The old Hilltop Hotel was sought after by company reps which would visit trading stations in Lesotho and exit via the Telle Bridge passport control point, to call on traders in Sterkspruit district as well. Piet van Heerden and his wife Anne owned and ran the hotel and while the accommodation was quite basic, their table was well above average. I dined there for years and never tired of the excellent cooking. Neither did the reps.
It often happened that several reps converged on the hotel simultaneously and in common with most Knights of the Road, they enjoyed a spot or two. It was a really cold night in July and believe me, being in the foothills of mountains which often received snow, even in summer, Sterkspruit had sub zero temperatures long before midnight, every night in winter. Normally the chaps would have a few snorts before supper and then would slope off to bed but not on this occasion.
The after supper “nightcaps” set off the most riotous impromptu party you could wish for. Good friends together after a good meal, lots of good jokes and shoptalk and a snugly warm pub just made things flow beautifully. And the stuff in the bottles helped a lot too! Round about 10 o’clock the talk had started becoming foolish and braggadocio had replaced civilized conversation. One of those drunken fools threw out a monumentally stupid challenge to his fellows: He wagered none of them would strip naked and do a streak down the Main Street and back. Common sense and reason had long gone, when six stark naked, shivering men trotted gingerly down the steep hill into the Main Street.
Even Piet, who could usually keep his head after a bottle of whisky, was out there with his pendulous belly flopping and slapping audibly. Down they went to the first light pole where they would turn and return to the pub but luck left them at this stage because a slow-moving black motorist was approaching, trapping six overweight and pale shivering men in his headlights. Six men were pushing and shoving and trying to hide behind the light pole, while keeping their hands firmly over some pale blue and dismally shrunken acorns for modesty. In that cold, they needn’t have bothered.
I just wish I was in a position to record the impressions of that late night traveler because one has to remember he that was driving in a town with just a handful of white residents and that to run into a group of stark naked, large white men, trying to hide behind a pole, was as unlikely an event as one could expect to encounter. Just try and imagine the myriad of thoughts which might have raced through his mind at that moment. It would not have been unreasonable if he had abandoned his car and run screaming out of town. Perhaps he thought they were ghosts. Well, demons from some very dark place at the very least. Eish!!
I saw the chaps at breakfast the next morning and they were a quiet, ill looking lot. It’s not much fun to be hungover while nursing a cold bordering on double pneumonia. They stared out of haggard, stubbled faces with bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes, flinching noticeably if you spoke to them. One of them was shaking so badly, he was in danger of stabbing himself in the eye with his fork.
If you wanted to annoy Piet and risk being banned from the pub, you would bring the conversation round to that night. I don’t think old Piet was very pleased with his own behavior and did not wish to be reminded of it so we stayed away from it when he was around but we sniggered about it quite often when he was not.
Oh yes ladies, boys will always be boys, even when they’re fat and middle-aged. Just never ask why.
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