The house full of visitors. Left Hennie van Dijken – Buring. Mayor Klaas Smid on the left. Next to him is Roelof van Dijken. Bram Hulzebos
Cake, coffee, vegetable soup, flowers, a drink, the mayor, a string of photographers and some great stories. Hennie and Roelof van Bergen have been married for seventy years.
How did it come to be? Roelof puts his hands over his mouth. “I hardly dare to say that.”
His wife smiles a crooked smile.
After some insistence, he is willing to tell. ,,I drove the baker’s cart in Roderwolde. And of course I had seen all the doors there. And I had also seen Hennie.”
Since the young Roelof did not have his eyes in his shoes, he had also seen how nice and sweet that farmer’s daughter was. But that she was a farmer’s daughter, that was kind of the point. “I was only a servant.”
“We weren’t big farmers at all,” says Hennie.
Summer endlessly gazing
Anyway, after a summer endlessly peeping and twirling around – “She didn’t even take it out!” – Roelof gathered all his courage and invited her to the Rodermarkt. And there the enamored servant and the unapproachable farmer’s daughter found each other.
After an evening of swinging, waving and also drinking a bit – “I came home with a stove, but luckily she wasn’t angry about that” – the two were a couple. “I always say I bought her for a currant parade.”
No, really all kidding aside. After all, they are sitting nicely here in their cozy house on the Vossengatsweg in Peize. Well into his nineties, independent. With the children, the supporters and the help with the cake. ,,She was not the first, but she was the best”, sighs Roelof.