* Nădlac is in the Transylvania region of Romania.
Normally the word Transylvania immediately brings to mind …
someone by the name of Vlade Tepes, better known as
… that friendly and endearing immortal, Dracula from the
vampire family.
  The word “Dracula," translates into "son of the dragon" or
"son of the devil."
  As we all know, Bram Stoker made him popular through his
loose imaginative interpretation of Vlade the Impaler’s life.
  If you mention the word Dracula here, the immediate
response you get from most is that Bram, gave Vlade, a bad rap.
  Today someone told me a story that her grandfather told her
when she was a young girl … the story is about Vlade Tepes
aka Dracula.
  Vlade was a guy who demanded respect and he wasn’t known
as a buddy to the murderers and thieves. His notoriety seems
to originate from the manner in which he dealt with those guys.
  The story goes like this … one day Vlade had a bunch of bad guys
and he wanted to do something about them. By Vlade’s side
was his approximately 10 year old son. So he turns to his son
and asks … OK kiddo … how are we going to handle these dudes?
Seeing as I am the guy that can give a pardon … and I ain’t … how
are we going to give these guys what they deserve? He says to his
son … I want to eliminate them and I want you to make the call
as to how it is going to be carried out.
  The kid must have had a creative mind and said … why don’t
we put them on stakes. Being a good dad it appears he didn’t want
to let old junior down and proceeded to give the orders to the
troops.
  So there they were … a bunch of stakes planted in the ground
… a bunch of bad guys that are not long for this world and a kid
with an imagination.
  What they did was throw the unfortunate souls on the stakes.
The actual logistics of it I don’t know but I think that the stakes
were planted first, then the guys were lifted and then thrown
onto it. I don’t know the Romanian world for ’ouch’ but I think it
could be said that it was one of the most repeated words at the
time.
  At that point the son wasn’t all to into watching the action and
turned away in horror. I guess he thought that his dad, Vlade, was
originally just joking around. So upon seeing that the kid wasn’t
into the visual aspect of it all, he grabbed the kid’s head and turned
it so he could see the results of his choice of ‘poison’ … so to speak.
Ole Vlade told the kid … you made the call, you have to look.
  I guess Vlade was trying to be a good dad and teach his son a
lesson in life.
  The story goes on to point out that at that time you could place a
million dollars of gold on the street and no one would even dare to
touch it … wonder why?
  Also, Vlade’s last name Tepes, has some relation to the word ‘stake’.
I looked the word up in my little dictionary but nothing seemed to
be remotely spelled like Tepes.
  I don’t know if this story was that of legend or one that a
grandfather made up to scare his little granddaughter into not
becoming a thief.
  All I know is that, to me, it was a ‘scoop’ straight from old
Dracula’s stomping grounds … the region of Transylvania
Romania.