This beautiful 1938 Buick Coupe was a regular sight on the streets of Harrismith back in the Sixties.
Martha McDonald and her friend Carrie Friday used to cruise the streets going nowhere. Mom Mary called them Martha and My Man Friday after Robinson Crusoe. She says Roy Cartwright coined the nickname. Roy ran the Tattersalls horse racing gambling joint in town and was full of wit.
Years later Sheila found out that Pietermaritzburg car enthusiast and restorer Ty Terblanche had found it, bought it and restored it to its former glory. Well done Ty! What a beaut!
With childish logic and mischief we’d occasionally throw it wif a stone (as we’d mockingly say). Always missed, mind you.
The redoubtable Martha McDonald, asked one day if she had any children replied in the negative, adding loftily “My husband is too much of a gentleman.”
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Here’s a better angle to showcase those beautiful lines:
From the front it’s much like other cars of its era, but from the side and half-back you can see why it gets so many oohs and aahs!
edit March 2019: I read in ‘Blafboom’, Leon Strachan’s first book about Harrismith, that Martha had actually bought this gorgeous 1938 Buick Century Sports Coupe 66S from Nic Wessels; and that she lived in Murray Street.
for images, my thanks to conceptcarz.com and powerful-cars.com
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Later, Carrie Friday became an organ donor:
This year when Mom Mary put on a pirates eye patch to play the piano as she sometimes gets double vision ‘and I can’t play if there are two keyboards,’ I reminded her ‘But you used to play a double keyboard, Mom!’ She couldn’t remember that, so I must show her this picture of the My Man Friday organ.
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