The journey back by johanna reiss1/4/2024 ![]() And off he would go, down the road, to where the fields were. “Johan, Joha-a-a-an, come home.” And his mother would give him a piece of bread on which she had sprinkled salt, so he’d be able to taste the thin layer of butter better before she sent him to get the horse and plow. His father was sick Johan was an only child, and even though the farm was small, there was a lot of work that had to be done. Sometimes he played soccer, as they did, but only sometimes and never for more than a short time. When Johan Oosterveld was a child, he went to the one-room schoolhouse, just like the few other children in Usselo. The Oostervelds lived in Usselo, and had for over fifty years. But then there were so few of them, not more than a handful. And they saw each other with baskets of seed potatoes on their arms, and turnips, and cabbage. Outside, in the fields, behind plows and wielding sickles, on hay wagons, and as they were binding the sheaves of rye, wearing straw hats this time, against the sun the women in white aprons with long sleeves but no gloves, their hands scratched and their nails broken. All right, a little bit then, to wet the throat.”Īnd back on their bikes they’d go because soon it would be time to milk the cows.ĭuring the rest of the year they saw each other, too, the farmers of Usselo. Don’t forget, we’ve got three more calls to make today. …” “Some sausage this one will make- No, thanks, not another drop. “She’s got a tasty border of fat on’r, not like Willem’s pig we just saw. In the winter pigs were slaughtered, and the farmers visited each other, sipping from glasses as they commented on the animal that was hanging from a ladder in front of them, cut open. Year after year, every season, the same things happened in Usselo. ![]() There were dances, too, in the café, where an accordion player pulled and pushed and pressed down on keys and buttons with fingers that were stiff from farmwork, while around him, legs waltzed and polkaed inside tight black pants and long black skirts, and lace caps slid off, showing hair that was stiff and shiny from sweet milk that had been rubbed on to make it so. He could never have gotten as many basketfuls as he said he did. Take how he planted potatoes … no good … right smack next to each other … told’m so, too … wouldn’t listen. “Quiet, he’s not buried yet.” “But what’s true’s true. Sometimes there would be a wedding, or a funeral to which every farmer went, walking two by two behind the hearse, talking in hushed and not so hushed voices. Such a quiet little village, where life was orderly and pleasant for years and years and years. Why, there is hardly anything there-fields, a café, a bakery, a school, a church and parsonage, a kind of dry-goods store in a house, and farmhouses, but only a handful of those. Not many people, however, care to know where Usselo is. On many maps of Holland you cannot find it at all, only on those that list every village, no matter how tiny. The house where Johanna Reiss and her sister hid for almost three years from the Nazis.
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