Callantsooger Piet Vos wanted to bring tourism to his village and built the first hotel there in the 1930s. The guests, of course, came for the beach. Together with fellow villager Piet de Haan, Vos soon started a beach company, which consisted of about ten wooden poles, some bulkheads and a few tables with chairs. The first beach pavilion in the Netherlands was a fact.
Fox it says in large letters above the entrance to the beach pavilion. More than 90 years after Piet Vos started it, it is still run by his family. Curator Jesse has made an appointment with Frits Vos. He is a grandson of the founder and is waiting for us under a clear blue sky.
After his grandfather, Frits’ father took over the pavilion and later a brother of Frits. Now it is his cousin who runs the place, but Frits still comes there every day for a cup of coffee. He spent his entire childhood on the beach.
“My grandfather and Piet de Haan started in 1933 and continued until 1956,” says Frits. “Then they were fed up because at the end of the season they each had 45 guilders. And they had worked all summer for that. But yes, with such a turnover no one wanted to buy it and then my father said ‘then I’ll take over.”
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From the summer of 1957, Frits lived on the beach with his parents and two brothers. His father had added an extension to the pavilion where the family could live. “What is now the toilet building, that’s where my brothers and I slept in bunk beds,” Frits points out.
He spends his youth on the beach. “That was wonderful, we had a very free life. There was always something to do. My father also organized all kinds of things. From treasure hunts to dance evenings on the beach. And when I was about 16, we made campfires and then lay Sometimes we didn’t get to bed until 4 o’clock. But then my father would wake us up early in the morning, because the beach had to be cleaned. ‘A man by night, a man by day,’ he would say.”
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The postcards that Jacob Vos made or had made himself every year are legendary. Frits leafs through the scrapbooks. “From the cards you can see what kind of summer it was. Whether the sun was shining or raining. There were even people who collected them.”
A menu from 1946 is also included in the book. Meat ball 0.70 cents is written by hand. “It was certainly new on the menu that summer,” Frits jokes. One of the last postcards is a photo of his father. Stretched out in a beach chair. “After sixty years of renting out beach chairs, he started enjoying it himself.”
Beach life in Callantsoog – NH News
On an old bicycle
In twelve episodes, image curator Jesse and program maker Carolien cycle along the coast. Along the way they visit places and meet people with important, special and sometimes forgotten stories from the past.
On an old bicycle can be seen weekly on NH from Sunday, January 7, at 5:11 PM.