The Netherlands

We know it as Holland because when this tiny country sent her ships all over the world they were from the providence of Holland. Of course here in New York we have many Dutch names left over from the 17th century. Amsterdam, New Amsterdam, and my tiny hometown village of Gansevoort are just a few places.

You got to give a lot of credit to a country that decides to acquire more land and instead of wielding a sword and overrunning a neighbor they decide to build a dam around a hunk of sea, erect a wind mill and pump the water out. Today, if the dams broke ½ of the Netherlands would be submerged. That is an area of half the state of Michigan. This makes New Orleans look like small potatoes. But even this country suffers its sea disasters. In 1953 a northwesterly North Sea storm and a high spring tide causes extensive flooding. 1835 people drown in the southwest providence of Zeeland. And to prevent the Allied forces from landing in the Netherlands the Germans broke many dikes along the coast.

The Dutch public broadcasting foundation has made numerous documentaries featuring the North Sea flood of 1953. They have also made two English versions of what where originally Dutch documentaries. The titles of these documentaries are The Greatest Storm and 1953, The Year of the Beast. I have not had time to find these on the internet, but here is a video of the flood. http://www.deltawerken.com/89

PHOTO: D. HENRY I’d go back to the Netherlands in a heartbeat. I found the country clean, neat as a pin, congenial. Thatched roof houses line streets so narrow I mistook several as pathways. Tiny canals serve as fences to keep cows confined to square meadows often lines with trees. Each yard is landscaped as if it was vying for the cover photo of Homes and Gardens. Some of the canals (ditches with character) have been incorporated into ponds, often times with the pond’s edge abutting the foundation of the house. Think English Garden meets Japanese koi pond. Lush, green, quaint, serene. No wasted space. I suspect even the garbage dumps were tidy.

Unfortunately, the day I was experiencing all this great landscaping it poured and I could not get a photo from the bus. This was the day we began our WWII Tour by visiting a drop sight for the Operation Market Garden and the taking of the bridges (The Bridge Too Far, Arnhem) on the Rhine September 1944. Exhausted with jet lag I kept falling asleep on the bus.

First night dinner concluded with a small fireworks display. We ate with Matilda and her husband Neil, a vet from the Occupying US Army serving in Germany; Garry an Australian who gained the reputation for getting lost, falling behind and wandering through the lingerie departments in Paris; and Bill and Don, two middle class hardworking retired tradesmen from the Midwest who were World War II buff. Dad and Neil began a nightly ritual of buying the other a glass of red wine which they then rates on a scale of 1 to 3. I don’t think any glass throughout the trip beat the taste of the very first night.

Slept like a log.