La Licorne

MAKING a HOME

It was a typical dike house as one finds in this country all along the rivers. We figured it had potential and only missed a cellar. So after making the deal we blocked off the front door and removed most of the partitioning downstairs. That made a marvelous big living annex kitchen. We moved in when the real mess was over, but building activity continued. Standing apart from the house was a barn. By making an extension on the backside of the house, we linked the two and obtained a nice and spacious entity.

The upstairs story of the house needed a lot of fixing as well, which work lasted till the twenty third of November 1970. I remember this date so well, because, while I completed the hammering in the master bedroom, my wife completed our family by giving birth to our son Lucien. With a fine sense for timing I then diverted my attention to the barn.

The barn was of the long-gable type characteristic to the region. The thatched roof gave a romantic finish. To us, the barn compensated to some extent the simple architecture of the house, though it had its shortcomings as well. The worst was that the back half of the building had started sliding down the slope of the dike, causing nasty cracks on both long gables. My first concern was to stop this process by providing buttresses for support. One of the cracks happened to be at the place where I could use a door, so that settled for that side.

A Barn with Cracks and Smoke Stack

Another thing that irritated was a smoke stack bluntly sticking through the roof frontage. Fortunately the crack on the other side of the barn offered a good location for a new chimney. Having become wise from all the subsidence I made sure to dig deep enough for a foundation. While I was doing it I hit on the corner of a hidden cellar. That arouse my curiosity, but I finished the chimney first.

When autumn 1972 came I had the chimney smoking, and the barn comfortably heated. Alas, in my way remained some stalls for cattle and hog. When removed, it left an uneven floor, which I broke up as well. This gave me the opportunity to trace the contours of the hidden cellar, which happened to be located entirely within the confines of the building. With that knowledge I set myself to digging for more discoveries. Starting from one corner it was marvelous to see a hole grow bigger. The first cubic meter took some effort, but when removed it looked quite spacious. It was so impressive that I couldn't hide my intentions from the family. While Mieke showed concern, the children were so excited that I couldn't cancel the project any more. So I continued.

The digging wasn't particularly easy on account of the rubble among the clay. Moreover, as the work progressed the dirt had to be lifted increasingly high. Nevertheless the mess and Mieke's sighs kept me going, and -who knew- a hidden treasure might be turning up. In all I must have excavated some 400 loads into the wheelbarrow. The dirt coming out of the excavation was used for landscaping the garden. Meanwhile daily life went on as usual: the children played around the crater, the he-goat jumped in it, Mieke maneuvered past it, and the chickens did as they liked all over the place.

The find was a water jar

The load of bricks that I had fixed at a bargain for the chimney showed sufficient for the cellar as well, including a staircase and niches for wine-storage. Having served as clinkers for road surfacing, these bricks were endowed with a sticky black substance that had to be removed before they were fit for building purpose.

Since I knew how dirty a job this was, I engaged my six and eight years old daughters for doing it. To facilitate the job I equipped them with brand new thick threaded nylon brushes. It took some pressure before it became routine for them to start every day after school with the cleaning. Truly the bricks were heavy, the water felt cold and spiders emerged from dark caverns. It was only when the job was over that I noticed they had reduced the brush to a stump, and had rubbed off their fingerprints. Now, don't blame me for that, for I can't be expected to look after everything.

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I write 2008. Twenty December of the year 2008 to be precise, and I just returned from our old house, where I met Kees van Eggelen. Kees is the son of Janske and the (late) colorful gentleman I knew from the land consolidation job I had back in 1963. It was he, who not only showed me all the pubs of the region, but also the beauty of the birds, the game and the nature in general. He had a fine hand for making drawings. Anyway, the son just offered me to help getting the wind vane installed back on top of the tower of La Licorne. That vane that has been gold plated again after it had been shitted upon and scratched by pigeons and craws. Maya Daudey did the restauration job.