In just a few days time I will come to realize that I have traveled not just across the vast Atlantic Ocean but, somehow in some mysterious way, transported through a time warp as well. All within a twenty-four hour time span I have left a twentieth century land of modern skyscrapers and advanced technological marvels and my-take-for-granted middle class worldly comforts to a far different land, one that I could not before even begin to conjure in my most unrestrained imagination. It would seem as if I somehow had stepped back in cosmic time and dimension to a much earlier period, to that of the late nineteenth century, to a world of horse and buggy, to another vastly older regressive world into an era that surely my parents and grandparents knew and experienced in their childhoods. World War II devastated Holland. Nazi officials had destroyed thousands of buildings and farms and robbed Dutch households of their precious valuables. Hunger stalked the people; some starved to death at the end of the war. I am but a child but I see for the first time and first hand the devastation of this terrible War. I will come to see rubble stretching for miles, for as far as the eye can project, with mountainous piles of brick and stone and steel that were once enduring structures. I will view vast cemeteries lined with thousands upon thousands of white crosses marking the final resting places of American and Canadian soldiers, not very much older than I, who had died in battle here. Reconstruction is now going on everywhere. New buildings, churches, schools, factories, apartments, roads, and bridges. I am bursting with pride that my Father is part of this American magnanimity.
About the Author: Peter August Hoetjes is the author of Skyscrapers to Windmills, a Captivating Journey to a Bygone Era by a Diplomat's Child. It is his second published book. He was born in Yonkers, New York, the only son of a Dutch immigrant, international banker, and American diplomat. Peter, proud father of five marvelous grown children, is a retired sales marketing executive, a freelance business writer and entrepreneur. The door for him to write professionally opened following his retirement in 1997. He previously authored The Palladino Family in America, a chronicle of his wife's colorful Italian ancestors lives, and a host of business related magazine and trade publication articles, research papers, business plans, and persuasive business-to-business marketing web copy for numerous high-tech companies. He and his wife make their home in Bridgewater, a small quaint pastoral community in northwestern Connecticut, nestled in the foothills of the Berkshires, located about 60 miles north of New York City.