Philippolis originally was a mission station of the London Missionary Society and gets its name from Dr John Philip who was superintendent of the society at the time. Adam Kok and his Griquas lived there before trekking to Kokstad while the famous author Laurens van der Post was born there. He was known for championing the cause of the Bushmen, to atone for the actions of his forefathers in treating the people like vermin and hunting them like animals. Laurens was a close friend of Prince Charles and was Prince William’s godfather. The main road from the Cape used to pass through the town but the new N1 missed it completely and the town slumped into obscurity. Today it is a quiet little backwater town, slowly drifting into total oblivion.
I spent only about 6 months in Philippolis, employed as agency teller at what was to eventually become today’s Gariep Dam. Why Philippolis was chosen to run the agency instead of Colesberg, I never did find out. The route from Philippolis to the Dam lay on a bumpy dirt road while Colesburg was not only closer but was linked by a decent tar road. The constructors’ village, Oranjekrag lay on the Free State side of the Orange River which could have been an illogical reason I suppose. I had a big Chev truck, which had telling equipment installed in the back, to drive and man as teller. The agency ran daily and it meant I had to be at the bank in Phillippolis by 7 to load up my cash, if I was to get out to the Dam on time. It was a thoroughly uncomfortable drive – extremely hot and dusty in summer and freezing cold in winter. Some mornings the truck’s radiator would freeze right up before we had gone 10 km but I really enjoyed that job. I liked being able to get out of the office and make my own decisions.
There were a number of young men at the branch and we all stayed at “Die Madonn Kafee” – it was a café with rooms attached and run by a pair of sweet old dears, one of whom lived on the premises. Tannie Dawn took a shine to me and made turning me from my decadent ways a priority. I wasn’t a really bad boy but I did like popping down to the hotel for a beer or two and that just wasn’t acceptable to her. So often she would sit waiting in her rocking chair for me to pass her room and call me in for a sermon, to which I would dutifully listen with my head hanging down “in shame”, all the while trying hard not to wet myself because I had to “go”. In common with every single “sermon” of whatever description that I had had to listen to in my life, her sermons had no chance at all of succeeding.
When I left Philippolis in 1967, Tannie Dawn asked me yet again to give up the demon drink and bet me R10 I would be married within a year of leaving. What prompts little old ladies to try and reform drunken wretches and then foist them on sweet, innocent young ladies in marriage? I don’t know but I neither gave up the booze then nor was I married for another 24 years. I returned to Philippolis in the early eighties as an auditor and by now the two old ladies had retired from the café and Tannie Dawn was in Pretoria. A few enquiries around town eventually secured her address for me and I dropped her a line. I had to tell her that I had given up drinking for good and also that she was wrong about my marrying in haste. I “demanded” the R10 she owed me for losing the bet but assured her I’d let her off if she replied to my letter. I had my reply soon after, in a very shaky handwriting – she was overjoyed that I had “taken the pledge” but disappointed that I had not yet blighted the life of some poor girl!
Briefly about the girls of Philippolis. This has to be brief because there simply weren’t any! The ladies in our bank were all married or committed as were the ladies of Standard Bank. There was one exception in Standard Bank – Pixie Greyvenstein. Pixie was an attractive girl with an equally engaging personality – I think most of us young guys had crushes on her. I certainly did but I was just too shy to vie for her attention. We’d sometimes go in a group and knock on her door and be invited in for coffee, only to find other guys there already. I must admit I hated being one of several testosterone laden young men hoping to get a toe in at the door, so to speak but I’d have given much to just be able to hold her hand and look into her eyes, just once. Pixie married a farmer eventually, long after we’d all left Philippolis. What DID he have that we didn’t? Oh, the farm, I guess.
I was going along at a substantial lick one morning in the bank truck, when the enormous bonnet flew open with a mighty crash. The windscreen luckily had a substantial steel overhang which the bonnet struck instead of smashing the glass but the road ahead was completely obscured and I had no idea where on the road I was. You just don’t touch the brakes when you’re doing nearly 80 mph (Sorry folks but we didn’t have kilometers in those days) on a loose dirt road so I took my foot off the gas and started gearing down. My cleaner, Simon suddenly shouted that I was veering off the road so I corrected or rather overcorrected in the opposite direction. It seemed to take an eternity to come to a standstill but despite my zig-zagging, I’d not left the road. We stopped and pulled the bonnet down but it had been bent and would not latch. I had an old blanket in the truck which we tore up and used to tie the bonnet down and off we went but a lot slower this time.
At my first stop at the shop in Donkerpoort, Simon went scrounging for some wire and set about with some very rusty bailing wire, tying the bonnet down properly. It looked sturdy enough so we completed our run and opened the agency on time. Going back in the afternoon, the bumpy road must have tested the rusty wire beyond reasonable limits and the bonnet flew open yet again, almost at the same place on the route. This time stopping was much easier as I was travelling quite slowly. After salvaging some of the wire, we managed to get the bonnet to stay down and crept back to town. Back at the branch the idiot manager bawled me out for being late and for damaging the truck. He’ll never know how close I came to thumping him that day!
While we were waiting for a new bonnet, I had to use the manager’s car, a Ford Zodiac, for the agency. Where the Chev had three forward gears on the steering column, the Zodiac had four and the configuration was different. Reverse on the Chev was 1st gear on the Zodiac. I was parked outside Binder’s clothing store at Norvalspont, doing the agency through the car window. It was a quiet day so after a couple of deposits, I was ready to leave. I put the Zodiac into what I thought was reverse, violently mounted the pavement as first gear engaged instead and I came within a whisker of crashing straight into Binder’s plate glass display window. How I managed to slam on those brakes in time I’ll never know. Imagine if I’d had to explain to the manager why I had messed up HIS car’s bonnet as well!
I’ve often wondered how long that agency would survive in these lawless days. What with bombs, AK47s, armour piercing bullets etc it wouldn’t last a week. The only fright I got was when a couple of chaps pulled up abreast of me on the road and caused their Landrover to backfire. The bang was nearly enough for me to drive clean off the road in shock and the jokers thought my reaction was pretty funny. How times have changed.
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