When we walk from the house into the direction of the village, along the Via Verde, we pass a small pallet factory. As far as can be noticed, the factory indeed only makes wooden pallets.
From a distance, the scent of freshly processed wood enters your nose. It brings back memories. When I was still at school I once did a ‘holiday job’ during summer at a factory called Simplex in the small village of Oosterhout. They made pallets, as seen in the picture above, and wooden crates for the transport of potatoes and fruits such as apples and pears.
Early every morning I cycled to the factory. I always worked under the supervision of an older employee. To my surprise, after a week I was already able to make pallets and crates by myself. To be honest, this wasn’t a big deal. The pallets and crates were made by putting prefabricated wooden shelves or planks in a metal mold and hammering them together.
You got the best job when you were allowed to use a pneumatic hammer to produce crates. Effortless you could hammer the biggest nails in the thickest wood. When we pass this little factory over here, we can indeed hear the sound of pneumatic hammers. Although I doubt that a man actually operates such a hammer, as I used to during my ‘holiday job’. I think a machine has taken over the job. But I’m not sure, because you can’t look inside the factory.
^tvo