Saturday........

The swimming pool we used to go to every Wednesday
Above is a picture from the 1980s, after renovation

Old creepy place, I'll bet it's haunted

This was the front of the swimming pool, where the man in white stands

It's almost noon and so far we've had a pretty productive day.

Since I never got around to doing the floors yesterday, I made it my priority to do it today.

So, every room is vacuumed, the bathrooms, kitchen and dining room floors mopped.

Everything (sort of) dusted, cobwebs that I could reach are gone. Febreezed the carpets and started the laundry. (It smells like a spa in here, Bugs said when she dropped off Boo)

Treated myself to a second cup of Douwe Egberts on the veranda, enjoying the sounds of the local mocking bird on steroids. Man, is that bird LOUD!

While I was dawdling on the front porch, I let my thoughts wander to something my cousin mentioned a while back.

When we were children, there was something like a day camp during the summer vacations.
Our summer vacations were not as long as the ones here in the States, I think we only had 4 weeks. Two weeks were always used for the big family vacation. The rest of the time (at least for a few years) we were shipped out to this day camp.

I must have been 7-8-9, my brother went too, not sure about my New Zealand brother, but my sister never had to go. Who knows, perhaps it didn't exist anymore then. Lucky brat!

The first year we would be dropped off at the tram. They were still the old wooden carriages, that sometimes gave you splinters in your butt when you wore shorts.
We were put in age groups and neighborhood groups, or parish groups. The tram would go through the city, picking up more groups of children.
We would pick up kids from very poor neighborhoods, places we now call 'the projects'
We didn't like those kids, because they were dirty, they smelled, and they were tough and mean!

It was pretty ignorant of us to shun these kids, but back then, what did you know? It wasn't like nowadays when you are taught to be politically correct at a young age. We blantantly looked down on these children, and tried to hold our breath when they passed by us on their way to the back of the tram

We would have our little rucksack with a bottle of milk and our sandwich, and perhaps some kind of candy bar, or some snoepjes. Certainly not the fancy lunch treats that are available now, nor did we have icepacks or thermal lunchpacks. Needless to say I got sick more than once. Not only carsickness from the wobbly tram, but probably also from the spoiled milk and sandwich meat.
I remember getting really sick from some smoked Gouda cheese once, to this day I cannot even LOOK at that cheese.

So the tram would take us to an area near the coast. Clingendael. Klein Zwitserland. Some sort of park, but not an organised park with playgrounds and such. No, we would just let loose in the dunes, and the woods.
No toilets, not much supervision, as I recall. There must have been adults around, I just don't remember.

Except for the one time I had to go poop, and it came out red, and I told one of the ladies. She told me to tell my mom. *lol* We later decided it was the beets I had the night before.

Another time I thought I was being smart when I had to go pee. I thought I'd try it on a hill, facing down. Of course I peed right into my shorts and underpants dangling around my ankles.
I must have smelled awful for the rest of the day, geesh, I would have fit right in with the kids from the Zomerhof.

In later years, we would be taken to our play area by bus. They chartered a bunch of very old busses (VIOS) which smelled of gasoline, and smoke.
Blech!
My brother banged his face against the seat in front of him when the bus stepped on the brakes.

I don't know about my brother, but I hated going to those day camps. Also called Groups (Groepen) But it could have been worse, in my mother's days they had to WALK to their destination, with one kid carrying the flag in front of the group. And they had to sing marching songs while they walked!!! In formation!!!!

The only reason I can think of that my parents made us go was because my mom just didn't have time to hang out with us kids during the summer vacation. She was on a self imposed rigid schedule of housework that could not be interrupted for any reason. I don't recall her ever sitting down with us to read us a book, play a game.
She was always working. Or sewing. Or knitting. Or cooking.

On Monday it was the laundry. The whites had been soaking in a mixture of hot water and soda all night. We did have a washing machine but it was an ancient one, wooden tub, with a huge lid with an agitator on it. There was a wringer, which you could swing over the big sink, through which everything was pressed. First to get all the soapy water out, then once more after the rinse, and then once more after the blueing rinse.

Then the wash went on the line outside on the balcony. Come wind, rain or shine, sleet or freezing weather, mom was hanging her laundry out on the lines, bending over far to reach the outside lines. Covering the mess with large sheets of plastic (we had plastic then?). When the weather was just too bad, the laundry would be hung all over the house. On wooden racks, and on special plastic lined fold-up racks which handily fit over the door tops. Not too great an environment for my brothers who had asthma. The house would have that sickly warm wet soapy smell.

I still have one of those Tomado racks. I am going to keep it forever, heck, I still use it sometimes.

If the laundry dried quickly enough, the next day it all got ironed. And I mean......IRONED........EVERYTHING!!!


Underwear, handkerchiefs, sheets, pillowcases, towels, clothing.
The cotton stuff was spritzed first and rolled up so it would be a little damp and easier to iron. And some stuff got starched too.

This was BEFORE steam irons, ladies!

Besides the laundry and the ironing, there was lunch and dinner to be fixed, dishes to be done, windows to be washed, inside and outside. My mom would risk her neck to hang onto the window ledge to reach the big window on the outside. Windows were washed pretty much every week.
Let's see...
I guess on Wednesdays she had it easy, we would be out of school early on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Yes, we had a 6 day school week!
Wednesday evenings were always fun for us. As that was the day we would go swimming. Dad taught swimming at his company's swim club. The pool was housed in a regular street. The front looked just like another house, but it was a huge pool. It had individual changing rooms on either side and upstairs. With curtains. Some public showers (where I received my very first real kiss)
My dad taught the little ones in the shallow end. Intrekken, spreiden, sluiten! It took me about 3 years to get my first diploma. I hated swimming, scared me to death. We had those belts with cork bricks on them to keep us afloat. Later in life I learned to love to swim, still do.

When I was the only one going with him, I would sit on the back of the motor bike, my feet tucked into the big leather saddlebags. Later on when the other kids would go as well, we would all go on our own bicycles. Wednesday nights would be play night for mom as well, as her younger sister would come over so they could gossip and knit together and listen to their radio programs.

I always loved coming home on those nights, when the house smelled of cigarettes (Gladstones, Auntie smoked, my parents didn't) and the atmosphere was happy and relaxed.

We did not have a TV until I was a teenager, so we played outside...a lot....
Lucky for us we had about two dozen children in our street alone, so we never lacked playmates.

My mom cooked dinner from scratch. No TV dinners (we did not have a fridge either, nor did we have an oven) It was always the same: cooked-to-death vegetables, boiled potatoes, meat of some kind cooked in A LOT of butter, and dessert, usually some kind of hot cereal like oatmeal, or vanilla pudding. Hot oatmeal with a milk skin on top. BLECH!

One of my earliest chores was drying the dinner dishes. Which really wasn't such a bad chore. Mom and I used to sing while we did that. Kind of a bonding experience there.

On Wednesdays (when Sunday's meat was gone) we would eat something "easy" like mac and cheese, or some stampot dish. Onions, potatoes and carrots all mushed together, with smoked sausage or meatballs. Later came the Indonesian stuff, Nasi Goreng, Bami, french fries...

On Thursday we had veggies again with those blasted potatoes (another chore I acquired, peeling potatoes) and some sort of "cheap" meat (as opposed to the "good" meat on Sundays)

On Friday mom went nuts cleaning the entire house. Including vacuuming and dusting EVERYTHING, polishing the furniture, the windows, and in the evening (when everyone on the block was home and wouldn't walk up and down the stairs anymore) she would scrub down the outside stairways of the apartment. Well, HER part of it. People on the other floors had to clean their own. But my mom was fanatic about it. Used bleach like it was going out of style. When you happened to come home later after she scrubbed those granite stairs, you would faint from the bleach fumes.
The front door would be scrubbed on the outside as well. Dinner was sandwiches (NO MEAT) and a hard boiled egg. Or fish. But fish stank up the clean house, so we didn't get that too often.

We didn't have showers in those days. And I have always found it strange how the Dutch would not take showers or baths but scrub the daylights out of their front stoop and front doors.

So...I digress...a little...*lol*

Back to day camp.
All I really remember well are the wooden trams, the bad sandwiches and sour milk the red poop, the sand and wet pants, and the VIOS buses, and the stinky kids.

The good thing about these camps was that at the end of the two weeks there would be this huge party for all the kids. It was held in an amphitheater in a big park near our neighborhood. It would last all day, and we would get limonade (sweet drinks) and some kind of treat, I forget what. There would be singing and skits performed.

But most of all I would be SO relieved it was OVER. It always pissed me off that my non catholic friends didn't have to go. I was embarrassed. I wanted to just play...in my street...with my friends...

Now please remember, I am talking about the time I was very young, 6-7-8-9 or so. Mom loosened up later on, when we got bigger/older and we started to help her more with the house work.
To be honest, mom had a wicked sense of humor, and we did have some rolling good times too.
I guess she came from that culture, where the women stayed home and took care of the family, and the men went out to bring home the bacon.

In later days when we tried to talk about mom getting a little job outside the house, my dad would get very mad. She was not allowed to WORK...hahaha...

On Saturdays, the shopping was done. The BIG shopping that is. We would buy the fresh veggies every day. The Baker man came and delivered fresh bread every day, the milkman came by, as did the egg man (kippenboer) and the oil man. But on Saturday I was sent to the local grocery store, list in hand. 1 kilo sugar, 1 pound of salt (EVERY WEEK!!!) and other staples. By the time they had gathered everything on the list (we had a special little book for that) my dad would have come home from work with his paycheck/cash in those days in a brown envelope, and he would come and pay for the groceries and haul the large shopping bag home.

Saturday night was BATH night. Whether we needed it or not! *lol* We had a sort of laundry room, where the washing machine was. It had a large round granite sink with a counter attached, about 50 inches long, 25 inches wide, the sink about 15 inches deep.
As children we would fit in that sink to have our bath. My dad rigged the plumbing so the grown ups had a shower head dangling at about chest height when you stood up. How the hell did we do that all those years.

When people started to buy TVs, our next door neighbors always let us watch Saturday night TV programs. It became a very nice routine every Saturday. Everyone all scrubbed clean in our p.j.s
It was so special. The adult were happy. We were excited to be allowed to stay up. We would drink tea or coffee and have pastries, and other goodies.

Ah, that memory made me smile...

Sundays were truly Holy days for our family.

When we were little we would all go to church together. After my sister was born, we went in teams. Usually mom and I went to high mass, and the guys would go at noon. Baby got to stay home.
We would have a fancy breakfast at the big table as opposed as our during-the-week-breakfast in the kitchen. We would have kadetjes (oblong rolls) with ham (which was fancy for us) and cheese, the good dishes would be used, there would be beschuit (round toasty things), and krentebrood, raisin bread.

After church my dad would go play soccer. Us kids would usually come along, just to get out of mom's hair for a few hours. On some Sundays we would go and visit my grandfather Blok (he from the Canada trip picture I posted yesterday)
That was always a fun visit, as we would get to hang out with the really cool cousins from that side of the family, who were a little less refined than my mother's side cousins, they were rowdy and less catholic, mostly the boys, I loved those Blok boys. Visit the horse (his stable and the carriage were behind that large door you see in the picture) and get a nice fresh shiny apple. Opa was a groentboer, more about that later.
One of these days I'll get around to THAT side of the family.

Sunday night dinner was like the Sunday night breakfast. The big table, the nice table cloth, the good dishes. Good meat, veggies, applesauce, POTATOES, gravy, and fancy dessert, pudding, sometimes chocolate pudding with meringues or whipped cream on top.

The evening was spent either listening to the radio, or playing boardgames. Which I hated with a passion. I am a bad loser.

After all the fun and games on Sunday night, my father would haul out the large aluminum pail for the laundry to soak in, and we knew that Monday was just around the corner...ready to start the cycle all over again....


I am so glad my cousin came into my life at this point. She started me remembering so many more things from the past. Thanks Margo! :>)

And th..th...th..that's all folks!

SGMKJ!