Sepia Saturday 759 - The Minankabau House

Finding a picture of a man in front of a house is a real shoebox challenge, for me at least. But just before reaching the bottom of the box, I ran into a photo showing a childhood memory. When I went to primary school all pupils had their own garden. It was a plot of land measuring approx. 9 x 9 ft. where we grew flowers, potatoes, and vegetables and learned about biology. Very educational! But that was not the main reason why this garden complex was etched in my memory. That was the house that was built there. It was called the Minankabau house. As you can see it does not come close to the traditional Dutch stepped gables. In fact, the house originates in what before WWII was called the Dutch East Indies, today Indonesia. To find the true origin of the house, we have to go to the island of Sumatra. There the Minankabau people originate. Without trying to write an anthropological report, I want to highlight one aspect of the Minankabau society. Whether you like it or not, our culture is based on patriarchal structures. Not so the Minankabau. Land, property, and the family name pass down from mother to daughter. (Matters such as politics are left to men.) So it is not unlikely that the house in the photo below was sold by a Minankabau woman to a Dutch enterprise.

The Minankabau house on the Mient in The Hague
during the winter of 1939/1940

The picture comes from an album owned by A.K.J. (Karel) Morren (1906-1988), the man my mother lived with from 1967 until he passed away. I have no idea who the person with the broom/snow plow is. He or she is standing amidst the school gardens I mentioned earlier. It needs a bit of imagination,  but it can be said that he or she is standing in front of a house thus complying with this week's theme ;-)

The postcard below shows the same complex in 1935 but from the opposite direction. The Minankabau house is on the right.

To give you a better impression of these houses' beauty, below is a fine example situated in the village of Pandai Sikek, West Sumatra, Indonesia.

By Michael J. Lowe, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org

Please turn to the Sepia Saturday site for more (unknown) men in front of mysterious houses.

Sepia Saturday - Vehicles

Alan suggests that this week's theme could be overalls, workwear and the like. That is an interesting subject and what is more, I covered it already a couple of months ago. You can see my granddads at work here. Having thus accomplished my mission for this week, I might as well wish you a very nice weekend. However, I do not want to be the cause of Sepians in literary distress, walking around and desperately asking themselves what to do now. 
Looking at the "Oshkosh picture" it occurred to me that we are looking at a photograph of buildings in a street. And what is a street without vehicles? So I have been digging in my many shoe boxes and came up with a few, I hope nice examples of not so current models.

Austin A40

This first picture is that of an Austin A40. It was taken in the Mimosastraat in The Hague approx 1955. My mother is next to the car.

Austin A30

A little earlier, it must have been 1954, my kid brother is standing next to a smaller model Austin, the 2-doors A30. The location I don't know but it looks like somewhere in the middle of the country, possibly the Veluwe.

Me, on my first motorcycle

I still recognize the location where this photo was taken. It is the Thorbeckelaan, again in The Hague. A relative of ours lived there. I guess I was about 3 or 4 years old. So it is 1947 or '48. I haven't got the foggiest idea about the make of the motorcycle. It looks like a single cylinder engine.
Update Apr. 30, 2015:
An unknown person commented that this motorcycle might very well be a CZ 125 t. And indeed there is some resemblance!

The Czech CZ 125 t

My father on his motorcycle

This picture makes clear that I inherited my father's motorcycle genes. However, I have to truthfully declare that I never rode one again after 1947/48... The woman in the passenger seat is probably my mother but it is difficult to see. The people looking at them are my maternal grandparents. They are doing so from their house in the Mispelstraat in The Hague. The year? 1938 or '39.

A pre war Opel cabriolet

I am not an expert on vintage cars so off hand I couldn't tell you the make of this car. But enlarging the wheel caps reveals that we are looking at an Opel. The model? Don't know. I'll leave that to the experts. My father is seated next to the driver, my mother is seated in the left hand rear seat. The other couple are friends of my parents. Also this picture is taken in 1938 or '39. The car has German plates, my father's friend was employed there.

During a school trip in the German city of Göttingen

My mother is the girl on the far right looking to us from her roof position. The school bus was owned by the then well known company VIOS from Wateringen near The Hague. The trip probably took place in 1933.

During a sightsee tour in Koblenz, Germany

Here is another of my mother's school trips to Germany. I couldn't even start to guess the make of this roofless bus. 

Austro Daimler

But it looks a little like the 1934 Austro Daimler (thank you, Google). I am led to believe this school trip took place in 1932 so maybe this is one of its predecessors.
Having finalized my post I just hope you did not forget that this week's theme is about workwear. So for the latest models I can recommend you turn to the Sepia Saturday site.
BTW In the unlikely event you want to see all the cars I ever owned, please see this post. The text is in Dutch but the pictures are not ;)

Sepia Saturday - Inside knowledge

Mist u een Nederlandse vertaling? Of kunt u het met het Engels prima af? Laat het mij weten door op dit blog een reactie te plaatsen. Dat kan, helemaal aan het eind.
As you can see in the Sepia Saturday logo at the end of this post, this weeks theme - also - has to do with a shop interior. Now, that poses a problem for me. Among my ancestors there are no shopkeepers, none that I know of at least. The man whom I consider my oldest ancestor, started as a farm hand in what is now Belgian Limburg. After that he joined the military and later, in The Hague, he had a more popular job. He was a (beer) tapper in a pub and as far as I know he was not the innkeeper. We are talking 1805 now. 
Then there was one of my great uncles. Around 1895 he was an errand boy in a pharmacy. He delivered medicines. (I don't think he would have liked being called a drug runner!) 
Ever since, most of my forbears earned their living as a civil servant, either for the municipality or for the government. So not many shop interiors there.
However, it is a small step from a shop interior to the inside of a house. And since Sepia Saturday organizer Alan is a flexible man, my pictures will show house interiors with which my ancestry can be associated.

The first picture is the interior of the house in the De Perponcherstraat 83(?) where my matrilineal grandparents lived in The Hague during the twenties of the previous century. The focus of the photographer is on my grandparents celebrating my grandfathers 25 year jubilee with his employer Eigen Hulp, a cooperative association of shops. I believe that event took place in 1926.

My grandparents Gerardus Theodorus de Langen and
Antje Doelman in approx 1926.

Looking with my today's eyes I see a number of things in this interior that I think are characteristic for the 1920's. In the red circles there are Dutch art deco patterns on earthenware. Also the vertical blue arrow points to examples of such patterns. The black cupboard is ornate with wooden decorations (blue circles) which I believe were typical for the turn of the century. On this side of the black cupboard is a fireplace. To avoid having to look at a big black hole in summer, people used a decorative shield, see the blue horizontal arrow.
The combination of my grandfathers neck tie and the heavily starched collar was commonly known here as a "father's killer", a vadermoordenaar in Dutch. In granny's dress you can already see the first signs of the charleston fashion of the thirties.

When I was about 3 years old, I vaguely remember that I, together with my mother and kid brother, stayed at a luxurious country house in a place called Laag Soeren. We are talking 1947. My most vivid memory is the availability of a tennis court on the premises. Funny, the irrelevant things a 3 year old remembers. My mother kept a few pictures of the house including a view of the inside of the living room.

The country house in Laag Soeren. The height of the windows on either
side of the front door is indicative of the presence of high ceilings.

The living room in Laag Soeren

The thing that strikes me most in this interior, is the height of the ceiling. You can't even see it! Must be more than 3 metres/10 ft! The fire place has already been modernized by installing a stove there (red arrow). But with a 10ft high ceiling additional heating is no luxury. So they put in a central heating radiator as well (blue arrow). Just after the war central heating was not unusual in industrial environments. However, in houses it was still exceptional. 
In those days the largest lamp in the room was over the table (black arrow). Certainly during the evening all activities took place there. The oak furniture is equipped with lavish ornaments (green arrow). Please also note the separate curtains for the upper windows (yellow arrow).

Unfortunately, in neither interior there is a clock visible. So I hope I did not disappoint you there. Still, I expect to have increased your inside knowledge. Before I refer you to my fellow Sepia Saturday adepts, I like to show you our previous house and its insides. We finally managed to sell it (pfft!) although not for the price mentioned... But I have to warn you, it's a bit different compared to the ones I showed you above.

For more clocks and interpretations of this week's theme,
please click here!

Update Oct. 13, 2012: A gentleman from Hoog Soeren, his name is Jan K., drew my attention to the fact that it was unlikely that the country house shown above, was situated in his village. After some further consultations and investigations, it is very probable that the house is (still!) located at 3 Badhuislaan in Laag Soeren. It is visible on Street View, be it that the black and white picture shows the rear of the house and the view below the front. Therefore, the text in this post has been corrected.