On this day 63 years ago a Vanderbilt University graduate student, John Bachman Hardcastle, along with two friends, Don Smith of Cleveland, Tennessee and Walter Crawford of Chattanooga, were traveling in Europe when they decided it would be a good idea to go to the border of Czechoslovakia and see what was known as the “Iron Curtain.”
Turns out that was actually not a good idea.
The three young men drove to what they thought was the border, a barricade that blocked the way further east. There they posed for pictures. When John took his place for a photo, Czech border guards emerged and seized him for illegally entering Czechoslovakia, then took him off to jail. His companions left in their rental car back to Vienna, Austria, from which they had come.
After three days of interrogation, Mr. Hardcastle was escorted to the Austrian-Czech border and released. He managed to catch a bus back to Vienna and meet up with his friends.
John Hardcastle, by the way, went on to become a banker in Nashville, then a real estate developer. He was also a president of the Tennessee Historical Society and contributed to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. He often addressed school groups dressed as a famous Tennessean. In 1976 he was one of a group of history enthusiasts who reenacted John Donelson’s 1779 boat trip from Kingsport to Nashville, down the Holston River.
And he was also a story-teller, with the Jack Tales being his favorite stories to tell students.
He passed away in 2011.
