So we would all sing songs. Mother would teach us songs that could have 24 verses.

In the good old days if something like a murder happened, it was put into song as these high crimes so seldom happened. This way these stories stayed alive. Also many people could not afford a newspaper.

There is a funny but true story. A motorcycle guy riding his bike had put his leather jacket on backwards, so he would stay warmer this way, as the wind could not get through in the front.

This fellow had an accident and the people who came out to help him said: ”Oh my, his head is turned around, oh that poor man”

Still today you can hear people say; “Why are you not going to Meppel and get your head turned around?” Meppel is the name of the town where this happened.

On our side of the street lived the working class; on the other side it was middle class. This class distinction was pointed out to us often in often not so subtle ways. Some kids were not allowed to play with us.

We were the wild street kids. Yes, we were on the street a lot because our home was too small for us all. We would often eat our sandwiches outside while playing games. If my mom said that we were not allowed to eat outdoors, we would tell her that we would not be eating at all in that case. You could call it blackmail, it was really and it worked every time.

It I had been my mother, I would have let us be hungry for a few days, I am sure we would have soon given in.

Poor mom she tried so hard to show those snobs that we were maybe not rich, but we were very presentable. She knitted us a lot of clothes. I remember a dress that had large dolls as a border, a red dress with white dolls. Another one of my sister’s wore a red dress with white ducks. We may have been wild but we were never the less neat.

Like mothers all over the world, my mom’s fear was that we kids were not wearing clean underwear, in case we would be run over by a bus.

When the baby bonuses arrived, all six of us would receive new underwear and mom would tell us every time that the next time we all would get nothing, as she herself would be getting a new coat. She never did buy that coat.

After we kids were all grown up, she had many coats, too many, more she could ever use.

One time mom bought us three oldest a new coat with a matching hat. It was wintertime and some lucky kids had a sled. We did not and would use a piece of cardboard instead.

This day mom told us not to get our new coats dirty by going sledding. We all assured her we would not even think of doing such a thing and went straight to the hill to join the other kids sledding. We found a piece of cardboard and went down the hill, and then we would ask each other if they could see any dirt.

Being told that we looked clean a few times we stopped asking and kept on going down the hill on that piece of cardboard. When the three of us came home we all had our behinds thoroughly warmed up, as our new coats were very dirty.

Why my dad never made us kids a simple sled, I will never know.

Dad had a lot of inner wisdom. He told us never marry just for money, he would say, that you would be like a bird in a golden cage, but it would still be a cage. Or he would say that when you knew your own wrongs you were lucky, for now you could do something about it.

We would go upstairs to our bedroom to get something and come back with empty hands as we at times forgot why we had gone upstairs.

Dad had an uncanny nose for just knowing when this happened and he would delight in telling us, that what we did not have in our head, we now had to have in our legs as we had to go back up stairs again.

He called me a “weed” sometimes. "Jenny you are just like a weed they can pull you out of the ground, but sooner or later you’re back again." Looking at it that way, I suppose it was it was a compliment.

Always thinking further then your nose is long was another of his favourites we would hear a lot.

Some of the thing my dad did I will never understand. My dad worked hard and looked forward to a quiet evening at home. He seldom got it!

Even at fourteen-fifteen, he wanted me to go to bed at 9 o’clock sharp.

I would often sit on the floor between two large chairs reading a book, hoping my dad would forget that I was there. He would be cross with me if I myself did not keep track of the time.

The problem was that my siblings would still be awake, especially in the summer time as it would be often hot upstairs.

I would teach my sisters gymnastics or we made up games.

Dad would yell for us to be quiet upstairs. We would yell back; “Yes dad”

Within a few minutes we would start again, and dad would yell at us again. Many nights he would sneak up on us, and all three of us would get a licking.

We would cry and this often ended up in hysterical laughter.

We would forget the licking and start the noise all over again.

Several nights we had as much as three spankings.

Dad as smart as he was, never figured out that if he only had let me stay up longer, the others would be asleep and he would have his quiet time.

My mother always went to bed herself very early, her escape?

Our noise making never bothered her as she wore a hearing aid.

I also would sometimes hide my book behind the stairs carpet and read upstairs standing on the bed and reading by the moonlight. Dad could tell if we turned on the lights. I was never clever enough to cover the doorway on the bottom with a towel.

When I turned fourteen years old my dad had me tested to see what direction I should go, stay in school or go to work, what was I suitable for?

It was found that I would be good with children, what a joke!

I could never go anywhere without Greetje and Coby in tow.

Mom would give me 50 cents and tell me to go to the swimming pool.

The cashier would tell me that it would cost 50 cents a person.

I would tell her that my mother only had given me 50 cent for all three of us.

I would not move and I learned very quickly that when we did this, the cashier seeing the line-up getting longer and my determent face that said that we would not be moving that day, would often say; ‘Oh alright go in”

My dad believed that the most important thing in life for a woman was to learn how to keep house, for that is what she would be doing as soon as she would be married. If a woman had a profession before marriage, she would often give that up when she married and the babies came.

I used to clean the house for my mother. I would polish the furniture and put it in the hallway. I would wash the windows if they needed it, roll up the mat, take it outside and beat the dirt out of it with a special paddle. Wash the wood-work down, the lamps and wash the floor. Put the rug back, return the furniture to its place, make coffee and wake-up mother she would be in a great mood then. When she was getting out of bed earlier some days, she would criticize me and we would have arguments.

My best friend had started to work in a factory, where they made raincoats. I asked if I could go to work there too. My parents told me that I could, and I would be allowed to keep all the money I would be making, if I started saving on my trousseau.

No couple in Holland would think of getting married, until they had all the things ready to set up house keeping, including the furniture.

All paid for as well, as we did not buy a thing on credit then.

For this reason couples would be engaged for many years. (Not so today as the credit card is now widely used In Holland too)

I would earn seven and a half guilders a week for working forty-four hours a week. For someone whose pocket money so far had been ten cents a week, this was a princely sum.

You had to be 14 years old to be allowed to work there. I was in luck as I had just turned fourteen. (This is called slave labour today)

One year later, kids had to be sixteen to be allowed to work.

I was in heaven. I will never forget that first day of work. I saw row upon rows of sing machines. There were approximately seventy-one hundred people working. I was taken to the very end of the line where all the sewing had now been completed and the coat had to have all the loose threads removed.

After we had cleaned up the coats as best as we could, it would be put on a mannequin where someone would give it a last inspection before it ended up in the expedition to be made ready for shipment.

There was one other girl sitting at the same table where I was placed, or actually she was half lying there, hanging in her seat. The girl was either very bored or lazy, so when I found out that someone stopped by every hour to write down how many each of us had done, I decided to work extra hard so it would be noticed.

I had no plans to sit there and clean up coats the rest of my life. My strategy worked! Three days later I had a new, and a nicer job.

I worked myself up in that place, and in the end was working next to the designers themselves.

Wow, I was moving up in the world!

The girls working in the office of the factory felt it was beneath them to talk or associate with the sewing machine workers.

I was working in the coupe now! Now that was another story, I was in!

A funny anecdote happened. All the seamstresses were on piecework. Too see if the owner could save more money, he hired an economist.

As soon as he would sit by a girl, she would leave to go to the rest room. Since all the others did the same, the poor man had to give up. He then thought he had “the plan.”

He went up on the attic, and from this position, lying down on glass panels, he could now watch all the workers.

A man in the packing room saw him go up there, came in the sewing room and pointed up.

In seconds the girls caught on and in unison started to sing a song that went something like this: “We have a cow in the attic, aboe, aboe.”

Needless to say our economist went home.

When I was about sixteen an aunt told me that before I was born, my mother had given birth to another baby girl. I have another sister? Wow! I told my sister Greetje what I had just learned and we were both very excited.

Strangely we did not tell our parents about what we now knew.

In those days it was thought of it being scandalous to have a baby out of wedlock. This pregnancy was not just from a one-night stand. My mother had spent eight years with this man, yet when he found out that mom was pregnant, the rat took off.

Mom felt she had no choice but too leave the baby with a farmer’s couple. The understanding was that if mother could take care of the child at a later date, the child would be returned to her. Mom visited her baby for approximately three years.

Mom met then, my now dad and he wanted nothing to do with the other man’s child.

He could not handle the fact that mom and this man’s relationship had gone on for eight years.

The farmer’s couple now adopted the little girl. My mother gave the baby her own name, Tina.

I met with Tina many years later and wow how much she looked like my mother!

How often I have wished that Tina had been taken into our family.

I would have had an older sister and I firmly believe, it would have made a big different in my own life.

I now understood why my mother felt about me the way she did. She had wanted to also have her first born living with her.

My mom has had a hard life and when she met my dad a good-looking man, my mother thought her better years were here.

She could not have been more wrong.

My dad’s boss had told him, that he could have the dairy store, only if he was married. Dad told me years later that my mother was the last person he had dated, so he made her his choice.

Mother had thought that she now had someone who would take care of her and she would just keep house. Instead she was put in charge of the dairy store. All white cabinets, difficult to keep clean. In those days the milk did not come in bottles, but was measured in to cups, then to be put in the pots and pans the customers had brought from home.

Then, baby makes three, as I felt it was time for my entrance into the world.

I was born in the rooms adjacent to the store, as most babies were born at home then.

I was sick from day one. My stomach had an obstruction making me unable to keep my food down. I was operated on when six weeks old.

Now my mother had the dairy store, a sick baby and her own house to keep clean and do the cooking etc.

I had to have follow-up doctor’s visits until I was three years old.

We had no car and my mother had to walk a good ½ hour.

I was often told that the doctor would come to pick me up in the waiting room, hoist me up onto his shoulder and tell the other kids this is how you all should be like. This one is always happy and laughing.

My mother too would tell me that I was a happy baby and would stand in the crib behind the window over looking the store front, smiling and waving to the customers. I told her one day that this was probably so because I had nothing else to do.

This time must have been very dramatic for my mother for she would tell of her early experience as a new wife and mother very often too us her children later.

Today I wished I had been more understanding of what she went through. At the time I did not think of my mother, nor did I have the insight that I have today.

Because I did not get along with my mother, my dad wanted me to leave the house and find a job as a housekeeper.

I was sixteen and I had a boyfriend since I was fourteen.

When you don’t find it at your home you seek it somewhere else.

There were only two boys in his family, so I got a lot of attention at his house and that was just fine with me.

Plus, with six children in ours, it was a bit crowded as we had only a small house. Being the oldest I was setting a bad example for my other sisters having a boyfriend at such an early age. So it was also because of him, that I had to leave the house.

To my surprise when I checked the want ads the next day, I saw an ad that sure got my attention. Someone wanted a young girl to work as a maid in Antwerp, Belgium. When I showed that ad to my dad he paled, he did not like it at all. Finally he said that I could go, if I would write and get information from the police about the family. So I did.

Later the lady of the house asked me if I had asked for information about them. I told her that I had in deed, but that this was supposed to be confidential. She said that I was right, but that my letter had fallen in the hands of a very close friend of theirs.

So much for confidentiality!

During the war this family had stayed in Holland with a farmer, it was through him that the ad had been placed. He was also the person that came to interview me at our home. I was hired.

When I told every one at work that I was leaving to go to work in Belgium, they were in shock. I had never traveled more than a few hours from home before, and neither my co-workers had done much traveling.

I was called into the office of the owner of the plant.

Mr Krueger was a man who would always let the people know he was on his way touring the plant. He would cough and smoke a pipe that we all recognized by its special smell.

This person had never talked to me before. He would talk to the managers but never to the people themselves.

He told me that he had heard that I was leaving to go to work in Belgium.

He pleaded with me not to go there. He said; “You are very young, much too young, don't you know that it is a large harbour city and that there is white slavery? I can find you a place in the most Southern part of Holland, but please don't go too Antwerp."

I was sincerely touched that this man cared about his workers that much.

In those days the boss stood next to God himself.

We had to call our managers sir, surely never got to talk to the big boss himself.

I saw adventure and also to get back at my dad for sending me out of the house. I didn't tell him what the big boss had told me of course.

So, one day, the same day that Holland was flooded in January ‘53, I met the Belgium family in Rotterdam. It is needless to say that I was very nervous.

My new employer was the director of the Agfa film companies. They had a daughter one year younger than I was. They were very nice people and they were good to me.

I was supposed to call the daughter Miss, but I never did. She loved to go swimming with me but if she met me on the streets with her girlfriends, she would ignore me. After all I was the maid. This really hurt, as I was not much more than a child myself at sixteen.

In the morning her cousin would come over and she and the daughter were driven to school. I was to open the door and then leave the room, as the cousin was not to see me together with the family.

The lady of the house was a good teacher she worked right along with me, wanting to teach me all she knew. One day she told me that when their new house was finished, that I would have to eat in the kitchen.

I told her that in my house only the dog ate in the kitchen. The matter was never brought up again. (We did not even have a dog)

I was allowed to sit with them in the living room unless they had company, then it was to the kitchen for me. When they had people over for dinner I was dressed in black and in a little white apron. I sure wished I had a picture of me in that get-up.

Imagine living in the home of the director of the Agfa film company, and not having one picture to show for. For the first time in my life I saw home movies. I enjoyed these the most when people were eating and the film was reversed.

I had lots of free time, every afternoon I was allowed to go out. One day the lady of the house drove me to the harbour, and told me to never go there alone. Needless to say I was there the very next day. I saw a lot of signs. Barmaid wanted, barmaid wanted, it was everywhere.

Need a job?

One day I went to the movies and a priest happened to stand in the hallway. The priest asked me if I was from Holland, as an emblem on my coat said so. He wanted to know if my parents knew I was in Belgium.

I assured him that they knew and approved.

One day at our home in Holland, the Moral police, as it would be called translated from Dutch, came to my parent’s home. They wanted to know if my mom and dad knew their daughter was in Belgium. My dad told them that yes, he knew about that.

At Easter time after having been working there for four months, the family felt that I should go home for a visit. My boyfriend had written many letters. One said that if I did not come back to Holland, then he would come to Belgium. I had hidden his letters before I left, and while I was gone, the lady of the house wanted to redo my room. She found the letters and because I had hidden them, she thought she better read them. She told me later that I could not come back as they were responsible for me and that one of the reason I was with them was to separate me from my boyfriend. Now that they read that Matt would come to Belgium, I was told that I now had to stay in Holland.

Of course the first thing I did when back home was to go for a walk with my boyfriend. Dad was expecting this and watched from an upstairs window to see which way I was going when I left the house. He had told me he was taking a nap. He figured that we were heading for the canal as we often went there. There were two ways to get there and thus when he saw the direction I was headed for he took his bike and went the opposite way. He found us on the road and told me to go home.

I have wondered at times that if my dad had let us be, if I would have married Matt. My father never caught on, that the more he tried to separate us, the more we wanted to be together.

Went back to my old employer for the second time and that went fine for a while, until my dad had the idea to make me a bus-conductor. (Person who you pay the fare to on the bus) touring in the middle of Holland.

You had to go to school for three days and I found out, that underage girls were working there. The new law was now that in order to work, you had to be sixteen. I was almost 17 years old now so I was okay.

After the three days were up, and I had been giving a most beautiful scenic bus tour in Holland, I went to see the manager. I told him that I wanted to go home.

He told me that he would not let me go as the company had just invested three days schooling in me, and that he had no intentions of paying me to get back home. I informed him that he better, as I knew he had underage girls working for him. Now he all of a sudden remembered that he had an uncle living in my city, that I could stay for one month, and that he then would come and get me. Sure you do that!

My dad was surprised to see me back so soon, but I could stay.

I went back to my old job, for the third time.

One of the tailors at work told me what had happened to friends of his, while they were on a vacation in Belgium.

In their hotel they met with another couple, the four of them became good friends, and went on several outings together.

One day when all of them were in the car, they passed a mailbox when the new friends asked if the other man would mind putting a letter in the mailbox. When he stepped out to do so, these new “friends” drove away with his wife, he never saw her again.

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