From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
This was one of the game days again at school. We started with Holland. We all knew all about Holland because we have two beautiful Dutch Windmills in Golden Gate Park. Holland is a lovely country. It is so tiny that you can walk almost all over it in a few hours or maybe it’s a few days, I forget what Miss Cashen told us. The people are very clean. The women spend all their time scrubbing their sidewalks and doorsteps. They wash their cows every day too. They can’t bathe themselves every day because they have no bathrooms, but it seems to me that if they are so clean about everything else they must find a way to wash themselves only I don’t know how they do it. There is one little village called Edam and it is full of cows too and they use the milk to make a special cheese and send it all over the world wrapped in red wax and pretty red paper like a Christmas package. Many great people lived in Holland once. One of them was Rembrandt. Miss Cashen said that we should find out about him for next week and tell her all about him because she doesn’t know anything except that he is famous, and that we would be doing her a big favor to help her find out.
When I was a child, the windmills in Golden Gate Park were not much to see — they were in disrepair and looked nothing like they did when Hilda visited them. Happily, they have been restored and today they look wonderful.
The windmills as Hilda would have seen them, circa 1912. Photo courtesy OpenSFHistory.
The windmills as I remember them when I was Hilda’s age. Photo courtesy OpenSFHistory.
The windmills today