"On The River - Zaan Dyk"

"On the River Zaan Dyk" 

Painted by Jacob Poulain 1970

          

Grandparents van den Berg

*Jacob van den Berg = Jacobtje Timmerman

Aaltje van den Berg = Jacob (snr) Poulain

Feclicien (jnr), Louis (jnr), Jacob (jnr), Maarten, Hilda

*Moved from Urk to Zaan Dyk

Grandparents Poulain

*Louis Poulain = Jansje Bas

 Felicien Poulain (snr) = Trijntje Hemmering

Jacob Poulain (snr) = Aaltje van den Berg

Feclicien (jnr), Louis (jnr), Jacob (jnr), Maarten, Hilda

*Moved from Belgium to Zaan Dyk

This is Zaan Dyk where my grandparents Jacob and Jacobtje van den Berg moved to from Urk about 1925.  My other grandparents Felicien and Trientje Hemmering have lived here in Zaan Dyk all their lives, My great-grandfather Louis Poulain came from Belgium and married Jansje Bas of Zaan Dyk.  These are houses in a historic village that have been restored on the banks of the river De Zaan.  There was only 3 colours for the houses a dark green, a lighter green and white or cream trimmings as you can see in the painting.  This was typical of all wooden houses since the 1700's.  The light green is called Zaan Groen (green) after the river, a well known colour in Holland.  My brother Felicien and his wife Nan and their two eldest children Alain and Nicky lived in one of these wooden green houses in a street called Hazepad in the village Zaan Dyk.  When we were kids we would row in small boats big enough for three or four  people, we never knew who owned the boats, we helped ourselves to a small boat from the boat harbour, we never got caught.  We would have a lovely time rowing and fishing and would be out for the whole afternoon, for food we helped ourselves from the food factories we could get coconut from the oil factory, cornflakes from the cornflakes factory anything we could lay our hands on and these were only snacks.  Sometimes we should have been at school.