Tulip Time in Holland

We went to Holland last night to enjoy some Tulip Time extravaganza. It was a very redolent experience for me. This could be our last Tulip Time! We've been doing Tulip Time every May for the past 13 years! I have pictures of Natalie as a one year old dressed up in the little Klompen dancer dress complete with wooden shoes. It's such a tiny town little big thing that it's laughable except that it's so stinkin' traditional that I'm a little sad that my girls won't grow up in the Holland Public Schools and be Dutch Dancers in high school for two weeks in May. I took some pictures last night and wanted to take the obscure pictures for posterity like the cheap cinderblock and wood plank benches along the parade route with black plastic bags duct taped to a section with a hand written sign saying "Reserved for the VanderHovens." Or the lawn chairs and blankets on the side walks 3 days in advance that are placed to save a spot for the Saturday Parade of Bands. Think Rose Parade dumbed down about 5 notches.


There's a $250 per flower fine for picking tulips, Nick.


"But I don't have any money!"

Scott asked me if I wanted to drive by our old house on East 33rd Street where there was a neighbor who sewed Dutch costumes. Each year she would place this butt-ugly sign in her yard. It was a side of a cardboard box ripped off with black marker, in bad handwriting that you could barely read: "Dutch Costumes." It was attached to some sort of wire frame with two huge jumper cable looking clips. After the first year the graphic designer in me was freaking out about the graphic horror and tragedy of this sign so the evangelist in me and the graphic designer in me got together and we decided that it would be a way to serve my neighbor by making her a new sign. I designed, printed, laminated and mounted this beautiful, easy to read attractive marketing tool onto a sturdy stick and knocked on her door to present her with a smile and a sign. She acted very typically Dutch (cold, rude and non-expressive) took my sign and shut the door. I thought, "Oh well, I did a nice thing, so that's enough." The next day I drove by her house and there was my sign...clipped crooked over the top of the other one with the same awful clips.


Literally a "Kinder Garten"

Anyhow, farewell junk wagons, tour buses, street scrubbers, Kinderplaats, Pretplaats, Marketplaats, children's parades, band parades, fireworks, really badly recorded tapes (I kid you not, tapes) of old Dutch dance music, girls dressed as Dutch boys dancing with girls dressed as Dutch girls. And of course acres and miles and streets lined with tulips of unending variety. Hopefully, when and if we move from here there will be some similar cheezy expression of local heritage that draws people from all corners of the earth for a $5.00 piece of funnel cake.