Vacations

No matter how poor we were, when my father got his yearly two weeks off, our family would go on vacation.
Being the organizer she was, my mother made sure that money was saved, the chest with clean ironed linens, towels, our clothes, soap, toiletries, and the large red square tin with 'snacks' was in the hall being slowly filled with all the necessities for that very important time of our family's year.

The picture above was taken on the beach at Scheveningen (most likely) In the days I was the only little twerp they had and I guess they didn't want to stray too far from home.
Notice the hole my mom sat in. It was customary for some reason. To keep the wind out? Who knows! But the first thing my dad always did was bring a shovel, and dug her a nice hole.
She watched me like a hawk and if she wanted to lay down to catch some sun she would tie a rope around me and her foot. Everyone dug holes. The German tourists made huge ones (they practiced in the war, ha ha) and were extremely territorial about their holes. When you came onto the beach and saw a large empty hole, you just avoided using it, knowing those damn Moffen made it, and would probably reclaim it when they came to the beach that day.






The first vacations I truly remember are the ones spent with aunts and uncles. Above a picture of my cousin Iggy, his face lit up with delight as his father pumped water. Me looking on, a bit of an attitude there? looking very much like Boo-boo.






We rented a tent like bungalow. I remember it being very small, people piled up in beds, the kids in cribs together. One night it rained so hard, we were afraid the roof would cave in.
This picture was taken June 27, My aunt Corry's birthday in 1951 or 1952. Iggy on his father;s lap, Aunt Corry holding my brother Ruud. Me on the ground, behind me my mom holding baby brother Carlo with his long blond hair, and behind her my auntie Willy, the auntie I took care of the last years of her life and went to the big Bingo hall in the sky three years ago at age 90.

I remember picking armloads of heather, and being freaked out of my skull by a huge hare, who jumped up and ran. He was HUGE.
Most likely my family came on their bikes, my uncle had a Black VW in those days. I guess they came by car. (Remind myself to ask my mom.) This was in Laren, province Gelderland, smack in the middle of the sandy heidevelden (heather fields) an area called De Veluwe







This picture is very dear to me. It was the year we spent our vacation in refurnished chicken coops in Voorthuizen, also on de Veluwe. Mind you, I use the term refurnished lightly. The buildings were horrible, there was hay on the wooden floors, the roof leaked, and at night the mice ran over your face. You still smelled the chickens. The only thing new were the French doors in the front. There were no bathrooms in the building, so we did the potty thing during the night, and it was papa's duty to empty it in the morning. My sister was a little under a year old. She slept on a tiny cot between the bunk beds on either side of the 'bed'room. After we discovered the mice, she was moved up to a higher bunk with one of us (or my parents, I forget)

My mom, trying to be smart, hid the bread and other food in her large sturdy shopping bag. But the mice were smarter, and we found the bread and the cheese gone the next morning, as well as a large hole through the shopping bag.
We had fun though, we played in the woods, we went to a nearby swimming hole, and we witnessed a huge thunderstorm where the lightning balls rolled over the meadows.





When we were a little older, and when things were financially a little better, we started going to a bungalow park in Overloon (North Brabant) There we at least had inside plumbing, and decent houses. Here we were, having coffee in the morning, me with my guitar, mom in her opklapstoel, where she allowed herself to sit for hours on end and get her tan. These would be the only times I would actually see her doing nothing.
We went to this place a few years in a row. Many families in our area went, we were picked up by touring busses. Our chests/suitcases/bikes would follow us in a moving van. (This was in the first few years. Later on my father would rent a car, always an Opel. :>)

The excitement started when we got on the freeway, and would pass the Nutricia Milk Factory.
Funny, it wasn't that far from our home. But you've got to remember that we never left our neighborhood, never had to, we didn't have a car, everything was close by enough to walk or bike to. So we would yell and holler as we passed Nutricia, thinking we were miles away from 'home' and finally seeing green in the way of meadows, farms, trees, forests, rivers. We were out in the big world.

The years in Overloon were the best for me. I made friends there who would come back year after year. On Friday nights, when people were set to go home on Saturday, the camp owners would organize a huge party. My friends and I took that opportunity to get close to the men folk, without getting in trouble. We played our music, we danced, we played games. There must have been some food involved, but in those days they didn't have hot dogs, hamburgers or pizza, so I'll have to think about that. I forget what we ate.

On Wednesday nights they organized a fox hunt. In the dark. We would split up in groups of about ten, and had to find our camp owner/director, who would hide out somewhere in the forest.
Always spooky, but oh so much fun. No flashlights allowed. Good opportunity for me to hold on to any boy's hand and sneak a peck on the cheek here and there, stuff that would cream your jeans and make you feel extremely guilty at the same time. We had to find little notes on trees with clues to find the way.

Overloon was a bike ride away from one of the large rivers in Holland. The Maas. We used to go and swim with our friends. Horrifically dangerous with the river traffic, and the river flowing at a rapid pace. But we didn't care, some of the boy would swim and climb up onto the barges. It's a miracle no one ever got killed.

The town of Overloon has a very interesting museum. The War museum.

http://www.oorlogsmuseum-overloon.nl/index.php?t=en

(this is the English version)

In the years we were there it was pretty much an area of forest, where tanks, bunkers, and other war stuff was just left in the woods (a huge battle was fought there) and they put a fence around it all and charged people to enter. I am sure it's now a much better organized museum.
The boys would go out on the heather fields and into the woods to find left behind artillery, like bullets and hand grenades. Unbelievable the stuff they would come back with, and so dangerous. But they loved that stuff, anything to to with fire and explosions.

When the two weeks were over and it came time to go back home again, we would all take our showers, don our clean "going-home" clothes. Papa would load the car ( in later years, a rental), we sat and waited obediently until mom had cleaned the house top to bottom, placed a vase with fresh field flowers on the table, mopped the floor creeping backwards towards and out the door. It was her pride and joy to leave the place as clean as possible for the next vacationers.
I always thought she was nuts for doing that. :>)

I was not a nice teenager....:>)

In 1966 we went to a bungalow park in Otterloo. I had a serious boyfriend, Louis. He was invited to come for a few days but he could NOT sleep in the house. He brought his own tent and I was forbidden to enter his tent when no one was around.

Lord.....

I was not allowed to wear my new bikini when Louis was around either....
Poor guy............That was a fun vacation until his mom came to pick him up.





This was pretty much the last vacation I spent with my parents. The place was Appelscha, Friesland. Iggy and his father happened to be visiting from America, and they came and stayed with us a few days. There was lots of laughter with Iggy, sleeping in the car outside, yelling back and forth. And those poor horses...remember Iggy?

My father had just participated in the Vierdaagse, a traditional annual four day walkathon, 40-45 miles a day.
The muscles in his shins were inflamed and he was pretty much out of commission there.
We were pissed, because we couldn't go anywhere. Look at our faces. The girl with the perky bosoms was a friend of one of my brothers, My sister sitting on the wall, my younger brother not looking too happy either. We stayed around the house, played a few nasty games of badminton.
This was the year when my uncle invited me to come to Amerika, it must have been 1967 or 1966.

Of course there are vacations I have forgotten, but we always went. Every year. Come hell or high water. With or without aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces. My mom and dad deserved their leisure time. It wasn't until we were all pretty much grown up that they finally made their very first trip alone together, and that was to come and see me in California in 1969.


It's fun thinking back on all those vacations. As always, I am so grateful for the way our parents made life wonderful for us, making sure we didn't lack of anything. Times were simpler then.

Today it's my turn to made the weekly Holland phone call...I do miss them...Next month is my father's 89th birthday....
I wish I could go.....

SGMKJ!