Better in the past ?
Did everything get better in the past?" What I can still remember from my childhood is very little and... There is not a lot of good in that.
Like my immense fear of the dentist who came in a special bus.
I certainly wasn't the only one. At the time, dental anxiety was as deep-seated as it was widespread. Later on, even adults would be affected by this, but fortunately that was limited to pigeon fanciers in the Reeuwijk region.
BETTER?
Then we also had to go to school on Saturdays and to church beforehand.
Classes of 40 pupils with the teacher in the open connecting door of two classrooms was quite common. As well as separate schools for boys and girls that opened and closed at different times so that they would not run into each other.
Have you ever looked at your children's or grandchildren's school reports?
They look like whole studies. We received a grade for four subjects: Arithmetic, Language, Geography and History. Sometimes one for diligence or cleanliness.
We were not taken to school by car like many do now. As a 7-year-old I had my bike and on my bike with pedal brake and blocks on the pedals. After all, it had been bought 'for growth'.
TRAUMA
We also got music. I only got one thing left of it: a trauma.
When there was class singing, I was one of those 'out of tune singers' who had to keep his mouth shut, or ergo, was placed in the back rows. We just had to draw something. What still wakes me up sometimes were the times I had to sing a song in front of the class. How I longed for a hole in the ground then. Never ever did I feel so little as then.
I'm left handed. Except with writing. A nun rattled it out with a rock-hard ruler. If a classmate saw someone writing with left hnd, he had to report it to her and he received a stamp as a reward.
In the Belgian boarding school my wife attended, it was even worse. Speaking French was compulsory, even on the playground. And there, too, children had to 'report' it to a nun if they had heard someone speak Dutch. So in Belgium, you shouldn't underestimate nuns at all.
WORST
I could play football quite well, a lot better than those two village boys.
When the sides were chosen for a match, they were always the last ones standing.
'We don't need that idiot, you may have it' was shouted and not infrequently yjhru were even pushed back to the other party. I'll never forget the pleading look in their eyes to be chosen and not to be the last one standing.
Arithmetic was little more than rattling off tables, and the one who could do it the easiest was allowed to wash the teacher's car. Or get a packet of cigarettes for him.
I will never forget one of the teachers. Once, when he had read the creation story in the bible, I asked him how there could be so many people if there was only one woman in the past. His answer was a slap in the vace. It was the day the country got another atheist, although of course I didn't know what that meant at the time.
PIGEONS
As a child I didn't come into contact with many other people than pigeon fanciers. So it was inevitable that I too would become interested.
Especially bad flights were high days for me and friend Huub. In the evening we scoured the gutters in search of pigeons that were panting from a 'disaster' race.
We registered them, hoping for a reward or a youngster from a great champion. For example, we once caught a pigeon from L v L.
I didn't dare to go there, I had already heard so much bad about him.
But we went, and seldom have I been as amazed as I was then.
v L, then still young with black hair, was an extremely friendly person and yes, we got a young pigeon.
It was the day I discovered how envious people can be. Because in my experience L did only one thing 'wrong': race too good with pigeons. The people who criticized him so much are long gone, but I have never forgiven them.
MONEY
As a child, I heard the grown-ups talk about little else than money.
Respect for a winner was only there if there was money behind it.
A bird that had not won even a penny was worth nothing or the boss was 'a miserly pout'. Pigeon fanciers worked overtime to get some money to bet on their birds.
The little town of Sint Willebrord, with reportedly about 300 fanciers at that time (now about 25), was the Mecca of the pigeon sport in the South of the Netherlands. There were no better pigeons and nowhere fanciers bet so much as there.
Later, Kees Bosua would say 'where fanciers bet most are the best pigeons'. He meant that they were forced to select very strictly.
THE MEDIA
A pigeon weekend started with the pigeon talk on Friday evening on TV. For those who had a TV.
A racing day started for fanciers and also many non-fanciers with turning on the radio 5 minutes before the news. Then there were the release reports and you also heard about the weather in numerous places. It is hard to imagine a better advertisement for pigeon sport. Just like the reports in the daily newspapers. In Belgium, on Mondays, usually a whole page. All that is gone. And with it, many fanciers.
VILLAGE GAME
A big difference with now is that the ‘village game’ was often central. We had no idea about pigeon sport in surrounding towns.
In South Holland they were already racing provincial at that time.
Competitions of ten thousand pigeons or a few 100 makes a substantial difference in the selection. In my opinion, it explains why there are the best ones are today. Whether you have 1 in 10 as a selection standard or 1 in 100 makes a difference. A 6th prize against 60 pigeons seems pretty good, a 600th prize against 6.000 pigeons seems to be poor, although the numbers are the same.
"Did everything get better in the past?" I never want to hear it again. And will never vote for a political party that claims that.
I was his best friend the late David Lin Yun Ta used to say