Hard gelag,
hard gelach
Slaapwandelaar
thing at a time before the line moved
to the next phase of building a car.
For that reason Henry was able to
build a cheaper car much more quickly,
one he hoped every American could af
ford. The most popular was the Model
T, known here as the Tin Lizzie, and
between 1908-1926 fifteen million
Fords had been sold. Henry Ford's
dream had come true, many people
now had cars and the whole world had
fallen in love with the automobile.
The horse-and-buggy days were over.
Another important event occured on
December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina. The Wright brothers,
Orville and Wilbur got a contraption
off the ground that actually flew. I did
not hear very much from my parents
about that as a child, but as I got older
- all of five years old -1 saw my first
airplane. It was a small biplane and it
flew so high. I was in awe. My father
could not tell me how it was that the
thing did not come crashing down.
'It flies like a bird,' he said and that
was as far as his knowledge of aerody
namics went. He was as much in awe
of the manmade bird as I was.
Today, the Wrights' first airplane is in a
museum and we fly faster than the
speed of sound, in great luxury in
enormously big airplanes not quite one
hundred years after Orville and Wilbur
got off the ground for a few minutes.
Today we fly around the world as often
as our grandparents used to poeter
Kajoon in a babalokah.
In 1903, Edwin S. Porter combined
still-camera and film-editing techniques
and came up with the first one-reeler, a
prototypical western, The Great Train
Robbery. It was a box-office succes.
Moving pictures became popular enter
tainment that drew vast numbers of
people into the theaters, and it re
mains so until this day.
As a young boy my father watched this
movie in Soerabaja sitting behind the
screen which was a whole lot cheaper
than sitting in front of it. Think of the
difference between the Train Robbery
and today's Titanicl The film industry
has come an awfully long way.
The US grew. Whenever there was un
rest, a famine, or a crisis in the world,
especially in Russia and other parts of
Europe, immigrants came flocking to
the New World. They brought with
them their customs, their music, their
ideas, their hopes and dreams, and
most importantly, their very diverse ta
lents.
Their children became Americans with
loose ties or no ties at all to the old
country. The first thing an immigrant
saw when steaming into New York
Harbor was the Statue of Liberty on
whose pedestal is written a sonnet by
Emma Lazarus which begins with:
Give me your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses... and ends with send
these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
And they came. They came at an
average rate of one hundred persons an
hour during the decade of the 1900s
and enriched their adopted country
immensely. America would never have
been what she is today without immi
grants who often suffered untold hard
ship and heartbreak before and after
they arrived on Ellis Esland, N.Y. But
now they were in America, the land of
milk and honey, the land that would
give them and especially their children
a future.
Little did we know that one day, deca-
Bij een kampbewoner kwamen
gedachten naar boven over 'vroeger'.
Vroeger, toen het leven hem nog toe
lachte.
Hij hield in die tijd voor zijn plezier
duiven. Ze waren zijn lust en zijn
leven. Dag en nacht was hij met de
gevleugelde diertjes bezig geweest.
Een gevoel van heimwee overviel hem.
Hij sloot zijn ogen en viel even later in
een diepe slaap. De nacht brak aan.
De kampgenoten begonnen aan hun
nachtrust, doch een deel van hen lag
piekerend en met open ogen in hun
kooien. Iedereen had weer een helse
dag achter de rug.
Plotseling gebeurde er iets merkwaar
digs. Degenen die wakker waren, gingen
rechtop in hun tampat zitten. Iemand
des later, we would be tempest-tost
and would knock on that golden door
ourselves.
We shall get to that and so much more
when the following decades get their
turn. For now we have looked - if only
superficially - at four events from the
beginning of our century.
These events, often occurring so fast,
changed many ways of life and their
influence was (is) felt not only in Ame
rica but all over the globe. The Twen
tieth Century was on the move
"INGET MATI" "AD PATRES"
Fa. Johs. Ouwejan Zn.
bewoog zich door het midden van de
barak. Hij wandelde met gesloten ogen
door het gangpad. Zijn armen als vleu
gels op en neer zwaaiend. 'Koer, koer,
riep hij, 'koer, koer!'
De mensen lachten en herinnerden
zich zijn vooroorlogse passie.
De volgende dag werd de slaapwande
laar aangeklampt en werd hem verteld
van zijn nachtelijke wandeling.
Hij krabde zich achter zijn oor en haal
de zijn schouders op.
De tweede nacht begon het ritueel van
voren af aan. Alleen zwaaide de slaap
wandelaar niet meer met zijn armen,
ook koerde hij niet. Wel ontsnapten
kleine lokgeluiden aan zijn lippen.
Toen de duivenmelker bij het ochtend
appel werd verteld dat hij 's nachts
'weer bezig was geweest', antwoordde
hij: 'Nondeju, het kan kloppen. Was ik
gisteren toch vergeten een bakje water
voor hun achter te laten!'
35
(Advertentie)
Begrafenis-
en Crematie- Onderneming
Opgericht 1924
ROUWKAMERS
EN ONTVANGKAMERS
AIRCONDITIONED
Kantoren:
Frederik Hendriklaan 7 - Den Haag
Tel. 070 - 355 64 27 (drie lijnen)
Samengesteld door: Tina Daniels
43ste jaargang - nummer 2 - augustus I998
