere playing video games. I think that is negative to me. I mean I don’t have anything against video games but young people have not learned, but have lost all sense of communication. Everything is on the phone. I went to the University of Houston here a while back. You’re from U of H so you might know what I am talking about. I was in the... I forget what building.

UH Interviewer: An Auditorium?

Wesley Pustejovsky: I guess, I don’t really remember what building it was because we were going to a meeting there. In the vestibule of the building, there was a group of students out there on their phones. When I had a group together back then, I’d converse with people. But every one of them in the group was all on a phone.

UH Interviewer: All on a phone?

Wesley Pustejovsky: They were all on the phone, I mean, I thought they would be speaking to each other. That’s one thing that I can see, that big, big difference is our way of communication. We didn’t have any phones. We didn’t even have a telephone out on the farm or anything. So there was no landline, but I’m not against telephones. But I think you lost something to me. We entertained ourselves by trying to find entertainment. We’d get out there and go for a walk if nothing else. Especially in the wintertime when we’d just at a young age, we’d grab a 22 rifle and go out through the pastures going rabbit hunting. Now, they just don’t do that. Of course you don’t have the opportunity to do that as much but you just don’t do that. So I think that one of the biggest differences that I see is the way people communicate., where now you have to have instant communication. I mean if somebody gets out there stubbing their toe in London and five minutes later its got to be on the, uh…

UH Interviewer: Local News?

Wesley Pustejovsky: On the local news, that oh yeah the Queen stubbed her toe out here trying to get out of something you know. It’s unnecessary to know that. I think that we were better off not knowing all of this. We knew more about what was happening in our locality than the young people do now I think, but we didn’t know what was happening outside since we got our news a month later. So I’m going to have a birthday here later this month. I’m going to be 93. So  I’m thankful for modern medicine. I can tell you one thing: without the medicine, I would probably have never made it to 93. One of my grandmothers died when she was in the 90s, grandmother Bezdek. But grandmother Pustejovsky died when she was about 60, and my aunt Lil died when she was in her late 50s. I mean, now we know exactly what they died from but at that time it was just, he died. Yeah, you just died. Oh, and also, one big thing that I can see where, at least in my part of the world,  death, we didn’t hide death. We knew death from the farm. I mean, we knew that everything dies, like you had to kill a chicken to eat it and your dog got old and died. And that calf out there in the pastures died and then your neighbor, Mister Riddle, he died. Well, we thought he was old, which he might not be, but he died. And when people die, whole families would go to the funeral. And we’d go into the church and the coffin would be up by the altar. I’d go with my parents and Dad would lift me up.

UH Interviewer: And you’d look in?

Wesley Pustejovsky: You’d peer down there at Mr. Riddle or whoever was down there, and you’d think, “OK, that’s who it is, Mr. Sycore out there”. So we kind of accepted it and I think it is so sad that out here sometimes people say to little kids “Grandma is asleep” . Then they wonder why grandma isn't coming back to see us anymore. Well, they need to know that grandma died but that’s my thoughts on it.

UH Interviewer: Like now, do your children and grandchildren still speak Czech or did they switch all to English?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Well, I don’t think any of them speak Czech, none of them, zero. Even my children don’t speak Czech and none of my nieces and nephews. I say none. Even if there is, it’s very, very limited and they just speak a few sentences. So Czech was completely left behind. I don’t know whether that is good or bad or whatever it is. That’s what it is. I had many trips, and I made a lot of friends in the Czech Republic. I’ve made numerous trips back there and visited them. I can go to Bohemia, which is the western part of it, and I don’t understand the people. But I can go to the eastern part, Moravia, and within about one day or so I can converse with people, I mean somehow the dialect is, uh…

UH Interviewer: More Familiar?

Wesley Pustejovsky: It’s different, I don’t know what it is about, but it is different. I’ve had other people say that they’ve seen the same thing, that they can better understand the Moravians. 

UH Interviewer: Anything else, like do they have any of the Czech traditions and old stories that still survive that passed down from you to your descendants? Like how much of the Czech identity survived after you? With your children and grandchildren, what's their relations with their Czech lineage because it is so far removed at this point.

Wesley Pustejovsky: Especially during my parents’ time, when the first generation was here and even a lot of those  were the second generation, in the Czech community Czech boys would marry Czech Girls and in the German Community German boys would marry German girls. But now, it’s just a hodgepodge and now he’s half Czech and quarter Czech and that’s what it is so its just completely, uh..

UH Interviewer: Mixed?

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right, it’s a complete mixture so I think that’s why. Since English is the language of the World, that’s the one that you really need to learn so there would be no advantage to learning Czech. In other words, you wouldn’t use it. You would not use it in commerce, you would not use it in your teaching.

UH Interviewer: So only in the Czech Republic.

Wesley Pustejovsky: Right, and so many people over there speak English anyway. I mean you can get by with English in hotels and restaurants. Of course, if you get out in the countryside you can’t.

UH Interviewer: So anything else that you can think of, anything else that comes up when you were doing all this?

Wesley Pustejovsky:  Let me just think a little bit if there is anything else, if there is anything that I need to put in. I guess there is no way we are going to reverse the trend of assimilation into different cultures. I don’t care whether there’re, but I can see that really. The Mexicans keep coming in over here. The first generation speaks Spanish and a lot of them don’t even speak any English. Then their children all of a sudden got that TexMex and then their grandchildren can’t even speak Spanish at all. I think that just happens. Whether that’s good, bad or different it happens. I think that one of the biggest things is that it just depends on the language of commerce. And that’s about it, I’ve had a good long life, and I always marvel at how quickly things changed. For instance, my Dad was born in 1893 and he died in 1972. When he was born,  it was all the horse and buggy days, we had some steam engines, steam locomotives, sails and a lot of sailboats. I would say way back there about several hundred years ago, it was a slow progression. And all of a sudden when he died, man was already on the moon. We had jet airplanes, rockets, and good grief. I was right in the middle of a lot of tech. When I was growing up for instance, automobiles were still rather crude. We had a Model T Ford, which was a good new car but now not really anymore. We were just starting airplanes back then. When an airplane flew overhead, we’d all look at it and it would be some biplane. Airtravel was almost non existent, of course it was all propeller planes. And then all of a sudden, we are going to Mars with Lunar Landers and we can go faster than the speed of sound. And modern medicine is absolutely jumping out of leaps and bounds. What we knew just a few years ago is nothing now. 10 years from now we’ll look back and say “Man, back there 10 years ago, they didn’t know anything”.