Het speeltuingebouw
Friday, 19 October 2007
In our neighbourhood is an old playing ground, where our children play a lot.
When they were young and the weather was good, it also was a meeting place for parents. I remember many that we ended many evenings in a corner of that place with a group of parents, with food and wine, while the children were playing. In the middle of the place, which is the size of a soccer field, there stands a wooden building, that served as the home for all kind of groups and organisations within the neighbourhood.
The past two decades there were not much activities going on anymore, but in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s this was the place where almost everything happened. Martial arts training, dance parties, chess and klaverjas tournaments, the reception of Sinterklaas, and much more. Today a group of people emptied the place, because it will be tore down soon. There will be a new school built on that location next year.
We were with about 15 people and it took us three hours to empty the place. A part of the furniture and other things was set apart for an organisation that brings stuff to Romania, a part was taken home by the people who helped (and who all are, eh, were member of the organisation that owned the place), but most was put in plastic bags as garbage. I don’t like to see things thrown away.
I will spare you the details of everything that was thrown away, but there was also a 70’s deejay set. Custom made, on wheels, with inbuilt record players, a mixing panel, a microphone, and shelves for the records. Later somebody added a shelf to place two CD-players on the monster, but probably it has hardly been used in the past 15 years, apart from the few times that Jan Hendrik and I deejayed there, on the monthly dance party that Jan Hendrik organised for a while. I didn’t want the thing, nobody wanted it, so it is gone forever now. And most of the records are gone too.
There were a few boxes with records. I carefully went through all of the boxes, but there were no records worth taking home. I did take a small pile home anyway, as souvenirs: two Dutch 78’s, a 10 inch with accordion polka’s, an LP by Toots Tielemans, the first LP of Pierre Kartner ( Gebeurtenissen ), and three 45’s: Kiss/Love or money by Prince, the dream/She’s but a little girl by Max Romeo, and Aretha Franklin with ??If I would ever leave you/Soulville.
Here is a song from the LP by Pierre Kartner, Het staat in de krant. It is a song in the twilight genre between talking and singing, also known as parlando in Dutch. I love parlando, and even Pierre Kartner, who’s not on top of my list of collectable musicians, gets away with it in this flower power inspired cliché story.