Happy with the Railroads

 

It had been a big step for the family: moving from the certainty of living with most of our relatives in the same city in the North to go to the South. But my father knew it was the only way for him to get a proper job.

He certainly managed to do this on the railroads. He started as a platform cleaner and a porter, getting goods on and off the train. Soon he got a job shunting trains and after some studies climbed up to be a train manager. As a person who loved talking to and meeting new people he had a job he used to dream about.

With a population that grew rapidly the Dutch railroads needed to expand, a lot more trains were needed and a lot more staff. So a campaign was started to get more workers. The campaign was mainly in the newspapers. My father was asked if he was interested to show his happiness in his work and he agreed to take part. After this my mother was also convinced this was a good thing to do. They both would appear in the national advertisement campaign. Maybe nowadays people would expect a nice payment from this, but my parents were made happy with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of cognac.

They were soon to regret what they had done. Under the supervision of my grandmother another campaign was started. This one was in my extended family. Grandma convinced the whole family that my parents had whored themselves for a TV. In the advertisement were two pictures: one of my father showing a big smile while giving the signal his train could leave the station and the other of mother, busy at the dining table. The photographer had been clever enough to get the new TV in his picture; to make it clear that you could get a nice salary that even allowed you to buy a TV set. 

A few weeks followed of angry letters being sent and received and even some angry phone calls that had to take place at the neighbour's place, since we didn't had a phone. Soon it became clear to the rest of the family that Grandma had been on a warpath because of our family's move and that she made things up. She had been quite bitter that we moved from the house next door to a village that took a journey of almost three hours to reach by train for her and my grandfather and would cost them a lot.

My oldest sister and I soon agreed not to do our yearly planned visit to our grandparents. We solemnly had promised them to do such, but we felt it would almost be like betraying our parents to do this.

Later it became clear that that possible visit would have been a last possibility to see our grandfather. He passed away that Summer. 

A year later my grandmother visited us in our new house in the south; after one week of hearing the adults arguing, I could hear her on the phone at the neighbour's house: "Please come and take me away from these horrible people. It's like hell over here." A day later an uncle came over by car to pick her up, much to our relief.

My father worked the rest of his working life on the railroads on all kinds of jobs. His last job was to manage stations with one worker: himself. He would sell tickets, give information and kept an eye on the platforms. Often my mother would keep him company, watering flowers and making coffee for him.

Sometimes she would say: "We do have the railroads to thank for this good life. Do you want another coffee?"

He was offered an early retirement, took it and enjoyed more than 30 years being a pensioner and living in a house rented from the Dutch Railroad Pension Fund. 

                                                                                                                                                            

An Indian in a Dutch town

 

The Dutch have, not surprisingly, a long tradition with chinese and indonesian food. Chinese restaurants you can find everywhere in the world; Indonesia was for centuries a Dutch colony, nowadays something they would like to forget. The food, not surprisingly, in a local Dutch variation is still being loved.

It took some time before the Dutch were ready to experiment with more outlandish food.  In the seventies pizzerias, mexican restaurants, balkan restaurants and bistros in French style started to pop up. Indian food took a bit longer to reach the Dutch, maybe because it was expected that people would confuse it with Indonesian, I am not certain about that. Fact is that it was not until the eighties before Indian restaurants became a normal sight in Dutch towns.

We discovered one in my hometown; it was a bit hidden, not on one of the main squares. The high rent in these areas probably was the reason for that. The restaurant got the name Ali Baba. First I thought it was a shop with a great variety of goods on offer, but peeping through the window taught me differently. Of course we had to check the place, we loved eating outdoors and had quite an amount of possibilities in town. Ali Baba was the newest attraction and we were curious.

The reception by the propietor who also functioned as waiter was very warm. He made a sort of reverence in reaction to almost everything we said. We got the menu, had the choice between three kinds of soups and my partner and I decided both to have a different one. We picked some other things for the main dish, ordered a beer and realised that we now would have to wait a bit. We were a bit afraid that the proprietor also had to function as cook, but that was not the case. He passed our order on through a door at the back and returned to take care of our beer.

"Look at that!", my partner whispered, "He is not having draught beer. The pumps are fake." I had a good look and saw him fiddling behind the counter with two bottles of beer, probably not realising I could see it all in the mirror behind him. After having filled two proper glasses of beer he brought them over, bowed and withdrew behind his counter. After a few minutes he went through the door and came back with two plates with bowls on top of them. The soup!

We both tried both bowls and they contained exactly the same soup. But it was nice and we did enjoy it. The proprietor came over to make this a certainty: "It's great, isn't? Of course it is! I would think so!" After the soup we had to wait for more than an hour; being bored we had more beer and had a bit of a laugh. The man in control came over and explained that the meal took some time because it was made with great care and within a clay oven. I expressed my interest and asked if we could have a look at the thing, we had never seen anything like that. He shook his head and said he was sorry; it was not possible.

Finally the food arrived and it was quite lovely. The man came over a few times to tell us that it was great food, we would certainly agree with him. It will not surprise you that we had more visits to Ali Baba. Everytime the soup would be exactly the same, the beer would come out of bottles and the wait for the main course would be very long. We never cared, always tried not to be in a hurry.              There came the time that we had visitors. The four of us decided to have a meal outdoors before they had to go home again. We considered the possibilities, our guests decided that we would do Indian food. It was their first time to have this. 

When we entered Ali Baba I explained to the proprietor that we had limited time this evening. Our guests had to catch a train at a certain hour. He bowed three times and said that it would be no problem. Even being the only guests, I had my doubts and I was right.

We had all three types of soup and there was still the same lentil soup in every bowl. We had a bit of a laugh about the man fiddling with the bottles of beer again. This time he noticed and told us that he would soon have a contract with Heineken. "Good for him", I thought. After the soup the waiting game began and I told the man that our time was beginning to run out. Again he assured me that the meal would be in time. And it was: we had 10 minutes left for our meal. The four of us gorged some down in record time and I asked for the bill. The proprietor was flabbergasted, we were forgetting our dessert! Again I had to tell him about time. He shook his head in disbelief when we walked out of the door.

After this we never ate in Ali Baba again. Some weeks later I saw the man in front of his window, maybe looking out for possible guests. Behind him there was nobody, no seat was taken.

A week after this I walked into town and passed the building; the window was wallpapered with newspapers and some worker was busy to scrape the name of the window.

Sometimes we have a nice dinner and we make certain that it is good. "It's great, isn't it? I certainly would say so!"

===============================================

Love

Her face showed that she had been crying a lot lately. She looked a bit cold, the coat she was wearing seemed a bit too summery for this day. "Is it okay if I get in?", she asked, even with that sad face it sounded more like an order than a request.

"Of course", I said and stepped aside to let her go in and closed the door behind her. "Do you want to hang your coat? Maybe you would like coffee or tea?"

"First question yes, the others NO THANK YOU", she tried to be relaxed and joky. I just nodded and accepted her coat and hung it on one of the hooks of the coat rack. She was already walking into the living room, not waiting for further invitations. She stopped abruptly when she saw the people sitting around the dining table, looked at them and walked on to the back of the room where the wood burner was. She sat down on one of the recliners and rubbed her hands. "It's nicer over here, than outside."

I took the other recliner and looked at her. She took a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her top and blew her nose. "Who are these people?" She nodded towards them, one of them was searching through my record collection. "Oh, these are squatters from the Regent Street, they have been knocked out of the house and everything was smashed by goons of the new owner of the place. They stay over here until they find a new place."

She pulled a face, obviously it would not have been her idea to invite people like that into her house. Every time I saw her it amazed me that we ever had something going on between us. My parents still asked about her, probably because she was decent, she was a teacher.

"So how are you doing?", I asked, trying to keep the conversation going. The question was not really needed, she was obviously not doing well. Her eyes filled with tears and she blew her nose quite loud. The squatter who was searching through the records showed one to his mates and they all laughed. It didn't bother me; I already was being told enough that I was bourgeois, not a revolutionary. I didn't mind, the world order would not be changed by me or by this lot. They still had their dreams.

She was ready to answer: "I'm so fed up with it all. He is using all our money to gamble. I can't even ask him to do some shopping, he takes the money and immediately runs to a betting agency. The bastard!"

I had heard it before, had asked the question before: "So why don't you kick him out?" She started crying openly now, the hanky could not stop the tears. "Because I love that bastard", she sniffed. I raised my hands in surrender: "That forces you to accept everything he chooses to do. It's still your own choice, I can't help you with this. I will not have another talk with him."

The squatters put a record on the player, I recognised it immediately: Rose Royce's "Love don't live here anymore".

She got up and almost ran out of the living room, I followed without really catching up with her. The squatters were observing the scene. When I reached the front door she was already closing it from the outside, through the glass in the door I could see her putting on her coat. I could hear the squatters laughing.

==================================================

Garth

Everybody differs from others, but colleague Garth was really different. He had an excellent knowledge of a lot of things, but in particular about his work field in the office. On top of that he was always available to give you very good, very thorough advice if you had questions about foreign taxes or social insurances. The thoroughness was great, but also a disability. He seemed to be never able to make decisions on the cases he handled. There were always new questions to be asked, other aspects to be looked upon. He would talk about this in a very loud way which was not exactly everybody's cup of tea, so it had been hard to find someone who wanted to share a room with him.

He had a habit that required a lot of his working hours. Garth always wanted to check packages on which was mentioned ca. or approx.. After counting the amount of things, like bolts; nuts; tissues; rubber bands; raisins and so on, he would exclaim: "There are never more than they say there should be! This tells you 50 paperclips, but there are only 46. That's thievery! If it's 49 I can understand, but 46 is ridiculous.

One day Garth told everybody he had thought of something ingenious. He had designed a spreadsheet that would warn him when he should buy a new box of sugar cubes for the coffee. He refused to use the sachets the office provided with our coffee. According to him in that sugar there were chemicals added; rather he wanted to be safe than sorry. So whenever he took a cube it would be registered on his spreadsheet.

His roommate was not his friend. Garth was always ready to point out that he didn't have friends, he seemed to be proud of that. If anyone said Thank you my friend, he would react with You're not my friend. I don't have friends. I had a nickname for his roommate, never told others about it. For me he was You have to be crazy wanting to work over here and got along very well with This is not MY work. They would get extra coffee from the machine for their endless coffee sessions together with various other colleagues. Normal talk would be to complain about the work stress and the awful management.

The two of them came up with something and they had to tell everybody in the hallway. In every room were two workers and the two friends went from room to room, bursting with laughter.
They had added one sugar cube to the box Garth was saving in his desk. "Let's see what happens."
They warned me: "You are not going to ruin the fun." I told them I don't want anything to do with it.
After a few days Garth himself went from room to room: "I don't get this. The spreadsheet is not correct. I have one cube extra. This can't be right."

The coffee sessions of the friends and their mates were filled with laughter for days on end. After a week colleague You have to be crazy to work over here got some remorse and told Garth what they had done. That solved the problem for Garth but also ruined the work relation between him and the pranksters. You have to crazy to work over here had to switch desks with a female colleague who had been ill for months and could not object sharing an office room with a person with no friends.
After she finally returned to the office she turned out to be able to get along with Garth very well.
=================================================

Paul McCartney

The old man knew exactly what he should give his beloved wife for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. She had told him over and over again how beautiful this rose named after a former Beatle was. Together they had watched a program on television about English gardens and they showed this rose as one of a few new species of plants. It took him only a few phonecalls to learn that he would have to drive to Truro to get one for the garden.

Together with their neighbours he found an excuse for not taking her along on a ride with the car. The two men were supposed to buy a new drill for the neighbour. Both women were not interested in this at all and so he could get what he wanted and keep it as a surprise. After the purchase he came home and put the little rosebush in the garage on a spot where she certainly would not look. The two men told her that the price for the drill had been too high and that the neighbour had decided not to buy it.

The next morning while she was having a shower, he sneaked out to the garage and put the rosebush in the kitchen. She had been a bit silent, probably thinking that he had forgotten that this was their wedding anniversary. She had been in good spirits, even a bit over the top and he had to chuckle how she could not really hide her disappointment from him. When she came out of the bathroom in her bathrobe, he asked her to follow him to the kitchen. And there it was: the Paul McCartney rose.

"Happy Anniversary, Darling", he said with a big smile.
"Oh Fred, what a lovely gift! I thought you forgot all about it."
He laughed: "I forget a lot nowadays, but not that I'm married to you, my Love."
After breakfast they went to the front garden to search for a nice spot where it could be planted, because she decided that she wanted everybody to see the lovely rose. She showed him what the best spot was and he planted it for her.

The rosebush grew steadily thanks to the good care from the old lady, but the bigger it got the health of the old man deteriorated. After a few years he died and she was on her own.
She would still make the joke to people they had made together. Whenever people asked where they lived, she would answer: "It's the house with Paul McCartney in front of the house."
People would look at her questioningly and she would explain. Sometimes she would add that it was the greatest gift he had ever given to her except for her wedding ring.

The years were getting harder and harder to get through for her on her own and she died only a few years later while Paul McCartney was in full bloom.
She had always loved gardening and that was quite obvious when you looked at it.
The daughter and her family came over for the funeral and to take care of the house and the garden, having to decide what should happen to it. It would feel like sacrilege to let the garden be ruined and so they did what they could to maintain it with a bit of help from the neighbours.

Most of the garden did okay, but the Paul McCartney rosebush suffered. You could almost see it getting worse in front of your eyes. Like it had no wish to go on anymore.
After a few days it died. The family let it be for a few days. After the estate agent advised to get the garden in topshape to give the house more kerb appeal for selling it, they knew they had to get it out of the ground and get rid of it.
Later one of the neighbours asked about the rosebush and got the answer that Paul McCartney had been disposed of in the bin. The house was sold only a few weeks later.
=======================================

KitKat Junky

After my last roommate in the office had been transferred to an office in the North of the country I had been on my own. I was quite happy with that, could do whatever I wanted with the room. So I had filled the empty spaces on the wall with prints of painting by Kandinsky and Joan Miro and could listen to an Amsterdam radio station that played Indian music all day. These were great days.

I knew these days had ended when my manager entered the room with "Let me introduce you to your new roommate. June, can you come in?"
There she was, June. I remembered her quite well from the first years of my life at the tax office. She was still as big and ugly as ever.
I gave a big smile and got up: "Well hello June! That's a long time ago I've seen you. How are things?"
The manager nodded approvingly: "It's obvious that you two know each other. Maybe you can help June getting started? There will be some files delivered within an hour, but she will need pen, pencils and so on. I understood:  "No problem. Do you want me to introduce her to everybody?"
The manager shook his head: "No need, you were the last one she needed to meet, being in the outskirts of the office."

Soon I saw that she had not changed at all. My art had to go, was replaced by a picture of her two sons and a picture of the office in which we both had started our career. The radio had to be on a channel with popsongs from the eighties and nineties. I went along with it all, love my peace, too lazy for quarrels.
Her workdays were filled a bit differently to mine. She liked to talk and she liked even more to talk a lot. I was not perfect in doing this, so she would phone her sister and some former colleagues to update the gossip.

A lot was about her wondering why everyone was always losing weight like anything and she was doing this crash diet and she was not even losing an ounce. This would be also discussed with me, at least she tried to. Then there were the health issues; she sometimes phoned that she was ill and would describe what kind of fluids were leaving her body; enough to lose your appetite for some hours. Once she asked me if I took showers with my daughters. She did this with her boys, who were of the same age as my children, ten and twelve. She described how she would clean their willies. I told her that my daughters probably would kill me if I would suggest something like that.

It was amazing how she managed the refurbishment of the family's house. The husband did the work, but for everything he needed her approval of his ideas. So he would make drawings of this and faxed to them to our office. June had a good look and would phone him to tell him what she thought of it. This went on for a few weeks.
Later there was the matter of a nice house in the neighbourhood of the village she lived in of which the owner had died. She phoned her sister who was a colleague in another tax office which was in charge of handling cases in her village and asked her to have a look into the files of the family who were inheriting the house.
Soon she was rubbing her hands: "So they are heavily in debt, you say. I think I will go to the estate agent. I feel I could get this place for a very nice price. Thanks, Sis!"

All in all there was not a lot of time for the work she was supposed to do and I was happy that she was working part-time, which  made it possible for myself to get enough work done in a week. The weeks went on and there came the time when the management had to give an evaluation of the work. Of course they were not happy with her productivity. We were supposed to handle from five to seven cases per day and June did an average of three in a week. A talk was held in front of me.
She defended herself fiercely: "But that's in three days, not in five!"
The manager shook his head: "I would expect fifteen to twenty-one cases being done."
"But I lack knowledge. They never really prepared me properly for this job. I would like a brushing course."
The manager laughed aloud: "I happen to know that you hardly worked the last three years. You have done every course there was on offer. So there's no way I'm going to let you do another one!"

After this talk she became ill for a longer period. I was quite happy on my own again. Being alone never has bothered me.
Once in a while other colleagues would come over to my room and we would discuss cases while drinking coffees. So it was not suprising when colleague Garth entered my room with two coffees in his hands and a file under his arm.

I thanked him for the coffee and he asked about June. I offered to phone her and ask about her illness.
"Oh no, don't! You don't want me to vomit over your desk!"
I had to laugh and took a sip of the coffee.
Garth was sitting behind her desk and played with the grips of the drawers.
"Hey, it's not locked! But look at that! You won't believe this!"
He opened the drawer completely and I walked over to have a look.
It was completely filled with KitKat Chunkies and wrappers of KitKat Chunkies.
I laughed along with Garth: "I think I start to understand why June can't lose weight."
==================================================

Partytime with the Picos

                                                          The Picos

My mother's family was quite gifted in making music; in the old days it was not for everybody to have a record player or even a radio. I think that is why people tried to make their own music, playing traditional songs or even creating things themselves. In my family the most popular instrument was the accordion and there were some great uncles who could play very well. They were always the first people to get invited for weddings, parties and such. Payment mostly consisted of free drinks.

                                                The Three Jacksons

In a lot of families this was the case and some of these accordion players became quite famous locally and sometimes even nationally, like the Jacksons, Las Estrellas, Schriebl & Hupperts and many more. In our family the band The Picos was the most important one. Every birthday would start with mother playing the 7 inch record "Partytime With The Picos", it was them playing the Dutch equivalent of Happy Birthday, called "We Wish You a Long Life". Becoming older we would feel a bit embarrassed when that music would sound really loudly through the house and imagined that the whole neighbourhood would witness this.

My parents never knew that the title of the record in the 60's would become a code for the children to warn each other when there were quarrells between my parents or with one or more of the children. If there were harsh words because my eldest sister would want to go out in her miniskirt or I refused to get a haircut or would play my beat music a bit too loudly, the warning would go out to me or my sisters coming home.
"Don't go in! It's Partytime With The Picos!"
We would stay outdoors until things would become quiet again.

The Birthday ritual remained for decades until the record got a scratch. How this happened, or who was the culprit for causing it was never discovered. In the meantime more and more of the children left the parental house and some moved to other countries.
It was my mother who took the initiative to give new musical congratulations. Both my parents could play the harmonica - nicknamed the poor people's accordion - very well.
So now we children would get a very early phonecall with my parents playing on their harmonicas the tune "We Wish You a Long Life".

                                           Hohner

They both had a Hohner,  the Rolls Royce of  harmonicas. My mother would play lead and Father would play the harmonies. It sounded quite good, certainly when you consider their age.
The first one who could not play anymore was Father, he didn't have the breath anymore, but Mother played on and on.
Father died and it was only her who would phone and give the little concert; she continued doing this almost to her last day when she was already in her nineties.

Yet sometimes in dreams I can still hear The Picos playing "We Wish You a Long Life".
===============================================