Memoires of Hank op den Dries
PROLOGUE
(nederlandse versie beschikbaar)
These memoirs cover the lives of ordinary people while living
in the twentieth century.
These generations lived during a time that has seen more change in one century than all the generations before then.
It started in the horse and buggy days when everything moved by foot or hoof locomotion.
Humankind made giant steps after that time, from the horse and buggy to the bicycle,
After that to the automobile period followed by air travel and into a time of jet airplanes, rockets and missiles. The introduction of high explosive bombs followed after that, then to the nuclear devises.
Now we have entered a period of high air pollution, floods, earthquakes and the warming up of the great polar ice caps at the time of this writing.
These generations lived during a time that has seen more change in one century than all the generations before then.
It started in the horse and buggy days when everything moved by foot or hoof locomotion.
Humankind made giant steps after that time, from the horse and buggy to the bicycle,
After that to the automobile period followed by air travel and into a time of jet airplanes, rockets and missiles. The introduction of high explosive bombs followed after that, then to the nuclear devises.
Now we have entered a period of high air pollution, floods, earthquakes and the warming up of the great polar ice caps at the time of this writing.
The writer is a person with no education outside the
elementary schools as they taught it in prewar Holland . A few years of
evening schools and a great deal of self-education has completed the
writer's education. Yet I dared to set the impressions of one life-time on
paper for the betterment or the punishment of the reader
The best years of our lives were lost in the war times and
later during the immigration period. Much of our effort was directed to
raising our families and last, but not least, the building and maintaining
of schools and churches.
I believe that the Holy Spirit guided us. He called us to this task.
The writer has injected some personal opinions on the different impressions that he has acquired over a lifetime. You --The long-suffering reader--can take it or leave it!
I would like to thank Carolyn WordStar and her husband, who did the editing of this memoir, Also, my brother Adolf and his granddaughter Cherie who copied the pictures of this book with great enthusiasm.
I believe that the Holy Spirit guided us. He called us to this task.
The writer has injected some personal opinions on the different impressions that he has acquired over a lifetime. You --The long-suffering reader--can take it or leave it!
I would like to thank Carolyn WordStar and her husband, who did the editing of this memoir, Also, my brother Adolf and his granddaughter Cherie who copied the pictures of this book with great enthusiasm.
Finally:- I wrote these life stories out of a deep desire
that they should record the heartbeat of the ordinary immigrant as they saw
it through the eyes of a simple person. That way, the real meaning and
feelings of the ordinary man and woman would not be lost in the retrograde
of a more educated person.
FIRST BOOK : HOLLAND
SECOND BOOK: CANADA