MEMEL DAYS

The second branch I was posted to was in a town even smaller and more remote than Fauresmith where I started. Coming from the dry, grim South Western Free State to the lush North Eastern part, arriving in Memel was really a pleasure. The countryside is green and pretty as pictures one sees of England and the town nestles at the foot of the smooth, well worn hills of the Drakensberg. The village lies close to the Klip River and the Seekoeivlei wetland, which in my day was virtually unknown as a tourist attraction but which is now as famous as the Wetlands situated at Wakkerstroom. Nobody really knows how the town became named Memel but possibly after a port city in Prussia. The word means “mute” or “silent” in the Latvian Curonian language, quite appropriate for what was a dying town in my time but fortunes have changed and the village has really picked up its head since the turn of the century.

I made the run down and dingy Memel Hotel my home – at R30 a month I felt I could easily afford it. The hotel was owned by Oom Stoffel Odendaal and run by his son-in-law, Attie Strydom and his family. The shortcomings in the rooms and premises and the less than wonderful table, were balanced by the hospitality of the Strydoms – lovely people with whom I still have occasional contact. Apart from the well supported pub, there was also a snooker room where one could play snooker and a near extinct game called skittles.

The room next to mine was occupied by a diminutive fellow, Ken Hellyer, who was teller at the branch. Almost right away, Ken and I were comparing notes on our records and playing the music of the day. He was an utter Ventures freak and owned every album the band had produced at that stage. (The band, now no longer around due to the deaths of members, went on to make around 100 albums, all of which I now have) He also had an electric guitar and a little amplifier with which he could make noise and generally annoy Oom Attie. A drinking habit which he had then, was Red Heart Rum and Coke. I couldn’t stand the smell of the stuff and stuck to Black Label beer, which had just come on the market and was pretty potent. I also learned to drink vodka there – good old voddies and Coke made me one of the “manne”! Neither of us had a car, so we were trapped in Memel and we chose to find our solace in the pub.

We soon discovered that a drink or two after work quickly added up and made deep inroads into our miserable little salaries. What to do? Obviously we had to buy in bulk. We carefully worked out just how much we drank over a month, pooled our meagre resources and went to the bottle store and bought stock. Ken could not afford Red Heart so he opted for a local brand –probably Squadron or Squaddies to rhyme with Voddies. We packed it all out on my dressing table and it looked marvelous. We were really chuffed at having solved our solvency problems without having to sacrifice any pleasures. Attie did not seem to miss us in the pub and had nothing to say about our new arrangement.

Gee, it seemed such a brilliant idea at the time but we’d forgotten to factor in one little thing – our own thirst. We had taken away the moderating influences of the barman and economics so there was nothing to stop us from being a little bit naughtier if we chose to be. And choose we did. A stock which was supposed to last for a full month, lasted for just ONE WEEK! It was a very shamefaced pair who crawled back to Attie and begged for a bit of credit to help relieve the silly drought we had created.

I’m sorry so many if my stories involve alcohol – Yeah, I know much of my youth was misspent but would you have had these yarns to chuckle at if alcohol had not helped to produce them?

Before I carry on, emetophobes beware!

There was an occasion when one of our staff members at the bank was on leave and a fellow from the Relief Staff, one Lambert Vos, came to help. Vos was better known as “Vet Vos” for reasons which need no elaboration. Boy, the bloke was fond of his grub and it showed. After his first day with us, we brought him along with us for an after work beer and while we were slaking our thirst, someone of our gang told us of a drink to which he had been introduced. Basically it was just Guinness Stout and Port Wine, simple enough. We had to try it of course and found it very much to our liking. The sweetness of the port tempered the bitterness of the Guinness and the result was an eminently tasty drink, which er ….. kicked like a mule! I had wrapped myself round three of these wonders, very unwise on a basically empty stomach and I was feeling VERY unsteady by the time suppertime rolled around. I suggested to Vossie that we go in for super and he was keen.

By now, I was feeling just a tad queasy and I thought a bit of Chef Moses’ soup would settle things down but when David, the ancient waiter brought the soup, it did not do the trick. I took one look at that plate of yellow stuff with lumps of grey meat floating in it and every part of my being rebelled, especially my poor abused stomach. I most unwisely placed my hand firmly over my mouth to batten down the hatches so to speak, to absolutely no avail. Up came all that lovely Guinness and I had to take my hand away or flippin’ well drown. I must have looked for all the world like one of those Texas oil gushers as I covered my plate, the table, my trousers and worst of all, my brand new royal blue blazer, in what looked like the best Brent crude.

Oh what shame and disgrace. Normally affable old David was extremely agitated and chased me out of his dining room. I stumbled out to my room and lay face down on the stoep, with my head hanging over the edge. Folks, I was so sick I thought I would die and when the disgrace penetrated my befuddled mind, I wished I HAD died!

And now for the remarkable part: Vet Vos had carried on eating calmly throughout my entire performance, pausing only for a second to tell me to rather go outside and misbehave there. THAT has to be the most remarkable dedication to eating that I have ever been witness to. He never turned a hair when Oilgusher Lyle was erupting like Mount Vesuvius. Remarkable man, quite remarkable.

Many years later, I returned to Memel for an audit of the branch. I was reasonably sure old David would no longer be with us, so I could face the new people of the hotel without them having to worry about the possibility of a return performance by me. They didn’t have to know my history did they? I was a week into the audit when a kid came into the bank leading a very doddery old chap. I did a double-take when I realized it was my old pal, David!

I went to the counter and greeted the old guy and he confirmed that he WAS David from the hotel. Asked whether he knew who I was, he shook his head doubtfully. I mentioned that I had stayed at the hotel when I was a young man and then I took a chance on the shameful incident to see if I was safe yet and to my surprise, he perked up considerably and pointed a shaky finger at me and exclaimed, “John, dja ek ken djou, ek ken djou”. The horror of that awful night was STILL etched upon his mind, more than 20 years after the occasion. I slipped the old guy a handful of notes, not for his silence but to belatedly thank him for cleaning up after me that night.

Ken and I took to smoking pipes sometime in that year. I smoked throughout my high school years and kept the habit going until 1969 when I quit cigarettes. My smoking had incurred Attie Strydom’s wrath when on a cold winter’s night, I had awoken, lit up a cigarette and fallen back asleep soon after. I must have been asleep for quite some time when I half awoke and thought I was standing on a mountain looking at veldfire down on the plains – a dark circle with glowing edges was what I saw. I was galvanized wide awake when I realized that the fire was on my chest and not miles away. The cigarette had fallen from my lips and quietly burned a 12 inch hole through my top blanket and to a lesser extent the next couple of blankets. Only the 4th blanket and the sheet were unscathed. (Did I mention that Memel was jolly cold? There were no electric blankets or hot water bottles back then, hence 4 blankets) I’m a bit ashamed to mention this but I flung a glass of water over the smoldering blanket, never for a moment thinking, at 1 in the morning, that I still had some hours left to sleep in that wet and horrible smelling bed. A genius I was not. Cost me three blankets and brought Attie’s wrath down around my ears and I don’t think I ever smoked in bed again. It’s like the old joke says, don’t smoke in bed or you could end up being the toast of the town.

This may have been why I started smoking a pipe. One cold evening after supper, Ken had the brilliant idea of using our pipes to create a bit of havoc in the pub. We crept into the lounge next to the pub and peered through a crack in the ancient serving hatch. The pub door was closed against the cold, Attie was behind the counter, Oom Nick Roos was reaching an advanced state of mellowness having been there half the afternoon and Pat de Bruyn was squatting on the barstool with his feet on it, just like a bushman. The conversation was quiet and easy, the talk of some chaps in whom the buzz had reached optimum level.

Ken & I lit up our pipes and once they were well alight we turned them around and started blowing into the bowls while we stuck the mouthpiece through the crack. It produces a really satisfying stream of non-stop smoke that way and we just kept on at it until you could hardly see the chaps in the murk. All of a sudden Pat fell off his stool in his haste, shouting “O genade manne, die f…..n plek brand af.” Even Oom Nick in his inebriated condition got out of that door like a sprinter. Ken and I meanwhile had swiftly scampered back to our rooms where we switched off the lights and waited.

Attie quickly figured out who was to blame and after a while I heard my bedroom door open and Attie say into the dark, “Ek weet dit was julle klein donners. Hiervoor gaan julle nog duur betaal”. Gosh but that was fun and Attie never got back at us either.

Sunday lunch saw the family gather around the large family table in the dining room. At least once a week Moses outdid himself and produced a really excellent plate of food but I always made sure I found a seat which didn’t face the family table. Why ? Oom Stoffel sat at the head of the table and his setting always had a cooked sheep’s head resting on it. I only managed to watch him eating that awful thing once and decided I was not strong enough to do it again. Pulling strips of meat off it was bad enough but the crunch came when he popped those damn sheep’s eyes in his mouth and chewed them with great relish. I shudder even now at the thought.

There weren’t many young people in the town but we still managed to have fun. Most young people stayed at Tannie Betty Uys’ house, boarding house style but Ken and I preferred the hotel. Across the road from the hotel Oom Gert Kroon had a little café while his wife Tannie Dulcie, ran an emporium for the ladies. I think Oom Gert had an excessive fondness for money because, believe it or not, he used to wash and iron his notes before banking them. Mind you, he could also have had a thing for cleanliness, I just don’t know. His son Poekkels was studying to be a doctor at the time and he ended up coming back to the town to practice medicine. That’s another story to which I’ll return. The building was quite large and at the end away from the café was a bit of a hall. I would drag my “hi-fi system” across to the hall every now and then and play records while the young folk danced. (My hi-fi was a little turntable attached to a home-built amp {Made by Piet Theron, the town attorney} running into a 12 inch speaker set in a tea chest! There wasn’t much musical fidelity involved but boy, it could pump.) Ken and I tried hard to play a bit of our music (Beach Boys, Ventures and the like) but we were shouted down because the crowd could only effectively dance to Boeremusiek. So Boeremusiek it was and everybody “skoffeled” to their hearts’ content. The girls worked pretty hard though because inevitably, there was a preponderance of males and the girls NEVER really sat out! Having the pub right across the road helped fill in time between dances and the evenings were very merry. I’ve never danced a step in my life and I don’t really like Boeremusiek much but I remember those evenings with much affection. The only trouble I ever recall was one night one of the girls was furious because her fiancé persisted in dancing with all the other girls while ignoring her. I don’t know if he was just having a last look around at what was available in the partner market or whether she was just a poor dancer but he had his ring flung in his face and was told exactly where he should put it.

As I said earlier, Poekkols became a doctor and came back to Memel to set up his practice. I had run out of blood pressure medication when I arrived there for an audit and went to see him. All I wanted was a fresh script but Poekkels insisted I should be examined first. I was starting to boil just a little when he reached my right foot and announced that he could not feel my pulse and that I must have a blocked artery. I rubbished his finding pointing out that I walked several kilometers every day and would not manage that with blocked arteries. Not listening to reason, he picked up the phone and started making an appointment for me with a specialist in Newcastle. Closest I’ve ever come to thumping a doctor! He finally realized I was really angry and grudgingly gave me my prescription on condition I would see my own doctor when next in Ladybrand. I did just that and he couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with my circulation. And then my family wonders why I have so little faith in doctors.

Generally speaking, farmers in the area were well to do. Their offspring didn’t mix with us working types as they were away at university or school. So it came as a surprise when we were all invited to a party and dance to celebrate a 21st birthday, on a farm not far from town. We were a bit dubious about going when we heard that these were very religious people, who eschewed alcohol but we cheered up when someone suggested we buy half jacks of our favourite tipple and take them along inside our inner jacket pockets. Problem solved, we were now ready to properly toast the fellow who was about to turn 21. The party/dance was held in a smart, modern barn. Full grain sacks were stacked along the walls of the barn for the guests to sit on and away the party went. The preliminaries of handing over gifts, the key to adult life and all the speeches, were carried out and in a corner, the corks were popping on what we assumed were bottles of sparkling grape juice. (Grapetizer and Appletizer had not been invented yet). The time arrived for the lad to be toasted and we all had glasses of bubbly, with which to do it. Slyly we topped up our glasses with a bit of the hard stuff from our inner pockets. Nice! Yep, it sure was and now we could fortify ourselves without offending the hosts.

The only trouble was, we were not toasting with doctored grape juice but with doctored CHAMPAGNE! I’m sure many of you will know that champagne is NOT the innocuous, friendly little drink it appears to be. It kicks just as hard as whisky or vodka and produces one of the worst hangovers of any drink. So adding a good splash of vodka or cane spirit to the mix is courting disaster. I started realizing something was awry when after my third glassful of “grape juice” I suddenly slid off the bag I was sitting on landing behind it where it was mercifully dark. My mind said I couldn’t be drunk after just three little glasses but the rest of me disagreed. I eventually got back up on the bags but watching dancing couples whirling by did my equilibrium no good at all. I eventually went out to Johan Slabbert’s car and tried to doze my way back to reasonable sobriety.

The time came for us to return to town and we piled into the two Peugeot station wagons we had come in. And now comes Suzette Uys’ revelation from a good few years after the occasion. She had found herself on a capacious backseat between two very sozzled chaps – Ken and a bloke we called Wolfie. Suzette wasn’t anyone’s “steady” at the time and as she was an attractive young lady, all the boys fancied her. Suzette felt the guys trying, in their inebriated state, to get hold of her hands to hold but she just wasn’t into it so she took their groping hands, linked them together and sat back in peace, while her two addled romeos, held hands with each other across her lap.

I doubt if either of those two chaps had any inkling that Suzette had played them a dirty trick and I’m sure both would self destruct in shame if they ever found out that each had held hands with the other. I’m still in touch with Suzette, more than 50 years on – she’s a sprightly Ouma now but still recalls that night with a naughty twinkle in her eye.

I turned 21 myself in Memel but I’m not going to bore you with what by now will be a familiar scenario, where our celebrations are concerned. We had to take someone through to Newcastle to catch a train on the Sunday before the Monday on which I reached my majority and I’m afraid we behaved quite badly on the way back home. I recall us all sitting in the road on the Natal/OFS borderline, having a snort by the car headlights. Only one car came by while we were thus occupied and luckily their impressions of us are not available.

Back at the hotel on a Sunday night, we convinced Attie that we’d quietly take our rowdy party elsewhere if he would just let us have two bottle of Voddies, so that we didn’t run dry. We took our racket out to the crossroads at the edge of town and carried on until around 2 am. On the Monday morning, I had not even sobered up properly yet and I went to work still inebriated but I hand-posted my ledger without a single mistake, which I reckon illustrates the value of alcohol.

But what I was going to say was that at the age of 20, I had NEVER seen the sea so on a long week-end in 1966, JP Prinsloo, Greta vd Merwe, Suzette Uys and I, piled into JPs little Anglia and travelled down to Durbs. Remarkably folks, there was no alcohol whatsoever involved but we had (Well, I did anyway!) a deliriously lekker time. We went on all the funfair rides on the Beachfront and just carried on like kids. I hit it off so well with Suzette that we’re still friends all these years later. Everyone was staring at me to see my reaction to my first glimpse of the sea, so I pretended to be mesmerized but the truth is, the sea was (and still is) rather ho-hum to me. I’d much rather be up in the mountains, than splashing around in salty water.