My story 7.1

Bicycles! After the war Dutchmen moved around on bicycles. Dad went to work on his bike, we kids went to school on our bikes, workers, bosses, teachers, everybody. The police was always out there handing out tickets should you break any of the traffic rules. Really!

During the "great" vacation, the summer holidays, I toured Holland on the bike, together with my brother. It took months to organize this by mail. Except for businesses, nobody had telephones yet in those days. We would write remote friends and family if we could spend a night at their place during one of those tours. When all had replied we could plan our route. Some days we covered a few kilometres, other days were long and tiring.

Most of the details of those trips we made are by now totally forgotten. But there were some highlights I remember. One day we passed a shepherd tending his sheep. Henk and I stopped and we wanted to see what that was like. After all, shepherds were in the stories of the birth of Jesus. I think this shepherd was sitting there all day without moving as his dog did all the work. He was not much of a talker, but he insisted to try out my harmonica, that I always carried with me those days. I was not thrilled have him suck on my "mouth organ" as we called it. But could that guy play!

Down the road we arrived at the destination of the day. We did not expect a great welcome, but we also didn't expect what happened! They pointed us to the haystack and we spent the night there among the chickens. They did give us a sandwich, but we never entered the house.

On a long stretch of road a truck passed us, and we went to grab a hold of a rope and let the driver pull us for a few miles. The cops stopped us, and yes, we got a ticket.

We always rode via the "Betuwe", a region with countless orchards. An acquaintance owned one of those orchards, and let us pick all the fruit we could eat. The next day Henk was sick. He hitchhiked home and I got on my bike, pushing his, backpack and all.

On another occasion we rode into Belgium. Now, our parents had warned us to avoid Catholics, (as many Protestants in those days looked down on Catholics for their beliefs) and Catholics were numerous in Belgium. Sure enough, close to Antwerp a priest pulled up and said in his friendliest tone, and in a strong Belgian accent: "Hi, young men, where are you going?" Henk said, and this is a rather mild translation: "Bugger off!!!" And he did. I am sure he will remember the day he met real Christians. And, yes, I am sticking to the story, that it was Henk who said it!