Oliebolle

Oliebolle

                                   

By John W. Vander Velden

 

When you move from one place to another, what you bring will surprised you.

 

My parents came to this country from the Netherlands in 1948.  Fortunately they did not come alone, for my father’s oldest sister and her family settled in northern Indiana a few months before my parent’s arrival.  Times in Holland were difficult so shortly after the war.  As newlyweds at twenty-three, they had little and leaving a county in reconstruction were allowed to take less.  Yet the Vander Veldens came with that optimism that so many had, when reaching this “land of opportunity”.

Though their suitcases lacked the material things, they carried memories of family and customs for the remainder of their lives.  With time, they became citizens and blended into this land, that had once been new to them, yet they retained much of the “echt Hollands” (real Dutch) in their home.

Perhaps New Year’s would be the best example.  The holiday was to be celebrated in the home of the oldest member of the family – within a reasonable distance.  Growing up we always went to Tante Agagt and Oom Cass after milking on New Year’s Eve.  The adults, a large group, played a game they brought from the “old country”, “Clock and Hammer”, until the wee hours of the New Year, while the young played Monopoly in the kitchen.  But the whole event would be for naught if it were not for oliebolle, a deep fried Dutch treat.  I loved my aunt, but she couldn’t make oliebolle like my mom.  Tante’s were OK, but mom’s….

Over the years things changed.  My Aunt and Uncle moved to a farm further away.  We continued to visit them on New Year’s Day though it was no longer reasonable to go after milking on the Eve.  As the family grew older and larger, we assembled at the Vander Velden farm house to wait out one year and welcome in the next. 

Mom would work all afternoon, making a raisin bread dough, filling large pans covering them with dish towels, warming the rising dough until the pots nearly overflowed, then dropping large spoonfuls of the sticky concoction into the hot bubbling oil.  She removed the olliebole, when the bobbing balls of raisin bread became golden brown.

At the end of the day’s work, we would enter the house, to an aroma that I am unable to describe but will be part of my memory all my days.  And everyone knew that something special awaited. 

Yes, over time many thing changed.  The family now “blown apart” by distance, no longer gather to celebrate the New Year’s beginning, though a few of the descendants of Jacob and Nel Vander Velden or their spouses continue to make oliebolle.  Yet the memory of that delightful treat reminds me of the place from which I have come -- and the life my parents left behind.

(480 Words)