Hi all!  Christopher Noering wrote about the other "Eekhoorn" organ
in yesterday's MMD.  In order to avoid confusion, here is the true
story about the old "Sik", which means goatee beard.

This organ was built in 1926 by de Decap Brs. in Antwerp.  It arrived
as one in a series of 75-key Decap organs, which all shared the same
type of front.  All of them had closed side-chests with figures of
a man's height painted upon them, nearly all Middle-East types (hence
the name "Arabier" for the most famous of them all).  This organ was
nicknamed "de Sik" because the man on the right side of the original
front wore a goatee beard.

In the early 1930s the organ was rebuilt by Carl Frei in Breda, who
reorganized the instrument to his own 72-key system.  Later in the
1930s the side panels of the front were rebuilt and the figures were
replaced by wood carvings with squirrels in the centre.

Mr. van Jaaren, then the owner, tried to rename the organ as
"Eekhoorn", but this name was not accepted by the public and the
renters, who stubbornly called it by its old nickname, even though
no goatee-bearded man visible anymore!

The organ is now owned by Mr. Elbert Pluer in Bussum.  The front was
repainted in the 1970s by Mr. Posthumus, who painted a real goat in
the top piece, thus bringing back a goatee beard on the facade again!

Best wishes and lots of electricity from the Netherlands,

Hans van Oost