The Ubiquity of Trefoil

Our house was the largest house in a very small village that was located along the meandering stream of the Maas river that separated Belgium from the Netherlands. A few farms lay scattered around the market square of cobbled brick, on the east side of the market place was the neo-Gothic church and its belfry towering above the roofs of the few houses. Every full hour it rang the number of hours, every fifteen minutes a lone dull tone struck. On Saturday evening and Sunday morning the bell struck for several minutes. Our house stood on the edge of the village, at the end of a field of grain. It was the house with the swimming pool. Only a few days in the year was the water warm enough to swim. On the other side of the village lay the canal that run straight from north to south, parallel to the random twists and curves of the river that formed the official border. In the summer, when the weather permitted us to play outside, I wandered to the sluice and climbed up the steep dike on the sides of the straight canal. I would walk along the canal on the dike's concrete path until I reached the bridge at the next village. A few kilometers away I took the dirt road below leading home again. On my way my eyes were continuously fixated on the grass along the path, looking for patches of clover scattered in the grass. Every now and then I would stop and squad down, and my fingers searched for a four leafed clover in the patch. Most of the times, I did not find any and continued on along the straight canal. In the distance I could see the iron bridge across the water already. A freight ship with a load of sand, three pyramids sticking out above the deck, passed by in the opposite direction toward the sluices. When I saw the red clay tiles of our tilted roofs, I stopped searching and looked at the tilted roof, as if not to loose my way home. People said four-leafed clover was to bring good luck.