Once reached the dike the closer you get. Take the swing gate, hit the stairs to the pitch and you’ll be sure of a grandstand of the world.

Welcome to  the boundary between the inner and outer world of Jakle Zet!

Hi, I am Jakle Zet and the dike is my window to the world!

The first thing you need to know is the real truth of the most frightening story ever written about a dike! Every one thinks it’s Hans Brinker who put his finger in the dike. No one knows his real name. Maybe because you think it’s just a story. But what if a story becomes real? Every day I cycle along the dike to school. The dike is my cover of life. My father works at the sluices just like in the story, likewise I often visit my grandmother who lives further along the embankment. So all the facts of the Mapes Dodge story are real to me and that’s pretty scary. Only the hole in the dike is still missing but that’s a matter of time. From now on I have to pay attention to become a hero!

My father works at the floodgates in the long dam. He can’t swim, so he hates the sea. The long dam connects the rest of the world. When they started building the dam, my father’s father started a saloon called ‘It Hert’(‘The Deer’). He knew, dike workers were very good drinkers, so after four years when the dam was finished, my grandfather was out of debt. In my mother’s family, they were all sailors. My mother’s mother started a general store called The Bazar. After schooltime my eldest brother picks periwinkles and in his best weeks he earns more money than my father on the sluices. And me..? I’m just the guy on the cover  who would like represents the spirit of the whole country by saving all the people to put just one damn finger in the dike.

Along the dike you need a bike, my father drives a Solex, there’s no bus. After four kilometer north, you will reach Den Breejen filling station at the entrance of the long dam. It’s the last tankstop before all the cars disappear in the long dam seafog. The first time I saw that place I was in shock. Never before I saw such a modern snow-white American building, with arched windows, shiny fuel pumps and men in snow-white overalls as well the big red neon Esso character as the icing on the cake. And full of wonder I gazed at the long dam highway with all that strange cars at full speed and large noisy trucks with big advertising letters on it. In my class nobody had a private car. This was definitely the gateway to the outside World!

         The stray Friesian embankment-cows and the cattle grids are gone.  Now there are sheep behind fences. The retirement home is the first building right behind the dike. I look to my mother’s window. Every day she enjoyed the view on the dike with the sheep and the ships. When she noticed me in her frame we waved to each other. This summer she died. Along the dike we carried her to the cemetery. The window remains empty. I pass my kindergarten down the embankment and a little further my childhood home. It’s the wind… or is it her grumble when I used to come home too late for dinner, with wet clothes stinking of mud and smoke. It all seems so long ago. On the way to school there’s still the man of stone. He’s the one who built the dike. He’s looking backward and he’s looking forward. There I’ll meet young Jakle Zet.

Jakle Zet & The Local World View  September 2015