So Bartje lived within walking distance of Assen. De Lange Jammer was not a street or neighborhood, but a building. Historian Bertus Boivin previously said the following about this: “It was actually a long building containing all one-room houses in a row. There was a separate toilet in a wooden cubicle and there was often a vegetable garden at the back.” The Lange Jammer in Assen was located on the spot where the Kloosterveen district is now built. There is nothing left to see in the landscape.
The meadows, fields and ditches are still there. To get to Assen, Bartje had to go along the Lange Jammer, so it is logical to conclude that Bartje lived on the other side of where Kloosterveen is now located, more towards the Smildes. Bartje jumped over ditches and ran across fields and meadows, which suggests that Anne de Vries had a ‘neighborhood’ such as the Meesterswijk or the Van Lierswijk in mind as a place where Bartje Bartels lived with his family.
At the end of the book, the Bartels family falls into even greater poverty than they already lived in. Then they all moved to the Lange Jammer, where they lived with the whole family in a room measuring three by four or five meters.
Text continues after the card: