Paradise Lost, Part 1
The events and experiences I describe in these essays took place mainly in the years 1930-1950. These were the years just before and during the Second World War. They were the years before the world changed. It is the world I grew up in.
It has been said that it was the First World War from 1914-1918 which changed the world forever. However more than anything else this earlier change was a change in philosophies and perceptions. The Second World War of 1940-1945 brought an unprecedented change in technologies. The war industries engaged in intense research to bring new inventions to the stage of production. After the military had made use of the newest inventions for the purposes of war many of them were passed on to the civilian world. Also every new invention had a number of by products which were not much use for the war effort but which found ready use in daily life. So that now, about 60 years after the war, we can hardly imagine anymore what life in this world was like when we grew up.
I was reminded of this when my grandson sent me a questionnaire to be filled in by grandparents. It contained a long list of electrical appliances. We were asked to indicate which of these was in use when we were in grade 6. When in 1937 I finished grade 6 I was 12. When I was 12 years old we used only 3 of the appliances mentioned on the list. We had a telephone (the only one of 2 in the village and both of them were office phones not private ones), a radio and an electric iron. In Mother's (Ada) home there was also a vacuum cleaner and a gas-range in the kitchen.
We did not have an automatic washer and dryer, an automatic dishwasher, a microwave, a food processor, a garburator, an electric knife, or an electric can opener. Central heating or air conditioning were unknown to us, as were electric heaters, or electric gas and water heaters. The only hot water we had came from a kettle on the stove.
We did not have (nor had we ever heard of) riding lawn mowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers, electric hedge clippers or edgers. No electric or chain 142 saws either. No power tools of any kind, except for a big table saw in the carpenter shop.
We did have lawn mowers, but they were the silent kind, powered by us ourselves. When we stood still the mower stopped. The four curved blades were mounted on the axle and they were brought into motion by pushing the mower forward.
We did have typewriters but they were the big clunky manual kind. There were no electric typewriters or keyboards. We did not have computers, calculators, refrigerators and freezers. We did not have a car. Cars were only used by very rich people or big businesses.
We did have gas to cook on but it was gas made out of coal, natural gas was not known. We did have water taps and flush toilets, but sanitary sewage systems only existed in the large cities. We had a septic tank system.
In the wider world there were trains, but they were always pulled by beautiful steam locomotives. Airplanes became familiar to us during the war.
In the country most transportation was by bicycle or by horse and buggy or wagon. As you can well imagine the world I grew up in was very quiet inside the house and outside. As quiet as it is today when the power is off and all the appliances are silent. When we were outside we would not hear any motors running or engines howling be it close by or in the distance, because they did not exist. On a hot summer day you could hear the bees humming and the birds singing (and there were many more of them because of the clear unpolluted air!). On a cold and windless winter day you could hear the ice cracking and the snow falling from the trees in the woods. There was no artificial sound anywhere.
The roads were pretty well empty and we could always play in the streets. Time enough to get out of the way of a horse drawn cart. We did not need public play grounds (except by the schools) and protected areas for kids. The whole world was ours and we played everywhere.
The greatest thing for us was a new bicycle. I never had one because we always got used ones. There were too many children in our house, so that it was too expensive to buy them all a new bike.
Bicycles were our means of transportation. By the way our bikes were all tour bikes. The handles came up from the bar and the handle bars were mounted rather high, so that one could always sit up straight on the bike.
Bikes were usually black or brown, dark red or dark green. No fancy colours like you see today. No multiple gears either. One gear was good enough.
All bikes were required by law to have a lantern in front and a red light on the back. This was mounted on the bottom section of the rear fender, which by law had to be white. I remember carbide lanterns.
Oh they were a pain! But when I grew up we had electric lanterns and tail lights. The electricity was provided by a dynamo, which was mounted in such a way that you could make the flywheel touch one of the tires, usually in the front. The faster you rode the better the light!
Another mandatory thing was the "bel" or buzzer which sounded very clear to warn people that you were coming . "Please get out of my way" it said. The law also said that we had to have a "belasting plaatje", a copper strip which showed that you had paid the bicycle tax, much like the license plates on cars today. That copper strip was held in a cylinder which was mounted on the upright handlebar of the bike. If you did not have that "belasting plaatje" you were in for a fine by the police.
The police in our area were represented by the "veldwachter" (in French literally: garde champêtre).
He was a lone police man out on his bicycle, who kept an eye on things. He was a kindly man who always smoked a pipe. If you know the booklets by W.G.VanderHulst you have probably seen a picture of the man. His name was "Huting", so when we were in mischief (which of course hardly ever happened!) you could hear somebody scream "HUTING!!" and we would run.
Farm machinery was pretty well limited to horse drawn machines. The only time we would see a tractor was at harvest time when a threshing machine would come. It was connected by a long belt to the tractor to get it running. We had never heard of combines or things like that. A horse drawn mowing machine would cut the hay or the grain: rye, barley and wheat in that order of importance. We did not have corn. Corn was imported and only used as chicken feed. You can imagine our horror when we came to Canada and saw people eat this "chicken feed." We called it "mais" just like the French do.
But I was talking about mowing machines. You can still see those machines being used by the Amish farmers in this area. As a matter of fact the way the Amish do their farming today is the way everybody did it in our younger years.
After the hay had been cut a horse drawn machine would be used to rake it together in swaths. After a little while another machine would turn it over and still another machine would go over it and shake it. That was fun to see. The machine sort of had a row of pitchforks which went up and down very The “veldwachter” fast and would throw the hay high up in the air. This was to get the air in and to dry it. After that they would rake it again and put it into swaths. It was a very laborious process as you can well imagine.
After the grain had been cut a group of men and women would gather to bind the sheaves and put them up into stooks to dry in the wind. The expertise and professional "standing" of a farmer was often judged by the way these stooks stood the onslaught of wind and rain.
There always were some fields where the weather had really thrown these stooks around into a soggy mess. The neighbours would comment on that with derision. Then after the grain was good and dry the harvest would be loaded onto wagons. When the wagon was filled a long pole (almost like a short telephone pole) would be laid on top of the load.
The farmer would pull it down tight and fasten it with ropes to the front and the back of the wagon. That's how it would be transported to the home farm. As kids we loved to ride on top of the grain or the hay in this hollow grove created by this top pole. I can still hear the creaking of the wagon, smell the sweat of the horses and feel the sun and the wind on my face. Way up on top of that wagon load we felt on top of the world!
Sometimes the driver would allow us to sit beside him up front and if he was in a good mood he might even let us hold the reins! That sure made us feel important because everybody could see us sitting there. And talking about feeling important: When we were old enough (13 or 14 or so) we were sometimes allowed to drive the wagon loaded with hay back to the home farm all by ourselves. Can you imagine? Driving a loaded hay wagon home all by yourself? Man, that felt good!
At home the grain would be unloaded and put into big square piles to wait for the threshing machine. Then after the threshing was done the grain was collected in large burlap bags and the straw was again stacked up in big square piles covered with a huge tarp. Or it was stacked up in the haystack.
This haystack was an interesting thing in itself. It consisted of a square often concrete floor of approx. 20x20 feet or larger. On the corners of this floor were tall upright poles that held up a roof covered with reeds or with sheet metal. The roof had a hole in each of its corners which fitted around one of the four poles. At every pole there was some kind of a pulley which made it possible to raise or lower the roof. So no matter how much or how little grain or hay there was in the haystack the roof could always be made to fit right on top of the hay so that the rain and the wind could not get in.
Those haystacks were our favorite playground. Oh the joy of climbing on top of that hay, burrowing into it and making kind of a chamber to stay in. If we were getting too wild in our play the farmer would holler at us and send us home. He did not want to be responsible if any accidents happened. And they did often enough. Kids would get too close to the edge and fall off. Sometimes they could really get hurt.
* The drawings in this chapter are from the book “Te Hooi en te Gras” by Rien Poortvliet. Used with permission from Uitgevers Maatschappij Holkema en Warendorf.