Information About N. Smits

Memories

Memories are based on documents, family lore or personal experiences. They give more information about a person, but are not necessarilly complete or correct.

For photos: click on the photo for a larger format; email family@grivel.net for more information about the photo.

Nicoline ca. 1968

I can still remember that the first day I was to go to kindergarten, I got the measles. It was a huge disappointment; I was so excited to go to school, but of course I couldn’t. I can also remember that I was allowed to treat for my birthday. It was customary at my school that you not only give treats in your own class, but also with one or two friends, go through the whole school and give something to all teachers. The school had several floors and for some reason I had the idea that there were monsters on the top floor. I then convinced my friends that we couldn’t go upstairs.

In 1972 we moved to Bovenkarspel. I went to kindergarten there for a few months, where they always had school milk from the triangular pyramids, but it wasn’t kept in a fridge, so it was always lukewarm by the time we got it to drink.

The first year of primary school was the Wendelschool, which was a public school; then I went to the Protestant-Christian Gideon school. My parents were very active in that school. They went on a school trip for sixth grade, which was a school trip that lasted a few days, and we were then farmed out to different families.

Nicoline ca. 1973

The neighborhood where we lived was still under construction; the Keizerskroonweg was one of the first streets to be finished. Everywhere around us construction was still going on. As children we saw that, of course, and in the afternoon when the workmen were away, or on the weekend, it was a beautiful playground. So we also built with bricks and pavers that lay around, and sometimes the construction collapsed. I can still see us racing with a scooter, with an injured playmate. “Wouter has a hole in his head,” we cried.

Later everything was fully built up and it was not nearly as exciting. We did have what we called the “Indian village,” a playground behind us with various installations. There was a sandpit, a wigwam of planks, and a quasi fort. We called it the “Indian village” because of the wigwam.

As a child I often went sleep over with family. I stayed with grandma in Duivendrecht, or with Eke and Ruud in Jutphaas (now Nieuwegein), who had a house with a basement where you had a ”garden room”: you could walk into the garden from the basement We now call it a walk-out basement. I also stayed with Jan and Ingrid, who loved how I spoke to my doll exactly the way my mother spoke to me. They had a toilet where you had to go up a step, I thought that was just like a throne.

Nicoline ca. 1978

After primary school I went to the Marcus college (nowadays called Martinus college) class, and after the first year I went to the HAVO. I chose HAVO because VWO seemed to me to much work at the time.

I finished high school in 1983 and first worked as a data entry typist in Bovenkarspel, but it soon became clear that this was not a career, and I started to study at Schoevers. With the Schoevers diploma I started working as an executive secretary at the Amro, and later for the law firm.

In 1986 I moved to Amsterdam, as of 1 February in sublet in the Transvaal street. The tenant lived with her friend, but kept her rental home on Transvaal street as an official address because of the assistance. I didn’t have a washing machine there, and I went to Grandma’s to do the laundry. That was always very nice.

At that time I had a lot of contact with Rudo: he thought it was wonderful to come visit his sister in Amsterdam at the weekend, which was of course much freer than at home. Rudo and I planned to go on holiday to Bulgaria that summer, but that was just when the Chernobyl disaster happened, and we went to Marseille instead. At the campsite there I met Pieter, whom I married on February 6, 1987. We then tried to register for a home in Amsterdam, but because I was living illegally on sublease, I was not eligible for it. We then found the flat at Kolfstraat 143 in Purmerend.

Nicoline on one of the ships during Sail Amsterdam 1990.

I had very little in common with Pieter and in 1988 we got divorced. At that time I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do more than be a secretary, and I enrolled at Leiden University for evening classes in history.

That study began in August 1989; I had to take the train from Amsterdam where I worked to Leiden, and then to the university. The first day I had mis-estimated how long that would take, so I arrived late for the very first lecture. I felt that everyone was staring at me. But in the end it didn’t matter; that school year I got to know Eric in Leiden, who also did the evening classes. One thing led to another and in 1991 we bought a house together on the Churchilllaan in Delft.

Bloemendaal: ca 1974 to the early 80s

Screen capture of a super-8 video: breach house at Bloemendaal beach.

During the summer vacation we went to Bloemendaal for four or five weeks. We would travel there by car (we had different cars, but sometimes not for a while) or by train. That house on Bloemendaal was a summer beach house; at the end of the season it was taken apart as a kind of “advanced Lego” and stored, and then set up again at the beginning of the following season.

The house in Bloemendaal belonged to the Ockhuizen family, but we could use it during the summer holidays. Mr. and Mrs. Ockhuizen both worked and their daughter, Janneke, then went with us to Bloemendaal. This way everyone benefited.

The cottage had no running water and no sewer. First thing in the morning the toilet bucket had to be emptied, just like at a campsite. The water came from a water tank, which had to be topped up regularly with a hose. Cooking was on butane gas.

Screen capture of a super-8 video: building forts.

If the weather was even halfway cooperative we were on the beach all day. Every summer I would burn my skin. I also remember that every day we started to build a “fortress” that would withstand the flood—and every day the flood came in and washed it away.

Some of the houses had television, which was very special at the time, and the trick was to become friends with children from those houses so that you could watch TV there in the afternoon.

My father had made a cart for when we went shopping in Zandvoort, where there was a larger supermarket. Catry was still so small, she was also in that cart. I remember that Catry thought she didn’t have enough space, and started throwing the groceries out. Of course we had to pick them up again and put them back in the car.

This YouTube video from 2015 has exactly the kind of houses that we had in Bloemendaal in the 1970s (although in 2015 the houses do seem to have running water and electricity).

Voorthuizen in the Veluwe (1976)

Screen capture of a super-8 video: lunch during the cycling holiday.

A cousin of my mother had a campsite in Voorthuizen. In 1976 the entire Roos family went camping there. I remember that Michiel, who was still little at the time, said “poeig” for milk (nobody knows where that came from), which became a saying in the family. Another term that summer was "kassie rammes." In the laundry room you had to use coins for the hot water, but someone had discovered that the coin came back if you hit the box in a certain way. Because of this, we had free hot water for a while.

It was a hot summer. As children we had all kinds of games that we played; the adults would sit around an inflatable kiddie pool, under an umbrella with their feet and a crate of beer in the cool water. We all had a great time.

Bicycling holiday England

Screen capture of a super-8 video: lunch during the bicycling holiday.

In 1980 or 1981 our family took a cycling holiday in England, and I think that this was mainly my father’s idea. We were six: my parents, my brother, sister and I, and a neighbor boy, Erik Henk Grondman. I think we went by bike on the train to Hoek van Holland, from there by boat to Harwich, and from there we'd cycle. We had three tents, one for my parents, one for the two boys and one for the two girls. We all had part of the packs on our bikes; my sister Catry, who was only eight or nine years old at the time, had the lightest suit: a roll with the very thin camping mattresses.

Screen capture of a super-8 video: Nicoline asks for directions.

We probably cycled through Suffolk in eastern England for two to three weeks. My parents spoke some English, but I was the one who mainly spoke using my high school English (I was fourteen or fifteen at the time).