I fell in love with Ladybrand the moment we came over the apex of the Platberg and there far below, lay the lights of the town. Dad had a 1953 Chev and we were crammed into that car like sardines. In the boot was Robbie, the boerboel along with our luggage, on the backseat was Granny, Patty & John, somewhere in there was Jeannie the fox terrier, Micky the mouse in his (her) cage. Up front, Dad balanced the fishbowl down by his feet which, because we were travelling along bumpy backroads, eventually toppled over and lost the poor goldfish much of their home environment. We stopped on the outskirts of Dewetsdorp while Dad went in to a house to ask for some water for his fish. Dad never forgot that old male chauvinist calling out, “Ou vrou, bring vir die man water” because it was quite unthinkable to him to call one’s wife out simply to undertake a simple task like that. Dad was about as far away from male chauvinism as one can get! Fish bowl restored, we managed the rest of the journey without mishap.
Down the old road built by Royal Engineers during the Boer War, past the golf course and into town we went. It was dark by then so we saw little of the town initially. We stopped off at the house just to lock old Robbie up in the kitchen for the night and then went round to the Grand Hotel to book in. It seemed such an amazingly grand place to me – I couldn’t get over all the shiny cutlery adorning the tables, when we went in for breakfast and was amazed that one could eat something other than pap for breakfast. The new house with its huge unkempt garden was a source of much delight for me. For one thing, we no longer had to traipse through the backyard to relieve a tummyache – there was a waterborne toilet right there in the bathroom. I would STILL recognize the smell of the original Harpic crystals which we found there, if I ever ran into them again. It was just bloody marvelous. Better still, the bathroom had a woodburning geyser with which to warm up the bath water – light years away from the drum which stood on the stove all day in Trompsburg and which Dad had to tote out to the bathroom. The house had three bedrooms - Mom and Dad shared with Pat while Granny & I had rooms leading off the short entrance passage. There was a lounge/dining room in the centre of the house with a pantry and kitchen off the dining room. I finally had my own room, YAY!
Mom always said that while that house was never much to look at or unduly comfortable, it had a lovely, friendly “feel” about it. It was a happy, welcoming house and today, looking back, I very much agree with her assessment. I went out into that jungle of a garden and it was like walking out on a farm. There was a generous run for our chickens or fowls as we called them and at the furthest end of the yard, was an old, rickety looking raw brick stable. Next to it stood a ramshackle corrugated iron garage for Dad’s car. Looking into the stable I met Maggie, a little black and white female cat who, we discovered, seemed to spend her little life having kittens. We adopted Maggie in due course and most kittens were put out for adoption. A good few went out to the Bartleman farm, Moorfield. Just once Dad decided to drown a litter but it so upset him that he ended up in the bathroom from where he came out white as a sheet. Needless to say, Mom was equally devastated.
Right behind the house stood the biggest mulberry tree I’ve ever encountered. It bore fruit which was insipid and not worth eating but a little way into the backyard wilderness stood a much smaller tree which bore wonderful mulberries, the like of which I’ve never encountered again. There was a wide variety of fruit trees in the garden which included, pears, apricots, cherries, pomegranates, figs, quinces and peaches. There was an almond tree which always flowered too soon and was never able to produce nuts because of late frosts. On the fence between us and Malcomess, a farm machinery dealer, was a walnut tree which bore nuts but which were almost always spoiled by the coddling moth. Dad soon had a chunk of the garden cleared of weeds and ready for vegetables and when in full production, we enjoyed lettuce, spinach, beans, carrots, peas and radishes. Dad even grew strawberries. The sole cherry tree bore the finest, sweet cherries you could wish for which unfortunately were equally sought after by swarms of starlings which would just peck and ruin a cherry, seldom eating one completely. They were so bold that I was sitting up the tree one afternoon and they joined me there, without turning a feather. I’ve disliked starlings ever since.
There were huge kikuyu lawns in front of the house, with four diamond shaped beds in the middle. Nothing would grow in these beds because the kikuyu would simply send rhizomes into the beds and steal the water meant for whatever plants Dad had put in. He eventually conceded defeat and contracted me to bring in barrow loads of soil with which to fill up the holes. I had to dig a hole in the unused part of the garden and cart that soil round to the front at something like a halfpenny a load – might even have been a farthing, I’m not sure. The hole I created in turn became a dump for garden refuse. Dad always made sure I had substantial projects like that to keep me busy and the exercise from swinging a pick, shoveling with a spade and pushing a heavy wheelbarrow, toughened me up too. I really loved that kind of job. The very worst job though, was trying to keep that damn kikuyu grass cut. No motor mowers in those days – we had only a hand powered Rolux, really meant for gentile English lawns, not tough African grass. After the first frosts, the lawn would die back and dry out and then it became possible to cut it.
One winter afternoon, Mom was sitting out on the lawn, knitting and enjoying the bit of sun. She lit a cigarette and must have dropped the still burning match into the dry grass and the next thing, Mom was stranded on a little island in a sea of blackened, smoking grass. Alan Watson and I were around so we rushed in and stamped out the fire with our shoes. I wonder why Granny didn’t rush in and report HER to someone too.
Getting back to Ladybrand as a town, I was happy in the town from the word go. I was particularly taken with the Platberg and its gigantic sandstone cliffs and boulders. After the weedy little hills of the Southern Free State, this Platberg was a mountain to me. I couldn’t get enough of seeing all those trees in the plantation behind the railway station and I longed to get out and see these wonders up close. It must have been on the first day Dad took us for a drive up into the beautiful park, Lilyhoek, along the road past the Hospital, which was closed to traffic in later years. The area at the foot of the tumbled rocks and tall trees, consisted of carefully terraced and maintained rose gardens. These were discarded in later years in order to create a swimming pool. It was an amazingly beautiful place, especially after the dreary sameness of Trompsburg. During the Royal Visit in 1947, the Royal party was shown around Lilyhoek and the then Princess Elizabeth is said to have commented on the lack of toilet facilities in the park. Toilets put up in haste after they had left would have severely irked Auntie Lizzie if she was in charge back then because they could only have been longdrops! No place for self respecting Royal bottoms, to be sure.
Dad also took us to the shops on Saturday morning and we parked outside the chemist/bookshop Austen Thomas. We kids stayed in the car and goggled at the “heavy” traffic and fine shops. Dad came out of Austen Thomas with British kids’ comics – The Knockout, The Beano, the Dandy , The Valiant and some girls’ comics like June, Girl’s Crystal as well. We greatly enjoyed British comics – they were much better than the American ones which was all we’d ever seen in Trompsburg. Dad subscribed to several comics on our behalf because he enjoyed them himself, especially Knockout which became the Valiant. I also used to get the Boys Own Paper, a slightly toffee-nosed magazine for the better class of lad! But the reading material I spent most money on was the 64 page pocket edition War Picture Library and similar series like Air War Picture Library and so on. We called them “One and threes” because they cost a shilling and thruppence. I built up a substantial collection which I really cherished but alas, Mom did the unforgivable and disposed of all my precious, hoarded reads while I was in the army. I’ve still not forgiven Mom for that heinous crime – they’d be worth good money today if they had been kept. A few years ago, a friend lent me a big pile of these comics which I enjoyed as much as I did when I was a lad. They were authentic stories, well drawn and exciting – very much slices from WW2 and not rubbish at all. Oh Mom, how could you!
There came a time when the problem of Mom and Dad having to share with Pat was faced. All would have been fine had Granny not been occupying the third bedroom. Thinking back, I don’t recall whose idea it was that I should move out onto the stoep but I’ll always be grateful for that bit of genius. We didn’t have much of a security problem in those days, with a curfew in place and I simply jumped at the chance to move out there into the fresh air. The ends of the stoep were enclosed and in front a fairly low wall made up the barrier – the rest was open to the glorious Eastern Free State air. I absolutely loved it out there, especially as it was summer and I had time to acclimatize before winter came along. A young couple living in the house adjoining ours had been to an estate sale and amongst other things had bought an old cathedral type wooden valve radio. They offered it to me and I grabbed it gratefully. Dad strung a power lead from an entrance hall plug and hey presto, I had my first radio.
I can’t find words even now to express how delighted I was to be able to lie and listen to the radio quietly playing behind my head. I could dig myself deep into my blankets, especially in winter and enjoy all my Springbok Radio shows and LM Radio’s endless supply of pop music, without sitting in the lounge shivering. At around 10.30 at night, John Berks had a show on LM on which he assumed the persona of a ducktail with an appropriate accent and presented his hilarious, “Gey’s Corner”. Make no mistake, it got pretty cold out on that stoep in winter and there were occasions when I found a thin ice layer on my bedside water in the morning but I cocked a snook at those Eastern Free State winters and had no wish to move back indoors at any time. I wore shorts to school all year long and sometimes even walked barefoot through the frost to feed our fowls in the morning. I became quite indifferent to cold and only wish I still had that ability today.
Round about this time, I somehow started smoking. I don’t remember exactly how or when I actually drew in my first puff but I would nick my Dad’s short, fat Springbok plain cigarettes, rather than my Mom’s cork tipped Rembrandt in the flat red box. Initially I smoked very little, especially after I heard Dad complaining about the maid stealing his cigarettes. I also had to be careful how I lit up because nosy Granny had a habit of peering out of her window at me at all hours. I lit and smoked under the blankets and took care not to blow out vast clouds of smoke. Getting rid of matches and stompies was simple – I simply stubbed them out and dropped them on the stoep and no-one would ask questions as they were Dad’s brand! Once we moved to our next house, I had progressed to buying my own – initially Lexington but eventually settling on Rothmans. By Std 9 I was buying a packet of 50 Rothmans filters a month, which cost exactly 50 cents. (Heavy when one’s pocket money was only R1). Packets of 50 were outlawed many years ago. I bought only from the rather slovenly Betty Ballabio at the Central Café. She had no qualms about selling to a minor and anyway, I’m sure she assumed I was buying for my parents.
Rothmans’ advertising greatly influenced my preference for their cigarettes because only the coolest, wealthiest people smoked them, if their film advertising was to be believed. Even the box and the aroma of the packet when one opened it, spoke of quality and utter coolness. As the habit took hold, a 50s packet would last only until about the 25th of the month but I used to save my “stompies” in a tin and when I ran out of cigs, I’d resort to smoking the last bits of tobacco right up to the filter, by sticking a pin in the filter and holding it that way. Those tar and nicotine drenched stompies kicked like a mule and I’d feel giddy and nauseous after one. How utterly foolish and uncool I was.
The house was on the corner of Voortrekker and Prinsloo Streets and there was a streetlight on the corner. One evening we spotted a bunny hopping around under the streetlight and when we approached he’d disappear back under the culvert, where he apparently had moved in. Dad was keen to trap him and bring him in so we could tame and look after him. Fashioning a simple wire trap balancing on a stick attached to a long piece of string, he baited the trap with lovely fresh lettuce leaves. We sat back a good distance away and as we hoped, out came the bunny and headed straight for the bait. Dad dropped the wire trap and Bugs, as we eventually called him, came to stay. He didn’t react wildly to being nabbed so we believed he had already belonged to someone else and had escaped. He soon had the run of the lounge and bedrooms and loved it if we were sick in bed because he could then spend the day up on the bed quite comfortably and happily. Our doctor, Dr Jan de Bruyn, calling to check on Pat who was sick in bed, was so enchanted with Bugs that he offered to buy him for his own kids. Unfortunately Bugs took a liking to Mom’s favourite lounge carpet and started ripping out the pile with his teeth. So the poor chappie was exiled to his cage outside and never came back inside again. His end was a particularly sad and infuriating one because at the third house we stayed at in Ladybrand, a neighbour’s dog called Tokkels, broke into his cage and simply bit him to death. Bugs had lived happily with our dogs and trusted them implicitly so he obviously thought all dogs were friendly.
Starting school in Ladybrand was quite an adaptation for us. Mom and Dad were keen to have us stay in the Afrikaans medium but “Das” Heckroodt, the Volkskool headmaster insisted that because our home language was English, we should both go into their English medium classes. Pat went into Miss Brisley’s class, a combination of Subs A & B as well as Stds 1 & 2. Brisley was a raucous voiced harridan, much given to flying off the handle and screaming at the kids. Her voice could be heard throughout the school when she was in full flight and I’ve never heard any kid that she taught, speak of her with any affection. I on the other hand, landed with Miss Pohl, a brilliant educator who not only successfully delivered the laid down curriculum to us but also expanded our minds with her scrapbooks and her paper mache models. I found my feet quite quickly and by the second quarter was doing quite well, inadvertently becoming a bit of a teacher’s pet in the process. Towards the month-end, she would send me off to town with her accounts and money and I would pay her bills for her. I much enjoyed getting away from the class and being on my own but it made my classmates rather envious and scornful. It really didn’t help that I made no attempt to join in any sport activities. The school offered tennisette and two of my classmates, Clive Webb and John Bramley were aces at the sport. Some of the chaps like Pietie Fouche always had a game of cricket going in a corner of the playground but I just sat and watched. I hated the PT classes with an ugly bulldog faced bastard they called Bobo because jumping over wooden horses and somersaulting just endangered my life.
I never was and never will be a team player – I detested joining groups of people and even going to teen parties was anathema to me. The term “Lone Wolf” was invented for me! I never found out if any girl was ever interested in me because I never made moves in their direction, despite having my share of crushes on one or two. Before I left the primary school, Miss Pohl cornered me and gave me a serious talking to, basically telling me that an unblemished scholastic record just wasn’t enough and that I needed to become more sociable and at least try to play sport. I promised I’d try just to get her off my back but never had any intention of following up on my promise. In High School had they not had a sport as a requirement, I’d not even have taken up tennis and would instead just have sloped off into my beloved Platberg in the afternoon.
Miss Pohl had some rather transparent tactics to keep us in line. There were times when she would rail at us for not doing our work and then exclaim, “I’ve had it with you kids”, grab her handbag and storm off into the staff room for a smoke. Back in class we’d be terrified of Heckroodt finding us without a teacher and having to explain why and we’d elect a spokesperson, usually Irmoine Maartens, to take our sincere apologies to her and beg her to forgive us and be our teacher again. We didn’t know it was just a little bit of applied psychology on her part at the time but later, when Pat moved down into her class, she used to pull the same stunt on them! Oh she was a wiley one, that old lady but we all loved her to bits. Every year we’d be told to come into school one afternoon because she wanted us to clean our desks. There we were, bottles of Jik out, getting rid of ink stains and polishing away at those crummy old desks. It must have been her version of team building. I can’t smell Jik and not think of those afternoons. Corporal Punishment was a last resort which she would employ on recalcitrant kids like Basil Robinson and John Bramley. The implement of punishment was called Jackie and was a length of leather strap attached to a bit of plank. I doubt if it hurt much because I recall a bent-over Bramley getting a “thrashing” in front on the class and grinning at us upside down between his legs, while Pohl slapped away at his legs, making a satisfying noise.
I can’t let the opportunity pass without mentioning the precocious girl from the class next door, who, in the absence of their teacher, decided to entertain the class with a striptease. She was down to her undies when Miss Pohl, alerted by the uproar, walked in to see what the fuss was about. Pat recalls that Pohl thrashed the girl all the way up to the principal’s office. One has to wonder what kind of career a girl with such exhibitionist tendencies might follow. Surely she’d not have become a nun. Jeepers, I hope not!
I wonder why I was saddled with a bunch of such unenterprising girls at school? Were they flippin’ nuns or what???
I started woodwork in Trompsburg and continued in Ladybrand with Mr “Aap” van Heerden. He was a most likeable old chap who was a good teacher and infinitely patient with an unhandyman such as me. We were given a project to make a breadboard and for once I thought it might fall within my woodworking ability, being straightforward sawing and planing. We were given a decent piece of meranti about a foot square and shown how to mark out a hexagon on the wood. Piece of cake I thought and marked out my hexagon without a backward glance. Had I looked again I might have noticed that five sides were equal but the sixth was longer than the rest. I got straight into the cutting of the wood and was proud that for once I had cut on the lines, straight and true. Unclamping the plank in order to admire my handiwork, I held it up and saw to my horror that I had created a lopsided bloody mess! Aap was vexed but not enough to give me another piece of expensive wood to bugger around with. He just remeasured everything until he had six sides the same and left me to cut again. I was left with a pile of sawdust and a plethora of little wooden blocks, of no earthly use to anyone and a “breadboard” which would have done for loaves baked by Hobbits and Fairies but not normal sized people like my parents. I still went ahead and neatly beveled the edges and took it home.
I’d love to know how Mom and Dad managed to keep a straight face when I presented them with my masterpiece and told them this tiny little hexagon was a breadboard. (I’m actually laughing as I write this!) It was the first and last thing I EVER made with my own hands. Teachers thereafter were apparently not keen to allow me to have expensive wood with which to “make” things. But I had the last laugh. The board was repurposed and an electrical socket was permanently mounted on it and here it is in my own house today, still serving me well. TAKE THAT you bloody fancy breadboards! I bet not a single one still exists today like my pioneering model still does!
Talking about bread has reminded me of an occasion when my cousin Brett Bayford came to visit us in the company of his family. Brett was a brash, devil-may-care teenager with a cavalier disregard for gentility and niceties. Great chap with a helluva sense of humour and fun outlook on life. Mom sent Brett and I uptown to Forte the Greek’s café for a loaf of bread. Mom warned us to make sure it was fresh bread and not an old stale loaf. Brett picked up a loaf off the bread rack and took it to Mrs Forte at the till. She was a very Greek, black-haired lady who had a face incapable of looking happy, who would snatch your money at the till without a word and slam your change down as if begrudging it to you. Not a nice person even in the remotest sense of the word.
As Brett handed her the money, he innocently asked, “Is this bread fresh?” WELL!! That glowering Greek face turned positively demonic as she snarled at Brett. “WHAT! YOU THINKA I SELLA DA STALE BREAD?? YOU SKATA! (Crap in Greek) GET OUTTA MY CAFÉ. SKATA! SKATA! Most people would cringe and be deeply offended by that tirade but not Brett – he utterly lapped it up. All the way home he kept repeating her words with huge relish with plenty of “skatas” thrown in for good measure. I must really ask him if he recalls the occasion.
Ladybrand High School was ostensibly a dual medium school but most classes were integrated and we English speakers had the fullest right to ask for whatever was vague in Afrikaans, to be repeated in English. In practice we hardly ever asked for repeats as we were as fluent in Afrikaans as the rest of the class. An exception in later years was English where we took higher grade and went off to the school library to “study” during that period. There were few English speakers in the school in any event.
In typical Lyle non-conformist style I avoided all the damn nonsense that was thrown at us in the name of initiation. I stayed away from the schoolyard during breaks until I thought it might be safe. I was wrong – the swines were waiting for me and punished me severely by making me run a gauntlet – “bakoond” as it was known. It consisted of me crawling on my hands and knees between the legs of all the boys in school, to have my bum walloped as I crawled by. The gauntlet ran from the school gate all the way to the boys toilets at the back. My butt was totally numb by the time they let up but far more painful were my skinned and bloody knees from all the crawling. I was left alone after that but I fear I still have mental scars somewhere inside from that ignominious crawl. I often feel blind rage welling up inside me when I hear of people having initiation rituals imposed on them and I could easily demolish perpetrators of such outrages, with my bare hands. You may impose initiation on someone who WANTS to join your secret society or club but not on an unwilling participant who has no interest in being in your group, whatever it is. Like bullies, you are totally unfit to be human beings at all in my eyes.
From this poor start I never grew to love high school or anything about it. I found school unutterably boring and of no consequence and frankly, I loafed my way through it. Cramming all that bloody rubbish they expected me to retain, was such a waste of time that today I have a totally skewed opinion of all South African education. Laugh if you like but I NEVER learned how to study in all those years. If I didn’t pick up what I needed in class, I was lost and no amount of cramming could change that. Luckily I had a good memory which retained things from class but even today for instance, I struggle to learn how to operate machines from the books which come with them. Show me what to do just once and I’ll run anything mechanical but I’ll struggle otherwise. I did rather poorly in my Matric finals and I really believe, looking back, that I may have had a less obvious learning disability! It no longer matters of course but how else do I explain how I did very well at maths in Std 6 with an excellent teacher and lost the plot totally thereafter, with a series of nincompoops?
I think my memory may have been a little eidetic because much of what you have read here is in my memory in clear, sharp images – not snapshots but video clips. Facts, figures and passages from books simply don’t exist the same way in my brain.
It must be obvious that I didn’t like my teachers. However, Mrs Ida de Bruyn, my class and English teacher, was an exception. Everyone called her Ma’am, something I believe my old pal Alan Watson had started. He was fanatical about cowboy movies and often walked around in a fantasy 10 gallon hat, wearing invisible six guns, with which he would try and “outdraw” the imaginary enemy. He also believed cowboys treated ladies politely and called them ma’am and while he never really perfected a Western drawl, insisted on calling Mrs de Bruyn “Ma’am”. The nickname stuck and persisted throughout the school until she retired. I liked Mrs de Bruyn but I discovered after I had finished school that she was scared of me. It seems that I corrected something she said in class one day and she was pretty nervous when I was around after that, fearing it might happen again. Damn, I wish I could just klap that clever little dick that I was and make me retract whatever it was that I said. I was justified in treating other teachers with such disdain but not Mrs de Bruyn. She was much too nice. She was always interested in who was gong steady with whom and I think it must have worried her that I showed no interest in girls. She might even have thought I was gay but I was just shy of girls and actually had big crushes on two girls in High School. When it came to choosing a partner for the Matric farewell I feigned total lack of interest, mainly because “my girl” had already been asked! Ma’am was disgusted with me when after being told I HAD to choose someone, I asked, “Who’s left? I’ll take her” Poor girl, whoever she was, I apologise for my lack of concern for her feelings but I’d really much rather have been up walking in the Platberg than at that damn farewell.
Mrs de Bruyn had three kids of her own – the oldest, Elsabe was a really pretty little girl a couple of years younger than I was. It seemed infradig to me then, to admire younger girls – shades of cradle-snatching I guess but I have to admit that Elsabe was a little head turner! After school, Elsabe taught for a few years and then she suddenly appeared on TV on Sunday evenings, presenting a Christian magazine programme. She was gorgeous, she really was, dressed in beautiful clothes and made up to wonderful effect. (I must ask her if she has any video footage of those years!)
In later years, I was travelling across the land, unattached and busy developing a drinking problem. If I was within reach, I’d make it back to Ladybrand for weekends. Mom would regularly run into a retired Ma’am at the supermarket and the inevitable question was always, “Is John married yet?” followed by. “Elsabe is not married yet either. Tell John I’m saving her for him!” Ma’am eventually moved to the old age home in Ladybrand, as I discovered when my Mom passed away after having spent her last years there as well. I decided, seeing that her girls were by then living in Cape Town, to start writing to her and wrote several nice long letters to her. Only after Ma’am died did I discover that my letters had gone down so well that she had shared them with the other old ladies at the home and that I was in fact a minor celebrity to them!
I was married by then and one day I received a letter of thanks from Elsabe, for having been kind to her Mom while they were far away. Now that I’m living quite close to her in Cape Town, we have become firm friends and she has been to our house and laughed when I introduced her as “the other woman” with whom I used to tease Sonja, when Elsabe was on TV. She never married and unexpectedly has turned out to be even shyer than I was at school. Was Elsabe one of those “Roads not taken” one encounters in one’s life? Would she have gone out with me had I ever had the courage to ask? I doubt it but I think Ma’am would have been very happy if I had just asked!
When I was about 5 years old, Mom took me off to the Post Office to open a Post Office savings book. My pal Gielie was given a bicycle and I naturally also wanted one but I was told if I wanted one, I’d have to save up for it. We had been in Ladybrand for about a year and my savings account hovered around the R12 mark, not quite enough for the smart balloon tyred Phillips which waited for me in Frasers shop. Mom decided to pay in the difference for me and my beloved bike came home. At first I struggled to master riding it but once I did, I started to go further and further away with it. A favourite destination was the aerodrome. I had never seen an aeroplane in Trompsburg and being able to get up close to one was a thrill to me, especially when it was taking off. Dr Brink had a Beechcraft Bonanza which he would fly low over our house on his way to the aerodrome and that was reason enough for me to hop on the bike and pedal out madly to go and see the amazing machine. Coming back from the aerodrome one day, I had my first major crash on the bike. I was coming down a hill at speed when I struck a patch of sand and skidded and crashed very hard indeed. I went one way while the bike went the other and I lost my specs in the process. Took me a while to find them and recover enough to get home but I was pretty shaken and my bike’s handlebars were comically bent. On another occasion I was carrying a paraffin tin which caused me to crash, denting the tin and my ego. I had enough falls to scramble my brains. That literally happened once when I had the bike upside down, doing something to it when it fell over and the pedal gashed my head. It didn’t hurt unduly so I walked into the kitchen and calmly asked Mom for a plaster. I didn’t realize the wound was bleeding copiously and the blood was pouring off me. The maid took one look and ran away screaming, while Mom got the fright of her life.
The fall that hurt most though, happened at the school tennis courts. I was cycling past slowly, watching the girls at play instead of where I was going and I slammed headlong into a tree. I still cringe when I think how silly it must have looked and that in front of all those legs, I mean girls. My pride was hurt far more than I was that day. And the poor old bike was also a bit bent and shorter than when it was new.
I travelled into the district sometimes, on extended rides e.g. Up and over the Platberg, round to Modderpoort and back again or out on the Maseru road and back along the Caledon River road and past Eendrag School. I always went alone because that was the state I enjoyed most and for “padkos” often carried a steak & kidney pie and a tin of tomato juice. Alan Watson and I once went out to Wattie Bartleman’s farm by bike, in order to try and shoot guinea fowl with Wattie’s .22 rifle. We spent all day on Wonderkop, a hill on the farm and had some shots at guinea fowl but luckily shot none. The long ride back to town was a killer because we’d been on our feet all day and we were pretty bushed. We never tried that again!
While on bicycles, I must tell of Alan Watson’s ego-denting crash. We were riding along the street which passes in front of where the girl’s hostel was back then. Watson was a shameless show-off and because the girls were all sitting out on the stoep, waiting for supper, he sped up like a lunatic with the intention of catching their eyes with his prowess on a bicycle. Somewhere in the Universe there is an authority tasked with bringing show-offs back to earth with a bump and that authority somehow shoved the clattering, loose mudguard on his bike into the rear wheel which had the effect of stopping that wreck dead. That bike bucked like a bronco, catapulting Alan headlong over the handlebars. He sailed majestically through the air for quite a distance but came down to earth in the loose gravel, in a huge cloud of dust - right in front of the girls. He got their attention alright but not the way he had fondly hoped.
For a bloke who was without skin on his knees, elbows and hands and very nearly concussed, Alan leaped up with alacrity, picked up his wrecked bike and headed down the road as if nothing had happened. Only when he got to the next corner and out of sight of the girls, did he stop and take stock of his manifold injuries. Oh how he must have been hurting, poor chap. The totally mangled mudguard lay in our backyard for years afterwards.
I’ve already expressed my love of the old Platberg and how much I enjoyed walking up there. The first time must have been in the winter of 1957 when a group of us started up the hill at the formation known as The Stables. I don’t remember who all the chaps were but I recall that Errol Rottcher was one of them. The Stables is simply a cleft in a long stretch of sandstone rock, just wide enough to take a horse comfortably, where during the Boer War, the Boers hid their horses from the British. As far as I know, the British never cottoned on to this hiding place. Nearby was a cave called, “Die Donker Grot” which we entered and explored. The cave has two chambers connected by a low, claustrophobia inducing tunnel through which one had to crawl through on hands and knees, while turned sideways, to slip through. The darkness was about as complete as can be imagined but we had a torch with us and could examine the carved letters on the cave walls. It was said that it extended much further at one time but that it had fallen in. I was relieved to get out of there, I must confess.
The ramble took us along the edge of the hill which has unscaleable, low cliffs all along and up to Lilyhoek where we were able to climb down again. A little stream runs down into the park and we followed it down, clambering down the large rocks. It was one of the most memorable days of my young life. The Platberg was (and still is) the most beautiful place I had ever experienced and every chance I got after that, I went back up there. Unfortunately, I suffer greatly from acrophobia and I had to fight this irrational fear every time I climbed there but I never let it spoil the pleasure I gained from just being up on the rocks. We moved to a house at one stage, which was very close to a large rock formation and I even managed to clamber up one morning and watch the sun rise over the Malutis from there.
On another occasion, the same group of lads went exploring an area of the Platberg known as Rose Cottage. At the foot of some massive sandstone cliffs lies an old ruin which I presume might have been the original Rose Cottage but far more famous further up amongst the rocks is the rock shelter known to archaeologists by this name. A world renowned archaeologist, Abbe Breuil excavated the cave sometime in the forties but mainly the University of the Free State has continued the work the Abbe started and I read somewhere that even at the lowest levels of the dig, there have been signs of fire capable humans using the cave for shelter. It is likely that the valley in which Ladybrand is situated, has been inhabited for at least a million years. I find that revelation just stunning. It seems as if my love of the old Platberg has been shared by many others throughout the ages. In later years I occasionally guided other people up to the shelter. It was well fenced off the last time I went there but there were Bushman paintings still visible on the top level sandstone walls.
While I’m in that general area, I have mentioned that the road up and over the Platberg to Maseru and Bloemfontein, was built by the Royal Engineers. When the new road was being built over the same route, an inscription, 3RE (Third Royal Engineers) was discovered on a rock face next to the road. Dad in his capacity as Roads Superintendent, had the inscription covered with a sturdy steel grid, which was cemented into the rock. I hope it is still there.
I encountered snakes on my rambles. Once a lazy old puffadder was on a path I was treading but he was easily avoided and on another occasion, a large rinkhals fled away from me over the rocks, But the closest I ever came to being bitten by a snake was in Nurseryhoek – another kloof further along the Platberg escarpment. There was a large plantation there, which was well populated with birds and Alan and I were in our despicable bird-hunting phase and quite determined to bag a guinea fowl. Alan had a .22 rifle and a box of bullets and we felt sure we’d bring home a bird that day. We rode out on our bikes which we stashed and crept into the plantation on foot to where we could hear those silly birds chattering. I was barefoot and carrying the rifle, creeping quietly through long grass and stalking the guinea fowl which were in a tree. My focus was on the tree not on the ground but something – I don’t know if it was a sound or a movement – made me look down and there, less than two feet away from my leg, hood spread and ready to strike, was a huge rinkhals. I think it had already spat at me because I found an unknown liquid on my leg afterwards.
Well, I have not a shred of memory of moving at all but Alan said I simply threw the rifle away and took off like a veritable hare, highstepping through the grass like a hurdler and really moving. I came to my senses some distance away and turned to look back and that serpent was still there, sticking up above the grass. Alan in the meanwhile had reached the rifle and fired off a couple of shots at it and though he swore blind one of his bullets must have penetrated its hood, it showed no signs of injury and simply slid off into the grass. That put paid to our hunting expedition and I’m very happy to admit that at no stage did we bag a single guinea fowl. I also never went out into the hills barefoot again. We got the hell out of there as fast as our bikes could carry us because we had this firm belief that snakes always “hunted” in pairs and that the mate was still somewhere nearby. An experience like that leaves you super jumpy for days, believe me. I think I would have wet myself had anyone just hissed softly behind me for days afterwards!
Earlier on I mentioned Maggie, our little stable cat, Robbie, the boerboel and Mom’s Jeannie but in Voortrekker Street, two other dogs joined our menagerie. Wagter was a cross black Labrador/Ridgeback who decided to come and live with us. He actually originally belonged to a white family who decided they didn’t want him anymore and gave him to a black man who was walking past their house. Wagter was taken to the location and tied up. He broke loose and tried to find a home at a number of houses in our neighborhood, before he arrived at the sympathetic Lyles. He often broke loose and had to be fetched by his black owners. Eventually they sent him to family in Lesotho. He broke loose there again and found his way all the way back to us, even swimming through the Caledon. He actually got to our front gate and collapsed there. Pat found him lying at our front gate utterly exhausted, with pads of his feet worn through and bleeding. We carried him into the house where mom cleaned bandaged his poor feet and fed him and gave him lots of TLC. That’s when dad put his foot down his foot and said “no more, now he stays”. He was already quite old when we acquired him but he lived out his days with us, a much happier and better fed dog than when he had arrived.
In the time I was sleeping on the stoep, we had neighbours across from us by the name of van Reenen who had a fat dachshund called Kim. The van Reenens went on an extended overseas trip and left Kim in the care of a maid who lived on the property. He was obviously lonely over there and so took to coming over to enjoy our company and frolic with our dogs. The maid would dutifully come over and collect him but one night she let him out for a widdle and Kim made a beeline for our house and came and jumped on my bed. I found him sleeping with me the next morning. It became a regular thing and Kim decided that staying with us was preferable to being alone at home. When the van Reenens returned from holiday, it was obvious to them that Kim preferred being with us so they asked us to adopt him, which needless to say, we had already done. As many dachshunds do, Kim went lame in his hindquarters. As nothing can be done to reverse the condition, euthanasia is usually recommended but Mom would not hear of it and she quite heroically undertook to look after Kim until natural causes took him out. I was a difficult task which Mom had taken on because Kim had no control over his bowel and bladder functions and he spent his days being moved from area to area where newspaper had been laid down for him. He also used to drag himself around and so wore his lame back legs raw but Mom kept them bandaged. He got around quite well and was really a happy little dog. Then we found an old open kind of babies’ pram/push chair which could be set in a reclining position. We had a waterproof pillow in it with a blanket and newspaper and he would lie in it. We took Kim for walks all over the place in his pram - even up to Lilyhoek when we were living in the Roads Department house. When mom and dad took the other dogs for walks old Kim went along in his pram!
He lived for a good few years beyond his paralysis and was a happy and contented dog, all thanks to Mom’s faithful care. You’d have to go far to find another animal lover with the dedication to her charges that Mom had.
We eventually moved from Voortrekker Street to a newly erected Roads Department prefab house up near the hospital. A road building unit was building the tar road from Bloemfontein past Ladybrand up to Bethlehem and the unit was stationed at Ladybrand. Temporary prefabs and terrapin houses were erected all over town for the workers and as Dad was temporarily in charge of the unit as well as his own district, he was entitled to the house. It really was a comfortable house, well insulated with vermiculite in the walls and on the ceilings and it had an outside room, which I could use as my bedroom. The room was not double walled and thus not insulated but I loved it nevertheless. The house was situated right below the Platberg and a few hundred yards away from Lilyhoek – for me not a single place on earth could equal that location. Even the school, boys hostel and tennis courts were a stone’s throw away from us.
As always, we had chickens in the "Padhuis". Sometimes on a Saturday I would go into the open field where the combined school hostel was eventually built, with a bucket and a spade. The field was still in its natural state, with termite mounds all over the place and it was these I used to go and raid. I would simply bash off a piece of the mound into my bucket, termites and all and then rush back to the fowl run and dump the termites for the fowls to peck up. They would go mad and clean that lot out in next to no time. They simply loved the termites and didn’t seem to mind being bitten by the little creatures. I learned that if I went back to the same hill in a couple of weeks’ time, the original hole would have been patched closed by the industrious insects and if I then broke that piece off, I’d capture a lot more as they’d be busy in their thousands, with repairs. Unfortunately for them, it usually spelled the end of the nest as well as there just weren’t numbers enough left to keep it going. I have no idea if the termites were good for the chickens but they sure did enjoy them.
I have written about Guy Fawkes before but the day went with a spectacular bang when we lived in the “padhuis” as we called it. Mr Clewlow was visiting us and at around 7.30 pm everyone was sitting on the stoep while Ernie and I were out in the road with the fireworks we were going to set off. Everything went as planned until we got to the final item. I had been tasked with buying the fireworks and this final piece de resistance was named an “Atomic Bomb” or something equally explosive and was my prize purchase. It was quite a long tube of considerable caliber which had to be placed upright when being lit. One was also advised to stand well back once the thing was lit.
We lit it up and it started off prettily with a fountain of fire, which sparkled and merrily climbed into the sky. Just when I thought it was a bit of swizz, it fell over and emitted two fireballs with a huge bang. The one fireball whizzed across the road and into the long grass in the Boys’ Hostel yard while the other streaked in the opposite direction, to land next to Clewlow’s chair, where it let off yet another terrifying bang and rolled into the lounge, towards Mom’s carpet. Dad somehow managed a spectacular dive and swatted the fireball out and away from burning the carpet. Ernie meanwhile, had raced across the road and climbed through the fence to stamp out the first fireball before it started a veldfire. As we discovered afterwards, the second fireball had actually damaged the concrete of the stoep when it first landed. Unsurprisingly, I don’t think we ever celebrated Guy Fawkes again after that.
The last children’s birthday party I ever attended was Pat’s birthday in 1961. I don’t recall how Alan, Ernie and I got involved as it was essentially a party for little girls but before long, we had thawed and were participating in one of those impromptu games with few rules, which kids sometimes invent. We lads played “guards” who had to look after and keep locked up, the girls who were our prisoners. All we did was chase madly after what seemed like hordes of screaming girls in party dresses, “capturing” them and bringing back to the “prison” at the garage, from where they would “escape” again. Yeah sure, it was a silly, puerile game but we must have been hopped up on sugar and needed to burn off that manic energy so we all had huge fun, just running about the yard and in the streets around the house. As far as I remember, some of the parents were on the stoep chatting – probably the Bartlemans and Pietruccis – while we kids were going mad. I still wonder if Elize Pietrucci remembers refusing to be taken to jail no matter how I tugged her arm and how I eventually picked her up bodily and carted her off. I’m probably deaf today because of the screams she shrilled into my ears! Pat recalled ducking down into the gutter in front of the house, thinking herself safe and then looking up and finding Ernie looking down at her, ready to pounce. More screams, that you can be sure of.
I don’t know about Ernie and Alan but I had a lot of fun and rated it the best birthday party ever. Unfortunately it was also the last birthday party we ever had. Apart from Pat herself, I wonder how many of those girls remember that party today? Most are Grannies now with grandchildren the age we were then.
With the boys’ hostel nearby, I got to see one of my buddies, Ernest Nightingale quite often. Ernie and his brother Peter had come to our school from Queens College in Queenstown. Queens was an English medium school so despite the Nightingales having an Afrikaans mother, they were better at English than Afrikaans. I’ll always remember some schoolboy howlers committed by Ernie in one of his first Afrikaans exams. He had to complete the proverb : “As ek meneer en jy meneer …..” and he said, “dan meneer ons weer” (Instead of “wie sal dan die wa smeer) and “Vra is vry en …….” And he said, “Vry is vra” (Instead of “en weier daarby). But the brothers adapted quickly as they were in the Boy’s Hostel. After Std 6, Peter went off to Ficksburg High School as his parents lived in Ficksburg but Ernie chose to stay behind with us. I think, because he was quite a philanderer, Ernie still had many girls he wanted to pursue in our school!
We had to learn a higher grade of English than the rest of the class, so in the later Standards, we would go off to the school library when the rest of the class did standard English, to study. In other words, we went there to loaf! The Afrikaans kids also had a subject known as “Taalbeweging” which we were not required to attend which meant more “Study” time. Out of sheer boredom I started looking into the books in the library and came across a learned study of early Afrikaans proverbs. Imagine my delight when I discovered some beautifully rude ones which regrettably were no longer in use. Someone who was off his head was described thus : “Hy het ‘n poep van ‘n perd weg”. Even better in our opinion was the proverb to use when you were feeling under the weather: “Ek voel soos ‘n omgewaaide plaaskakhuis” Presumably such brilliantly apt sayings were bowdlerized out of the language and more’s the pity that they were. We took the book along with us to a class over which Mrs de Bruyn presided and passed it around secretly, sniggering as only schoolboys know how. Ma’am intercepted it and idly paged through it and suddenly exclaimed. “Liewe Hemel” and that was the last we saw of it. Many years later I started writing to Ma’am and raised the question of what she had done with the book but she could not recall the case. But just maybe she did remember and wouldn’t admit it!
Ernie and his girlfriends were a never-ending source of wonder and annoyance. In Std 6, there was Idyll Brigg, the Barclays Bank manager’s daughter. She had unusual, rather “French” looks, more exotic than outright pretty and I rather fancied her too and had since Volkskool days. She played a strong game of tennis which was Ernie’s forte as well so I guess it was inevitable that he would pursue her. (They left Ladybrand and we heard years later that she had died young, in childbirth) Next was Irmoine Maartens, a pretty, vivacious girl who was popular generally. In Std 7 Ernie, Watson and I went camping in a battered old bell tent on Willie Pieterse’s farm. While it started off in perfect weather, a cold front soon turned our expedition into abject misery. The tent leaked and even sleet came down and we were trapped in that leaky tent with a love-sick Nightingale who drove us nuts by mooning continuously over Irmoine. Her post school life was tragic and eventually after failed marriages, she is said to have committed suicide.
I think Coralie Spamer came next. I disliked her because she always had a supercilious air which I found intolerable. I suppose I should be able to remember more about her but all I do is that she was tall and blonde. There was at least one girl from the Kinderhuis but she’s gone from my memory. I was becoming bored with his girlfriends by this time and I think there were others. But wait, there was Marietjie Delport who was his tennis partner and girlfriend in Matric. I recall her Dad not being keen on his daughter marrying an “Engelsman”. She did marry well though and is a wealthy widow in Somerset West these days and a most attractive woman still. To his credit, Ernie might have been a gadabout at school but when he found his Rosa he chose well and for life.
In Stds 6 & 7, he had a hostel buddy, John Bramley. Between them they took mischief to new heights. They would break out of the hostel late at night and sail off into town, sometimes to keep assignations with girlfriends from the Girls’ Hostel or to go on fruit stealing expeditions. I woke up one night on the stoep to find the two of them sitting on my bed. It must have been about one o clock and they were on their way back to the hostel. Japie Jacobs was our headmaster but he was also in charge of the Boys Hostel. He sometimes caught John & Ernie up to their tricks and as the cane was his favourite disciplinary measure, they received cuts aplenty. And boy, the bastard could swing a cane. One practice of theirs that I thought was senseless and wasteful, was throwing stones at street lights. They must have cost the Municipality a fortune in light globes.
While I’m thinking of him, we had a teacher who taught German; van Niekerk was his name but we called him Kaspaas. He was a small, ugly man, always dressed in a black suit and he had a disproportionately loud voice. I could not acquire German with the same ease that I did English and Afrikaans, as it required my actually studying, which I just couldn’t seem to do, so regularly that gnome would thunder out. “Gaan kantoor toe en se vir Mnr Jacobs jy het nie jou huiswerk gedoen nie”. I always seemed to have Emil Krynauw for company on those visits and while those cuts were savagely painful, they had no impact whatsoever on my scholastic performance. An unfair caning came one morning when we were assembled in the hall where some of the matric boys were roughhousing at the back of the hall. Jacobsz bellowed at them to go and wait for him at his office and I, standing further forward, curiously turned to see who it was and next thing he bellowed that I should go and join them as well! Four cuts for doing absolutely nothing except turn round and look. But on another occasion I should have got cuts, but lied myself out of a hiding, so I guess that was Karma at work. It happened that we were left in a classroom unsupervised to ostensibly “study” for some upcoming exams and we decided to play rummy instead. A lady teacher came in unexpectedly, spotted the cards and naturally assumed we were playing cards. Off to the office went four of us and on the way we decided we’d tell Jacobsz that I had been using playing cards as bookmarks in my text book and that they had fallen out just as Mrs X walked in. Jacobsz let us off and told us just to explain it all to Mrs X which needless to say, we never did.
I always did poorly at German and yet today, I still have a good deal of it left. If I was forced to live in a German community, I’m convinced I’d speak it quickly, because I can read and understand a good deal of it. Oh no, I’m not giving those cuts the credit. My good memory picked up good usable German in class, that’s all.
While I’m thinking about the misery that school was for me, I must touch on sport. I had to play something in High School so I chose tennis, which I discovered was something I could manage to do. Every year we had that bit of pure purgatory known as the School Athletics day, in which everyone was supposed to participate and at the very least be there to cheer your team on. It was the worst day of the year by far for me because I had no athletic ability whatsoever and indeed, had even less ambition to acquire any. It was just pointless and boring, as it still is today. During gym classes, we often used to play softball and every time we did, sides were picked by two chaps and I was ALWAYS the one left at the end that no-one wanted on his team. That kind of peer rejection leaves its mark. Don’t ask me to join ANY damn thing today because I won’t – not a club, a church, a committee, a team, NOTHING. I played my mediocre tennis because I had to, not because I particularly wanted to. I played exactly two games of tennis in my life that I was proud of – the one was at school and the only time I ever beat Ernie and the other, at Sterkspruit. Both times I pulled out a brand of tennis well above the average which led me to think that I might have ability but I could never find that form again and eventually tired of trying to. Apart from a short spell in Sterkspruit, I have never played tennis again.
We must have lived in that Roads Department house for a year and a bit when the Roads Department decided that the Road Building unit required its own Superintendent and he was entitled to the house that we occupied. I was devastated by that move because of my perception of the prefab having an idyllic location. Dad rented a modern brick house downtown from a teacher Terblanche and I was in Std 9 when we moved there. The house was built on a slope and was a split level. The bottom area had a carport, store rooms and a large room which the original builder had used as an office. I used this room as a bedroom which suited me well as it was well away from the rest of the family.
Mom never took to the house, even though it was a smart looking place, well built by the owner/builder by the name of Tilch. Along one edge of the property lay a substantial sloping piece of ground which was just lying fallow. Dad fancied planting vegetables there but everything would tend to wash away due to the slope, so he conceived the idea of creating terraces there and challenged me to do the job. I absolutely relished it and with pick and shovel, I spent one December holiday, excavating and moving soil, creating terraces which might still be there today. It took me weeks to do and was backbreaking work. I was the subject of much discussion between township dwellers on their way to the shops, who stopped and stared over our wall at what I was doing. I think they were flabbergasted that any white kid was capable of such menial labour. It didn’t bring in a lot of pocket money but I was immensely proud of that job.
Another dog came to stay with us there. I found a tiny fox terrier pup hiding fearfully under Dad’s car and took her upstairs to show Mom. As always, my first question was, “Can we keep her?” Mom declined and said she must have an owner. I’m no longer sure but she might have advertised it in the Ladybrand Courant but in any event, the dog was never claimed and Binky stayed with us and eventually died of old age with us.
Another foundling of mine was Mr Magoo. I heard a kitten calling in an overgrown part of the garden outside my room and found a tiny white kitten crying pitifully. Its eyes had not even opened yet but I felt it had been abandoned and took it up to my mother, who wanted me to put him back where I had found him. I remonstrated with Mom, saying that his mother had obviously given up on him and that he would die a nasty starvation death. Mom relented and took pity on the kitty. She fed him a milk mixture via a doll’s bottle and before long, the kitten was lying on his back, holding the bottle between his paws and having a jolly good drink. In all this time, his eyes did not open and we started worrying that he had been born blind but Mom had a brainwave. She reasoned mother cats licked the eyelids of their kittens to open their eyes and our little guy just needed a “lick” to help him, so she started to gently wipe the lids with cotton wool dipped in medicinal olive oil. Meanwhile, we had decided that His name would be Mr Magoo, after the shortsighted comic-strip character. It didn’t take long for that name to be shortened to Goo and he was stuck with that forever!
We woke up one morning and when we peeped into his box, he was staring back at us with one bright eye. We were the first living creatures he ever saw and he just loved us all to bits from the word go. His eyes were soon fully open and taking in the world around him and boy, did he grow into a big beautiful cat. He was still with us when the folks moved into the little house that they had bought and I used to see him on the occasional week-end I could get home from where I was working. Goo’s greatest joy was a full out roughhouse with me. He would basically wrestle with my hand and I could be as rough as I liked and he’d come back for more. I used to get scratched and bitten to bits as he didn’t pull his punches either and playing with him was something only I could do. No-one else was prepared to put up with the pain he’d inflict.
When Dad died in 1977, Mom elected to go and stay with the Clarks in for a few months. She arranged with a Mrs Jacques, a French lady who was a passionate animal lover that she would come in and feed the cats every day. We had three: Grey Misty, black Felix and white Goo and while the two other cats accepted the status quo and carried on eating, Goo seemed to be fretting for our company and would not eat, no matter what Mrs Jacques did. He passed away before Mom returned and Mrs Jacques always blamed his death on Mom. I was heartbroken myself as he was the only cat I had ever managed to connect with. (Until Blackie came along of course)
Mom also had a large ginger cat at Terblanche’s house but she lost Tammy who died under anaesthetic while being sterilized. Mom so feared the procedure after that when she acquired a dachshund pup, she opted for having the dog injected rather than be sterilized. Ironically, the vet never told her that this practice tended to cause cancer in the dog’s reproductive system and she lost the little guy that way eventually.
Religion and Christianity no longer feature in my life and probably never did. I think the urge to worship and externalize one’s inner workings are born into one along with everything else that makes us up and that genes play a huge part in what we tend to believe. I just was not born with that religion gene and I can’t change that.
Be that as it may, I was born into the Anglican Church, was Christened and Confirmed and was quite familiar with the rituals and doctrines of the church. I attended church early on in Trompsburg and continued to do so once we reached Ladybrand. When we first arrived, Pat and I would attend Sunday School and somewhere in my stuff there is a certificate which confirms regular attendance. When we arrived in Ladybrand, we found the Chatfields there whom we knew from Trompsburg days – Ben and Birdie occupied the Rectory and we soon slipped into a regular Sunday attendance schedule which included Mass in the morning and Evensong at night. Despite my current religious apathy, I look back on those days with quite a bit of affection. We had a pleasant, peaceful and warm routine with none of that puritanical fervor and obsession with sin that infects many believers. I think attending church was very much a social thing for me and that I was more influenced by the trappings of religion than the actual tenets. The Bible was and is to me, a source of old Jewish history mixed in with a healthy dose of practical wisdom, goodness and nothing more. I don’t understand the need to study it, break each sentence down into component words and phrases in search of whatever wisdom might reside there. It was written by wise men with simple people in their charge, in simple language and I can’t look at the book(s) in any other way.
There was a Mr Clewlow who sat right at the back where my folks and Pat sat and he unfortunately had rather rowdy innards. His intestines would rumble, squeak and gurgle endlessly and in those pregnant silences which a preacher uses for dramatic effect, even I could hear his “oy-yoy-yoys” up in the quire. I did not dare even glance in my sister’s direction for fear of unleashing uncontrolled and hysterical laughter. I am a giggler and once I get going I am absolutely unable to stop. Poor old Clewlow was such a prim and proper old gent that tummy rumbles were really wildly out of character and embarrassing for him.
Although there were enough Anglicans in town and on the farms, to fill the church during special services, the rest of the time there was just a small hard core of regulars, which included us. There was Mrs Vlotman, wife of a deceased local attorney who was our librarian for years; the two Miss Fordreds, Gertie and Ada, Mr “Rumbles” Clewlow and Mrs Stein and her sister, Miss Lomnitz (Anglicised Jews).
I must just say a word or two about Gertie and Ada Fordred. They were spinsters who had lived in the same house since the Boer War. Gertie was a music teacher and a bit of a martinet from all reports. I didn’t much like her and for years I’ve had a hard time living down a remark I made about her way back. I said I didn’t like the way she looked down her nose at me. It was just plain silly because imagine if you can, a diminutive little lady looking down her nose at the long slab that I was. A contortionist would battle. Gertie drove an old 1938 Plymouth which was in virtually new condition and still running on its original tyres. When it was finally disposed of, it was bought by an enthusiast in Port Elizabeth and should still be running, it was in such good condition. Auntie Ada was the absolute antithesis of Gertie – she was as quiet and sweet as was her sister raucous and abrasive. Pat and I referred to them as Dirty Gertie and Grader Ada but not to their faces.
I Might as well talk about our two “Jewish” ladies while I’m thinking of them. Mrs Stein lived in a huge stone house a few doors down from us. Her husband owned a large shop, Loewenstein & Moffets and left her well off when he passed on. Miss Lomnitz was much like Ada Fordred – quiet and self effacing. We experienced their genuine charity when in either 1958 or 1959 we were as a family, struck down by the Asian flu which was raging worldwide. Father, mother, granny, son and daughter went down together and stayed down – we were too ill and weak to even feed ourselves. No trouble to those two dear ladies – they brought food for all of us and even washed up our dirty dishes afterwards. Mom marveled at that because she was sure that, with ever present servants in her house, wealthy Mrs Stein had seldom had her hands in dishwater. It was a wonderfully sincere act of charity that I for one will never forget. Some months later, the two ladies went overseas for three months and left their budgie, Blue Boy, with mom who was quite happy to look after him. To her dismay, they hadn’t been gone long when the little chap took ill and Mom spent weeks and weeks nursing him and trying to save his life. Luckily he revived and recovered to welcome his own family back but poor Mom was a wreck from all that worry. Mrs Stein’s son Arthur and his wife Irene, lived up the road from us and were also Anglicans. Mrs Stein had kept all the books Arthur had collected when he was a youngster and I was given access to them. There were amazing adventure books for boys from before WW2 and I just lapped them up.
But back at St James’ Church, my favourite service was the annual service of the nine lessons, which always occurred a week or so before Christmas. Both Dad and I had verses from the Bible which we would read out loud, while standing. I don’t recall which verse Dad had but I had some from Isaiah 9 which I could almost quote without the Book. A source of gripes for me was wealthy Raymond Howell’s daughter, Verity. She had probably had elocution lessons and had an unbearably artificially posh way of speaking and when she read her lesson I cringed when I thought about how common my Afrikaans inflected accent must have sounded after hers. I was sensitive about such things then, ashamed that I was a simple “Padmakers” son maybe. How I wish I could go back and show young John G. the folly of his stupid beliefs.
There was a point in the service when the carol, “Good King Wenceslas” was sung by Chattie, alternating with young boy soprano, Timmy Radloff. It used to amuse me when my voice was breaking, to sing BOTH parts of the carol with equal ease. Take THAT Radloff!! I suppose Timmy went to St Andrews school in Bloemfontein and served in a choir. I wasn’t impressed – that voice damn well belonged in a girl, not a boy.
There were people by the name of Oelrich who attended the church a few times a year. The son was a fellow by the name of James. I knew him by sight only as he attended school in Bloemfontein but many years later, I ran into James in Ladybrand and he was now grown-up and doing woodwork as a hobby. I had a room at my Mom’s house before I married Sonja, and space was at a premium. I needed a small bookcase made to a very specific size, to house some paperbacks which I liked to always have close at hand while I was at home. I asked James if he would make a bookcase for me, very specific in size and shape, which would fit snugly in an opening which I had. I indicated that I would phone him at home and provide the measurements to enable him to commence.
Back at home I set to measuring the aperture where I wanted to place the bookcase and jotted the figures down. I made doubly sure by remeasuring it all again. That evening I phoned James. I should mention that James was a stolid, serious fellow and I should imagine, devoid of any sense of the ridiculous. I read my measurements to him in millimeters when in fact, I had done them in centimeters. James went silent for a spell and then quietly asked, “What kind of books are you planning to place on this bookshelf?” I replied that it was specifically designed for paperbacks. James went silent again as he chewed over this bit of information. “Are these a special type of paperback then?” he asked. A little impatiently I assured him that they were totally standard paperbacks. More silence from James. Then very seriously he said, “I don’t think they’ll fit on this shelf”. I took another look at my measurements and then the penny dropped. Poor old James was trying to visualize a bookshelf that was not much bigger than a matchbox. I was immediately totally overcome with mirth at the mental picture I suddenly had of a minute bookshelf and books to match and I just managed to tell him I’d call back before I went completely hysterical.
I really don’t know in retrospect, whether it was the size of the bookcase or James’ total lack of humorous reaction to my ridiculous order but boy, I laughed and laughed. It took me nearly half an hour to stop laughing and confirm to James that I had meant centimeters not millimeters. He duly made my bookshelf and it stayed with me until I left Port Elizabeth, but my family has never stopped kidding me about it. They have suggested all sorts of other miniatures to match my little bookshelf, just as if I have taken to living in a flipping dollhouse. Thinking about James again, I wonder exactly what it would take to get James laughing out loud. It wouldn’t be fair for the guy to have NO sense of humour at all.
I have to admit that I adapted very poorly to metric measurements and have never been able to get up to speed with them. You can tell me a man is 190 cm tall and I have no idea if he’s a midget, average or a giant. Tell me he is 6 foot three and I know exactly. At least I got used to kilometers and liters as my car forced me to do so but weight has me stumped. I know what a pound of butter looks like but is that the same as a kilogram of butter? Don’t try and tell me, I won’t remember anyway.
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