the M.A.D. pages
OMA REMEMBERS . . . |
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| sitting in her little office with windows all around it, receiving money, writing dockets, talking to people, keeping an eye on things. She was the one who actually ran the business. Pa always stayed in the background; he was not a businessman. He worked with his hands, doing repairs and doing improvements to the store. Moe bought stock and decided on prices and sale strategies. Several shop assistants were employed, and I still have a postcard sent to me by one of them. My brothers Jacques and Joh also worked in the store, and at St. Nicolaas time when it was really busy, To, (my sister) - who can only have been 14 or 15 years old at the time - and Siny (Jacques' wife) were also recruited to help. Joh (who always had grand ideas) decided that what the catholic community in the parish needed was a catholic library. So he bought lots of books and opened (in a room in the Korte Marnixstraat) a library called "Inter Nos". For years afterwards we had still books in the house from this library, all of which I read later, but the whole venture was a flop (as were so many things which Joh undertook). |
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He also established a musical group; piano, cello and violin. Then, in the early twenties, we had the depression. Apart from that, Pa had heavily invested in the setting up of a bank, which went broke, and he lost a lot of money. It was decided that Pa and Moe should retire and that the two sons should take over the business. They were only 22 and 26 at the time and I can not now imagine how they could have taken this decision. As it turned out, the boys' inexperience, their incompatibility and the depression soon put an end to the whole thing. My sister To (10 years my senior) was a happy- go- lucky and rather attractive girl and this caused her to have many admirers, much to the discomfiture of Moe, who thought she was much too young. We are here talking about the time we lived in Bussum, and To would have been 16 or 17. She would meet her current boyfriend in town while doing shopping for Moe on the pushbike. Whenever she went out on the bike, I wanted to go with her, sitting on the carrier, but she did not always want to take me. I must have been a dreadful child. So To used to spell out to Moe that she wanted to go, |
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