Street games

This photo at the exhibnition of yesterday's post caught my eye and brought back memories. Children playing with a rope you had to knit at a lamppole and than running around until the rope had winded around the pole and than you had to lift your feet of the ground and you could hover and rotate. Those games I never see here anymore in the streets. The lamppoles have changed anyway now.

 

Photo exhibition

 

I visited a photo exhibition about the fifties is Amsterdam. That was fun to see photos of those times I lived there too as a child.

Old photo

 I was watching the archives and found  this photo I saw at an exhibition in Amsterdam in 2013.

The photo dates from 1929 and you see a nanny and her three children. So cute those cjildren with their hats long coats and a hoop to play with.

Memory

My daughter asked me to look for a photo of  me in the seventies she needed to show to a friend. Well this is me as a young mother with her in the pram in Amsterdam. I wore knee high suede boots with platform soles.

 

Skates

 I was scrolling through some old photos and found this one from the fifties.  That is me in the middle with my sister and brother. We had an icy winter  and in front of our home in Amsterdam the canal was frozen and we could skate on wooden skates that you had to tie under your shoes. I never made it to be a good skater, but al least I could stand on them.

Memories

 My post of yesterday brought me back to memories when I had little children and lived in the middle of nowhere in a new village in 1979.  We had no car and I brought my children to school by bike. Cargobikes for children didn't excists in those days, so I had one child in a backseat and one at the front in a seat on my handlebars of the bike. As there were always cold blowing winds I had a windshield in front for the little one. 

Memories

After the Albert Cuyp market photo's of yesterday I remembered these photos  SC made of our daughter in 1976 at the same market street on a Sunday morning.

 I was at home busy with feeding our newborn son, so hubby took her out in the extinct streets around the corner to make some photos.

The necklace she wore was mine, she insisted to wear it over her coat!

Looking back.

I am a bit in a nostalgic mood after looking for  old photos. This is me and my friend at highschool posing for a so called "schoolphoto" I am 17 years old here. Same hairstyle.

And this is at my parental house with my father and my two friends at my 19th birthday.

Memories

I am still in the memory mood after yesterday's post and looked for some old photos. This is an old schoolphoto of my friend and me at eight years old I think. We are the two in the centre, me at the right.

And here one of schoolcamp when we were 12 years old, me at the left.

The quality is  a bit vague  after enlarging but that is what memories are too.

The heat is on

Since yesterday we have an official heatwave, temperatures of 35 C (95 F) or more will be the norm this week. It is the hottest summer since 1976.

That brought me back to memories of that summer when we lived in Amsterdam in an apartment on the third floor in a busy street with lots of traffic. We had a small balcony with shadow where I had put a bath for my little daughter of  17 months old to cool down a bit.

And we spent many hours in the nearby park at the playground.

Baby number two was already on the way but we survived that summer. and so we will this one.

Old ladies

My sister and me have a difference of five years in age. I had my 70th birthday last November and my sister had her 75th birthday last weekend. We can't believe it that we both are so "old" now.

This was in 1947.

Beachlife in the fifties

Found a few old photos today from the fifties at the beach in Katwijk aan Zee at the North Sea. My mother and me at the left and my brother and sister. My parents hired in summer holidays for six weeks a few rooms in a guesthouse close to the beach. to flee  a hot Amsterdam. A kind of an early B&B. I remember that bathing suit of me made of blue itchy wool! When it got wet it dropped off down with the straps cutting in my neck,

My father didn't like the beach so much and stayed in Amsterdam. But in the weekends he came to visit us on the beach always wearing a suit! The only thing he took off on the beach were his shoes....

Ready-over

A post of Bill Burke of "Somewhere in Ireland" about a woman who helps children to cross the road safely near a school, brought back memories of my own time as a crossing guard. In the fifties I lived in Amsterdam and not far from our school was an intersection that children had to cross to reach the school. The students from the highest grade of the  elementery schools in Amsterdam might be a "klaar-over" ( "ready-over" ) as we were called. We were indentified by a white belt having a band running diagonally over the shoulder. At the band you could hang the "fried-egg", the stop sign. This is me at  twelve years old in 1958.

This was my older brother at the same age.

Usually we were with two together and you had to be present half an hour before school at the crossing and after school as long as there were still children out of school. So you could leave class early and came in later.

This is also my brother with a fellow "ready-over". Our official name was "crossing guard" but as we had to say "ready over" when we raised our sign and the children could start walking, everybody named us "ready-overs".

As I look now we were very young but traffic in Amsterdam in the fifties was not very crowded, a few cars or cyclists and they drove not so fast, they always stopped for us. We also walked to school without parents just on your own.

A photo from internet shows the outfit we weared for rainy days.
Linking to "Our World Tuesday"

Looking back

This is me in 1968 at 19 years old. I had just met SC and he made this first photo of me in my room at home. 

He blew me away with this one,  I had never seen myself like this.

Well the rest is history, he must have made thousands photos of me in the following 48 years that we know each other now.

And this was the photographer himself at 21 years old.

Just looking back a bit at the end of the year, the weather is grey and foggy, not inviting to go out, so  I got through some old photo albums and found these I wanted to show you.

Beachgirl

My mother as a beachgirl in the thirties. Don't know exactly how old she was here, in her twenties I think, before she got married to my father. In this way I have never seen her as a child, so carefree and a bit sexie looking. I only remember her on the beach sitting in a dress in a chair with my father  (in a suit!) and a bag full of towels and food at her feet for us three children. I have never seen her in a swimsuit like this.

This is one of the finds when you inherits the photoalbums of your parents.

Nursery School

I am scanning some old photos and continue with my school photos. This one is from Nursery school in 1952. I count 32 children not that much as in Primary school. I am the one in the front with the white blouse and the bow in her hair, looking a bit serious. I must have been 5 years old and had that bow in my hair for years in various colours, my mother liked that, I was not the only one I can see. It is nice to watch the classroom and us all sitting decently to tables with different things to play with.

Some of you mentioned yesterday we were so well dressed. The reason is that it was always announced to the parents when the school photographer was coming so all the mothers had their child dressed on their best that day.
Linking to "Our World Tuesday"

The Baby boomers

This is my class at primary school in Amsterdam in 1954 with 43 children! We were all from 1947, the generation known as the Baby boomers. The end of World War II in 1945 brought a baby boom to many countries, especially the Western Europeans and the United States. My parents had the same idea as all the others and so we all marched into the classrooms of schools that were not required to so many children. We were packed together and I remember in the third year we were even with 50 children. I can't  say that I have suffered, you take things as a child for granted, and I always enjoyed my school period. The teachers however must have had a hard job.

And now of course you want to know which one I am, the second row down from above, the third one from the left. The second one left  next to me is my refound friend of yesterday's post.

This is the same class in the sixth year on a three day school holiday with only 30 children left,  I don't remember why but I think it had to do with money, the parents had to pay for it. The camp was organized by a foundation Vacation Kids founded in 1919 to allow city children (called "white noses") to get some fresh air in the country. I am on top row in the middle with that billowing skirt with my friend at the right next to me.

Oldies

Found an oldie of  me with my first born 10 days old in 1975. Although old colour photos changes their colours due to poor quality,during the years,  this looks we were a bit color blind in those days. It was the orange brown period.

First walk with the pram in Amsterdam.

And  daddy SC with pipe.

Nostalgic

After yesterday's post I got a bit nostalgic and looked for some photos of our "pioneer" time in our new residence Almere This was our house under construction in 1979.

In November 1979 we moved  from Amsterdam to Almere and this is how our surroundings looked liked when we started living here. I remember we always had to wear boots to walk through sand and mud as there was no paving yet.

But the best part was that we got a very cold winter with frozen waters everywhere and had our own icerinks around the house. The kids had not skated before but learned very quickly, unlike me, I have never been a good skater and don't dare it anymore.

Old Photos

Today was my mother's birthday and I remembered these old photos of her as a baby in 1914.

And as a toddler. People didn't have a camera those times but some went to a photographer to have a portrait. I am glad my grandparents did so and I have inherited these photos of her. I like specially this one with her distrustful look and the cute dress with the addition of the collar. She was the eldest of three sisters and was educated as a school teacher.She had to give up her job when she got married to my father who was a teacher as well. Married women were not allowed to work in the thirties and she had to sit at home alone to do the household! What a shame was that. She died twelve years ago when she was 89.