Boys will be boys

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If this isn’t a truly fantastic picture, we don’t know what is, and we’re sure it evokes memories for many of you. What's better than playing outside in an old, abandoned, faded and part-dismantled car? The author Joseph Heller wrote 'When I grow up I want to be a little boy.' This is surely what he had in mind.

Born in 1923, Heller was seven years old when this picture was taken - about as old as the boys in this photograph must have been in 1930 when it was shot, but they are thousands of miles away from the New York where Heller grew up. This was taken in a place called Schoten, which is now part of the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. The sign next to the car reveals a bit more. Translated it says: ‘First Car Transport Company of Schoten. Supply of black soil, river and dune sand. Contractor for ground works P. J. Oerlemans, Oosterstraat No. 8, Schoten'. The number plate is a provincial one, issued in North Holland, so a local one indeed.

Is the car one of the company’s cars which had been discarded? That seems unlikely as it appears to be an early 1920s Ford Model T doctor’s coupé, which isn't a very suitable vehicle for transporting soil and sand. Just a car dumped in the woods then? Even that seems questionable as a car of not even 10 years old must have been of at least some value back then. Any other explanations? Tell us what you think...

Words Jeroen Booij; picture via Gerrit Hansma at Oldtimerliefhebbers/Mecum Auctioneers
 

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