We return now to Czechoslovakia and go back to the 1840's in Moravia where a man named Jan Palat was born. He married a girl named Marie Kanak who was born there in 1846. They had three sons whose names were Jan, Joseph and Thomas. Now according to tradition we must assume that Jan was the oldest. He was born August 16, 1870. To make this boy easier to remember we will call him by his name in English, John. The place where they lived in Moravia was called Hostalkova. It was a small village located east of Brno and close to the border between Moravia and Slovakia. John's trade was tailoring and he was also very good at woodworking. John built a wooden chest to hold his belongings while he served in the Austrian Army.

January 8, 1895 at the age of 24, John Palat married a girl named Johanna Valcik. Johanna was born September 21, 1874 so she was four years older than John. They lived in Hostalkova and three children were born in their homeland.

Their first child was a boy and guess what they named him? John of course. John was born September 22, 1896, just one day after his mother's 22nd birthday. Sadly John died when less than two years old on January 23, 1898. The second child was also a boy whom they named Joseph. Joseph was born March 29, 1899. After two boys, they had a daughter and thank goodness because if this did not happen it would bring this story to an end now.

Mary Palat was born September 14, 1902 in Hostalkova, Moravia. She would not be the last of the children born to John and Johanna Palat but she was the last to be born in their Czechoslovakian homeland. In Czechoslovakia only one name was given to anyone other than royalty. Mary was taken for her christening very soon after her birth and when the priest asked her name, the family said they had not decided on Mary or Martha yet. Her name was recorded as Mary Martha and thus she ended up with a middle name in the records. The parents decided on Mary after her christening.

When Mary was two years old, the Palat family of four packed up their belongings, said goodbye to their friends and family members that remained, and headed for the German port of Bremen. John's father had died, so his mother, Marie Kanak Palat, accompanied them when they boarded the "Hanover" bound for Galveston, Texas. John's younger brother, Joseph, came to America also at some point in time but his brother Thomas remained behind. The ship arrived on December 24, 1904 so that had to be a special Christmas for the family.

Immigrants came to Texas in large numbers after a Czech community was established at Cat Spring, in Austin County, in 1847. Later Czech communities included Guy, in Fort Bend County, and Hallettsville, in Lavaca County. The Palat family settled in Guy, Texas just a short distance southeast of Houston. John gave up his tailoring and started farming. They lived on a two-acre farm there and immediately started increasing the size of their family. A son named Jerry was born February 25, 1905, a daughter, Vlasta, was born March 30, 1909, and November 17, 1914 another son was born who they named John and called him John Jr.

This is the Palat Family in Texas in 1909 after the birth of daughter Vlasta. John Palat is the man on the back row on the left with the mustache. His brother, Joseph, is on the right. His wife, Johanna, is the lady on the left and his mother, Marie, is the lady on the right. Daughter, Mary, is in the middle.

Immigrant Czechs tended to move to communities where friends and relatives had previously settled. Johanna Palat had an uncle named Joseph living in Idaho. Joseph must have convinced them there was something good about Idaho because John and Johanna sold their farm in Guy, Texas and moved to Idaho October 8, 1917. Another reason for the move may have had to do with the health of Johanna's mother, Ana Vavra Valcik, because she died in Buhl, Idaho March 24, 1918. This information came from a note written by their son John Palat, Jr.

The Palat family settled in the Fairview district, in the city of Buhl, in Twin Falls County. This put them right in the middle of Magic Valley, one of the largest irrigated areas in the world. This offered farmers a great advantage over what the situation had been down in Texas. Buhl is the trading center for farm people working some 100,000 acres of fertile, irrigated lands which produce the famous Idaho potato, beans, sugar beets, alfalfa, poultry, dairy products, sheep, hogs and cattle, as well as many kinds of fruits and vegetables. The Snake River Plain runs through this area creating the abundance of water making the irrigation possible. The rich volcanic soil, when irrigated with the plentiful water supply, makes for a perfect combination for successful farming. The family at this time consisted of the father John age 47, mother Johanna age 43, son Joseph age 18, daughter Mary age 15, son Jerry age 12, daughter Vlasta age 8, and son John, Jr. age 3.

John and Johanna Palat's 15-year-old daughter, Mary, met a man named Joseph Kucera less than a year after the family's move to Idaho. Joseph Kucera was 29 years old which made him about 13 years older than Mary. He, like the others, had left Czechoslovakia to come to the United States. He arrived in New York on April 9, 1909 and was processed through immigration at Ellis Island. Joseph Kucera's name is among those inscribed on the wall there. This picture shows him as a young man.

Joseph worked two months in a shoe factory and then worked for a gardener until the fall of 1909 when he went to Elma, Iowa to take a job he had seen advertised. He went to school to learn English and had a teacher that was younger than he was. His handwriting was beautiful. He moved to Buhl, Idaho in February 1912 when he read in a newspaper about being able to get land in the new irrigation project being created there. He really was thrilled at the opportunity to own his own land because this had not been possible for him back in Czechoslovakia.

Joseph, unlike the Palat, Kulicka, and Foukal families who came from Moravia, came from Bohemia. He was born in Pilsen January 3, 1889 and lived there until he went to America at age 20. Pilsen is southeast of Prague and near the border with Germany.

Joseph left his entire family behind when he left Czechoslovakia. His father was Vaclav Kucera who died in Pilsen in 1918, nine years after Joseph left the country. His mother was Josefa Masek, the daughter of John Masek and Marie Kasner. She stayed in Czechoslovakia after Vaclav died and she died there in 1927. Joseph had a younger sister named Marie who was born in 1893. She married a man named Augustin Schvarz and they remained in Czechoslovakia.

Joseph Kucera bought a 83-acre farm west of Buhl in November 1917 for $13,353.00. On this farm he had an orchard of peach, apricot, apple, plum and cherry trees and a patch where grapes, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, and currants grew. He later bought a second farm where he operated a dairy and grew alfalfa, potatoes, and grain.

Joseph and Mary made their home there on these farms after their marriage, May 28, 1918. A year after their marriage, they had their first of two children. Both of their children were daughters and they named the first one Rose. Rose described a typical day in the life of her father. "He put in long hours. He was there at the break of day directing the water down the irrigation ditches. Then he milked the cows and after that was finished he started the field work. In the evening he had to change the flow of the water to new fields and milk the cows again." She continued, " no wonder when he sat in his chair in the evening he fell asleep". In the winter, the cows still had to be milked even though it was below zero and his barn was only a shed closed from the north and west.

John Palat and his family, now minus daughter Mary, lived on their farm and made it their livelihood. Czech women worked at least as hard as the men did. Along with the inside chores of a farm wife, they often milked cows, raised chickens, raised a garden for the food the family ate, and weeded the fields. Most women helped with special needs during the harvest and at other critical times. This created a heavy burden for the women, since until recently few men did any housework. Most believed that the Czech women worked harder than did their non-Czech counterparts. Some young Czech girls worked outside the home in non-Czech families at a time when the absence of modern conveniences made a hired girl more necessary, particularly after an illness or childbirth. These families passed on American values to the girls. For example, while working for the family of a banker, a Czech girl was amazed that the son of the banker was cutting grass throughout the neighborhood at the age of ten. A Czech banker's son would never have done manual labor.

Moving your home from Czechoslovakia to American was not the same as moving from Virginia to Alabama. The contrast in lifestyles was far different. The world departed by the Czech immigrants was the tiny one of the peasant's village. Czechs uniformly lived in villages and walked to their little strips of farmland each morning. The villages themselves were uniform, 100 to 150 brick or stone houses on a single dusty lane, plastered, whitewashed, and roofed with red tiles. One entered each house through a large gate and proceeded by a passageway to two entrances, one leading to living quarters, the other to the stable. The inhabitants, human and animal, thus lived under a single roof. Living quarters consisted of rooms, from one to four in number, heated by a single kitchen stove. Do you have a grandmother who always has a fire burning in her house when you come to visit? Floors were of wood, swept clean daily. Aside from these simple cottages, each village had a green, which also served as a marketplace, and some structures, a school, a church, and a tavern or a public house. A brook bisected each village and here the women gathered to wash and gossip, while children tended the inevitable flocks of arrogant geese. A more panoramic view of the village environs would yield common forest and pasture land and innumerable strips of tilled soil.

In America, the farm houses were isolated structures, and the outbuildings were not part of the family home. The horizon normally yielded no sights, except fields and sky. There were no villages near at hand, no green and commons, no instant sociability, no church or school close by, no brook and, as often as not, no geese.

The Czechs responded to this new environment by banding together to preserve their culture. Their tendency to create ethnic colonies led them to form Czech lodges' to preserve the sociability of the European village. A lodge hall was built in 1923, with volunteer labor, in the Fairview area of Buhl. This lodge and others cooperated to provide Czech social life during the 1920's and 1930's. Special days such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, July 4th, weddings, family reunions, etc., were often celebrated at the hall. The lodges provided funeral rites and fulfilled many of the social and supportive functions usually associated with churches.

The Czechs so emphasized music that it has been said, "Every Czech a musician". Weddings were followed by shivarees in which, after much noise from pots and pans, the groom wheeled the bride in a wheelbarrow for about a quarter of a mile to where a dinner and dance awaited. Music was present on Memorial Day as well. After the lodge members marched to music to a cemetery and a short speech was given, little girls in white dresses decorated the graves of deceased Czechs with flowers. On Saturday nights Fairview Hall sponsored dances and plays which were designed to be family affairs. The children came to the dances, were put to bed in the hall, only after they were exhausted, and were awakened to eat at midnight. Gatherings like dances provided the opportunity to see relatives and, for the younger members, to meet future ones.

Six-year-old Rose Kucera was no doubt use to attending functions at the hall on a regular basis when her sister, Lydia May, joined the family April 24, 1925. The Czech tradition of no middle name for commoners had been dropped in favor of the American way. In 1927, two years after Lydia was born, Joseph's mother died back home in Czechoslovakia. His sister Marie lived until 1974.

In 1928 Mary Kucera's father, John Palat, gave up farming and moved to a home at 308 14th Street in Buhl. He returned to his skill as a tailor as a hobby. He and wife Johanna made house slippers that were very popular with family members and soon became popular with paying customers. The slippers were made from old overcoats, mackinaws, upholstery, and other discarded but sturdy textile objects. The Palats recycled their own old clothes in this way, like quilters do, but neighbors and friends also brought them their cast-offs. John and Johanna created sturdy slippers that lasted for many years. They sold for about $1.50 a pair back then. John Palat was known as a friend to all and lived a very colorful life. He officiated at funerals, and spoke and sang at public gatherings, with his wife Johanna.

Rose Kucera was asked to recall her earliest childhood memory and she told of a time that she was taking care of her sister Lydia and while doing so, she dumped her out of the baby carriage. Her punishment for allowing this to happen was having to kneel on corn kernels for a considerable period of time. Times have changed when it comes to punishment. She described the family's farm house as two rooms and a porch with a canvas-covered porch where they slept. In winter it was so cold they would have frost on their covers from their breathing. Some facts she related concerning her father indicate just how much she admired him. In addition to her description of how hard he worked for the family he loved, she said he was a fine man who was overly generous. He was short in stature but big of heart. He never swore, smoked, drank or gambled.

Rose started school at five years of age but due to having to walk two miles to get to the school she was allowed to stay at home for one more year. The school was a three-room building with about 90 children. One room was first and second grade, another was third, fourth and fifth, and the other was sixth, seventh and eighth. She could only speak Czech when she began school. Her teacher was Czech and could speak Czech and English so she helped her learn English. Once she learned English she made very good grades and was the class Salutatorian when she graduated from the eighth grade. Her favorite subjects were history, geography and biology. Outside of class her school activities included 4-H Club, a High School Christian group called Girl Reserves, the Debate Club, and Basketball. Her mother was President of the PTA when she was in the seventh grade. Rose was very proud of her mom for this because she too could speak very little English when Rose started school.

It wasn't until Rose was about nine years old that the Kucera family had electricity on their property. When Rose was not in school, she loved playing with her dog "Shoney" and with her one and only doll. Her closest playmates were her cousins, Stan and Eddie Novacek. She was able to earn money from her parents by pulling weeds in their field beans and sorting or picking potatoes. The family was never able to take a vacation because of being tied down to tending the dairy cows. She did get to go to a 4-H Club event for a week in Pocatello once which delighted her to no end. She won a 4-H Club event and the prize was a gift certificate in a clothing store. She bought an evening gown and some accessaries with it and wore it to school dances and other dressy occasions. When she was a senior, her class made a trip to Boise, the state capital.

During the great depression years of the 1930's, Mary Kucera gave massages for $6.00 an hour or in exchange for food. The table she used for her massages is still in the family, located at the lake house on Lay Lake.

More about Rose's young life is revealed when she wrote: