Parish priest Davidts, who had known Diegem around 1890, wrote down his memories late in life. At the age of four he walked with his older sister to the sisters' nursery school on the Haachtsesteenweg, between the Daveraedt family's joinery and Dekens's inn and hall, twenty steps from the Woluwe. There were no tram tracks yet, and from the school door he could see the wheel of the water mill on the Woluwe turning.
When the steam tram came he was afraid of it, especially when farmers drove their horses alongside it and the driver blew the steam whistle. His grandparents lived opposite the gate of the De Reine castle. On Easter Monday, the Diegem fair, Zaar's merry-go-round stood in front of an old barn. A regular tram service then ran between the Schaerbeek fair and the Diegem fair, where it was so crowded that the trams to Kampenhout were preceded from the ‘Zavelken’ by two tram men with a red flag to clear a way through the fairgoers.
Davidts ended his memories with a thought: every generation writes its own history, and the fact that we can now fly to the moon gives us no right to look down on those who could not do so before.
What remained?
By around 1980 little remained of the picturesque Woluwe valley, but the historic core survived: the elegant spire, the gatehouse and moats of the castle of the lords of Diegem, the large farm with the Duivenmolen, the chicory fields and the sand pits. At the time of the pilgrimages Diegem had some 60 inns. After the war the village seemed to hold every trump card, with the airport, motorways, railways and an industrial park with three large hotels, but because of expropriations and demolitions the population never passed 5,000. Even so, the people of Diegem stayed optimistic, especially during the great Easter fair.