Memoirs & Meditations by Theo Bruinsma

During the 1980s there was a song called "Promised You A Miracle" but I always heard it as "Promised You America." And that is where my blog received its title from.  In the previous century, after the Second World War, many Europeans sought to immigrate to the United States. America was the promised land. It was a beautiful, safe country. And a free country, there was no welfare state. The immigrants that came to America had to work to survive, there was no alternative.  My father was one such immigrant after leaving Holland after the Second World War. He worked many odd jobs until he became his own salesperson, first selling Dutch chocolate from his VW van to supermarkets in the US, and thereafter, eventually by hard work, becoming a successful fine art dealer.  One of my first jobs after arriving in America in 1983 was that of a busboy at the Bankers Club Carnelian Room. Some people might look down on that but I was looking down upon them as the restaurant was on