Hidden and dilapidated: Cees (82) is not yet selling his burnt-down hotel for a million

If you’re not paying attention, you’ll drive right past it. Cees Schumaker’s house is hidden between a thousand tall trees and only has a black fence with a thin path that leads to his house. The 82-year-old Texel native, who wears a large leather hat and has medium-length gray hair underneath, lives on his own wooded territory, with a house that has been under construction for 40 years. A quiet life, but that used to be different.

Schumaker ran a youth hotel in the late 1960s: Sleep-in Klabam. It was not a big deal and not at all how we know tourism on Texel now, but Schumaker likes to talk about it. “Everyone arrived, because there was no reservation. It was a different time. You paid 3.75 guilders per night then, I believe,” says Cees.

Job for sleeping place

Drug users, police detainees, or women with soup dresses: Cees came across a wide variety of figures. Everyone was welcome and there were never any problems. “Those were relaxed times,” says Cees. Even when a guest couldn’t pay, Schumaker had a solution for that. “A lady like that in a soup dress wanted to stay longer, but had no money left. I didn’t say a point, then you dig,” the Texel resident laughs.

Although Cees had a permit for 65 sleeping places, everyone was welcome and there were endless mattresses. During a visit from a municipal inspector, it quickly became clear that the mattresses were very close together. “The mattresses had to be 30 centimeters apart to prevent homosexual contact, as if that 30 centimeters made a difference. But the man was Christian and had to give me a permit, so I listened.”

Cees turned a blind eye to a lot, because he too had been young and knew that the young people wouldn’t keep their hands above the covers anyway. “You had two bunk beds in the room and I said in advance, just go to bed with the two of us, because if I had lifted my heels they would still do it. So then you had eight people in a room” Schumaker laughs.

Fire

After these relaxed years, also known as the flower power period for Cees, the fairy tale came to an abrupt end. A fire broke out in the youth hotel just when Schumaker was not at home. The fire brigade was too late to save the building.

No one was injured during the fire, as the hotel was not open to guests at the time. “People would have been trapped like rats”, the fire master at the time, D. van Wilsum, told the Texel newspaper at the time.

The photo below is the newspaper report of 17 June 1977 from the Texelse Courant, which stated that a fire had broken out at Klabam. Text continues below the photo.

According to Schumaker, the cause of the fire was a cigarette butt between the mattresses. “There were a hundred mattresses and a guest had smoked,” explains Cees.

End of an era

After the fire, Cees is done with doing business in the tourism sector for a while. He does not choose to rebuild something again. “I thought it was nice and I didn’t have the financial resources to create something again,” he explains. The Klabam era came to an end, which, according to Schumaker, was also becoming less and less popular.

And so Cees has had a permit for 65 sleeping places for decades that he does nothing with. And those are 65 sleeping places that many hotel or holiday park owners would like to have. Texel has set a maximum of 47,000 beds, and those are almost all gone.

Over the years, Schumaker sometimes receives an offer to sell those 65 ‘beds’, but that is no longer so easy since stricter rules. After all, the beds must remain at the same destination, and the Texel resident does not like moving.

The Texel resident even turned down an offer of one million guilders to sell the entire site and the 65 beds some 30 years ago. “You should not help your environment to its madness by building a large-scale hotel there, because then you will get annoyed green and yellow. You will regret that”, Cees believes.

Even with a good chunk of money, which would mean he never has to work again, you can’t get Cees off his beloved terrain. “Even if it yields ten million, I don’t care. What is money? The environment where you are is very important.”

Future plans

Although the Texel resident is already 82 years old, he is still very spry and active. He renovates his house independently, but you can call that a long-term project without exaggerating. He has been rebuilding for forty years. “I think I am now Dutch champion”, laughs Cees. But it’s not surprising that it takes so long, because Cees does all the work himself, brick by brick.

Schumaker now has an end date, which he believes can also be achieved: “It must be finished in two years.” And all that yourself. Help is completely out of the question. “Because those people all work way too rough.”

Cees is still renovating his house after forty years, view the photos here:

But Schumaker is also planning something with the 65 sleeping places after more than forty years. No partying young people, but tourists who are looking for a place to spend the night with their camper. “The request for 32 camper pitches has already been submitted to the municipality,” says Cees.

When Cees thinks about how he envisions the camper pitches, he describes it as an idyllic spot between the trees and along the small lake, where people can spend the night in peace and quiet with their camper. A completely different world than fifty years ago, but perhaps that suits him better at the moment, given the age of this striking Texel resident.