Vrystaat Confessions

Category: 2_Free State / Vrystaat

My Home Province in South Africa

  • Jolling in the Harrismith Park

    Jolling in the Harrismith Park

    We loved the park down by the riverside. We’d go there on Sundays with Mom or Annie or both – in our light blue VW beetle ca.1959, or in Annie’s beige Chev Fleetline ca.1949. The centre of attraction at first were the swings, but the kiosk was the real place if you could get Mom to buy anything from them. You can read some dodgy history of the establishment of the park here.

    Near the lake there was a cork tree, surrounded by a fence to protect it, as people would pull off the cork bark. The lake had some ducks, I think. I seem to remember feeding them at this fence, which was probly quite old by the 60s when we used to go.

    Later the road next to the river became a focus, with its huge leaning trees that I just knew were going to fall down at any time! Then the suspension bridge which was great fun – some wanted to make it sway and some said Hey! Stoppit! Don’t make it sway! When we were even bigger, the swing from the willow tree a couple of hundred metres further down the road. It swung out over the river. Being a bit of a bangbroek, I remember my first swing and successful return to dry land quite clearly. And I remember teacher Bruce Humphries not making it back once and causing quite a splash.

    By now another weir had dammed the river much further upstream at Sunnymede, creating a bigger and wider expanse of water, so not much motor boating was done in the park in our time.

    In the fifties a zoo was added in the NW corner of the park. That’s a fascinating story in itself!

    As time went on we used the park more for its sportsfields – there was a cricket oval, a rugby field surrounded by a 440m cinder athletics track overlooked by a big new concrete pavilion for spectators, a hockey field, a netball field and probably some jukskei sandpits for those stuck in the past.

    The park was extended across the river, but the other side was not oft-frequented by us. I remember it mainly as a late night race track and a picnic spot for the annual MOTH picnic.

    In our time, a caravan park was started on the town side of the park with a new ablution building.

    img563
    – view of the Wilge River from a bridge – the suspension bridge or the ysterbrug, not sure-
    They named the lake
    • Victoria Lake

    Personal memories of the park were about rugby games, athletic meetings and then later on, cars – cars before we were actually allowed to drive! ‘Borrowed’ cars. Stealthily borrowed late at night from our parents on a no-permission-sought understanding. The best was Steph de Witt’s black Saab. Actually Gerrie Pretorius’ Saab but ours for the night – ‘borrowed!’ We would hurtle around the atletiekbaan at speed , drifting sideways left then sideways right long before ‘drifting’ had a name. One night we hugged the final bend coming into the home straight and there was a moerse big bloekom stump in the headlights right in front of us! Someone must have seen our tracks and thought ‘I’ll put a stop to this!’ or ‘Ek sal hierdie bliksems wys!‘ How Steph missed that huge log I do not know, but we hosed ourselves and roared off. Instead of Yee Ha! we’d say Arrie-ee! (from a joke about camels . . )

    On the other side of the river it was in Tim Venning’s light blue Triumph 2000. Actually Dr Dick Venning’s Triumph, but ours for the night – ‘borrowed!’ Tim behind the wheel, laughing his head off as we roared around in a cloud of dust late at night, drifting sideways most of the time.

    We were good kids all in all though, of course. Nostalgia makes it ‘naughtiness,’ ‘mischief.’ Nowadays people would slate the ‘Hooliganism Of The Youth Of Today!’ Maybe adults did then? Tut tut, how wrong they were . . and are.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    atletiekbaan – 440 yard athletic track – a cinder track

    moerse big bloekom stump – huge ‘blue gum’ eucalyptus log or stump – over half a metre in diameter and three to five metres long. If we’d hit it, the SAAB would have been moertoe

    moertoe – varktap

    varktap – damaged

    Ek sal hierdie bliksems wys! – I’ll show them! Ha! he missed! We were too rats

    rats – nimble; artful dodgers

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Later, a zoo was established in a corner of the park.

  • Dougie Wright

    Dougie Wright

    ” . . and over the hills lay long fields of barley and of rye

    and through the fields a road runs by . . .“

    Douglas Wright Esq would wax poetical after a few beers, quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson out on the Vrystaat vlaktes. I spose that’s what happens if you get sent to a soutpiel school in the colonies.

    I see now he was misquoting Tennyson – or maybe I misremember and he was spot on? Anyway, I prefer his version. It’s hardwired in my brain now.

    In my mind’s eye dear ole Dougie is wandering across the veld with a shotgun in the crook of his arm, deerstalker on his head, waxing forth . . . .

    Old Harrismith Warden.jpg
    Fifth from the right wearing a black beret

    The rest, L to R:

    Tony Porrell, Koos Swanepoel, Nev Shave, Charlie Deane, Dirk Odendaal, Ian Fyvie, Rob Spilsbury, Nick Leslie, Doug Wright wearing the black beret, John Venning, Mike Curnow, Tabs Fyvie and Guy Kirk

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Other Dougie things I remember:

    • ‘Let’s play Bok Bok Staan Styf! Hoeveel fingers op jou lyf?’
    • ‘We must play pennetjie!’ – urgently suggested after a few beers. We never did.
    • His fox terrier — (name?)
    • His cottage on Glen Khyber, their plot in the shadow of Platberg, away from the big house. It was right on the verdant banks of a little stream that flowed down from Khyber Pass into the beautiful Kak Spruit as it tumbled down from Platberg on its way to the Wilge River. Glen Khyber was below Platberg’s steep, narrow, stony Khyber Pass.

    Sheila remembers:

    • Doug’s story about Tabs Fyvie when Tabs was little: Dougie asked him “Did you have any rain?” and Tabs answered “Not much but they were big drops”.
    • How we used to walk to Glen Khyber from Birdhaven and wake Doug up in his cottage (him probably hung over) and Barbara would show him her whispy ponytail at eye level as he lay in bed and say “Look Doug, my ponytail!”.
    Birdhaven

    1. Birdhaven – the ruins; 2. Glen Khyber – Doug’s cottage the green roof;

    3. Jack Levick’s plot; 4. Kakspruit

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    soutpiel – English-speaking South African; said to have one foot in SA, the other foot in England, his penis hanging in the sea, so ‘salt penis’

    Bok Bok Staan Styf! Hoeveel fingers op jou lyf? – weird game where you jump on each others’ backs! amiright?

    pennetjie – game where you scratch a hole in the ground and use a stick to prevent your opponent from tossing his stick into the hole; amiright?

    Kak Spruit – Shit Creek; Stream flowing down from the top of Platberg past Dougie’s plot Glen Khyber, then past our plot Birdhaven

  • I Believe I Can Fly

    I’ve always wanted to fly. Who hasn’t? But I dislike noise, so while my first flight in a light aeroplane (I think with an Odendaal or a Wessels piloting it?) was great, and my first flight across the Atlantic in a Boeing 707 at seventeen was unforgettable, it was a glider flight that first got me saying “Now THIS is flying!!”

    We hopped into the sleek craft, me in front and pilot Blom behind me. Someone attached the long cable to the nose and someone else revved the V8 engine far ahead of us at the end of the runway of the Harrismith aerodrome on top of 42nd Hill. The cable tensed and we started forward, ever-faster. Very soon we rose and climbed steeply. After quite a while Blom must have pulled something as the cable dropped away and we turned, free as a bird, towards the NW cliffs of Platberg.

    glider-platberg
    glider_onfinal

     

    The finish at the Groen Pawiljoen grounds

    “OK, you take the stick now, watch the wool” – and I’m the pilot! The wool is a little strand taped to the top of the cockpit glass outside and the trick is always to keep it straight. Even when you turn you keep it flying straight back – or you’re slipping sideways. I watched it carefully as I turned. Dead straight.

    “Can you hear anything?” asks Blom from behind me. No, it’s so beautifully quiet, isn’t it great?! I grin. “That’s because you’re going too slowly, we’re about to stall, put the stick down”, he says mildly. Oh. I push the stick forward and the wind noise increases to a gentle whoosh. Beautiful. Soaring up close to those cliffs – so familiar from growing up below them and climbing the mountain, yet so different seeing them from a new angle.

    And then, even better, I flew like a bird alone with only a hankie overhead.

  • Thanks, Sister Dugmore

    Thanks, Sister Dugmore

    On 19 December 2015, Sheila wrote:

    This was taken at the sad occasion of Jean Coleman’s funeral yesterday. Jean was Mum’s great friend in Harrismith in the 50’s & 60’s. They lived in Hector Street, opposite the du Plessis’ first home.

    Mum says when we still lived on the ‘townlands’ on the way to the waterworks, Jean would often ‘phone and say “Have you got a little visitor?” – once again her son Donald had gone missing *** and she knew exactly where he was – he used to walk all the way to our farm to visit his great mate, Koos. The two were inseparable.

    Mary Methodist is Anne’s godmother. The Colemans left Harrismith in about 1964.

    While we were standing around chatting yesterday, Anne suddenly realised that she, her brother Eddie, and George Elphick (whose daughter is engaged to Anne’s son – small world) had all been delivered by Sister Dugmore at the maternity home on Kings Hill.

    “So were we!” chorused Koos & Sheila!

    So we had to have this pic taken!

    – born in the same spot – Eddie Coleman, George Elphick, Anne Coleman Immelman, Sheila & Koos Swanepoel –

    Duggie Dugmore’s maternity home – and below what was left of it the last time I visited. )

    Kings Hill2.jpg
    – Anglo-Boer War doctors house – then Duggie Dugmore’s maternity home – Kings Hill –

    More from Sheila: George Elphick is an architect in Durban. His parents John & Una, also left Harrismith in about 1964. They lived in Lotsoff Flats where Una had a grand piano in their tiny sitting room!  She was a very talented pianist and used to accompany Mary Methodist, Trudy Else and other singers. We used to have ‘musical evenings’ in our home in Stuart Street – wonder what the neighbours thought?  John Elphick, bless his soul, had an enormous reel-to-reel tape on which he would record the proceedings.  I have had these tapes put on CD – no Grammy winners here – but just to have this music preserved is so special.  I have Mrs Euthemiou singing ‘La Paloma,’ William vd Bosch singing and playing his guitar, Harold Taylor singing ‘Til the sands of the desert grow cold.’  Harold lost his leg at Delville Wood and on tape he tells us that he learnt the song on board ship en route to Alexandria in Egypt, in World War 1. So now you know.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    *** Donald once did a big ‘going missing’ on the beach somewhere on the KwaZulu Natal Coast. That time the police were called to help find him. But – as always – he was just exploring. He’d have made it home sooner or later, I’m sure.

    He and I once walked home from the Kleinspan school – a distance of less than a kilometer – and got home somewhat later than our folks thought we should have.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Duggie in a nutshell: What a wonderful epitaph!!

    – what a great epitaph!! –

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    We’ve just heard Una Elphick died this year. – R.I.P –

  • What a Lovely Man

    What a Lovely Man

    We grew up next door to Gould Dominy on a plot outside town. Our plot was Birdhaven, theirs was Glen Khyber. We knew him as Uncle Gould and would watch fascinated as he drank tea out of the biggest teacup you ever saw. Size of a salad bowl. A flock of small dogs would be running around his ankles as he drank, seated on their wide enclosed and sun-filled stoep.

    Then he disappeared and re-appeared years later at the hoerskool as religious instruction (‘RI’) teacher. Seems he had been teaching music at some naff school in Bloemfontein all those years. St Andrews or St Somebody. He’d probably deservedly been promoted back to Harrismith.

    He had been very fond of me as a boy but he was re-meeting me as a teenager and that was about to change. Or would have had he not been such an amazingly tolerant and loving gentleman.

    His classroom was at the back of the school in the row of asbestos prefabs. For the cold Harries winters it had a cast-iron stove that burnt wood or coal in one corner.

    We were terrible. We would saunter in while he caught a quick smoke outside, grab his sarmies and scoff them, move the bookmark a hundred pages forward in his copy of The Robe* (that he was considerately reading to us as our “RI” in lieu of bible-punching) and pull up our chairs around the black stove and sit with our backs to him. Maybe to compensate, Katrina would sit right in front of him and give him her full attention. She was a mensch.

    Dear old Mr Dominy would come in and start reading while tickling the inner canthus of his eye with a sharp pencil till he couldn’t stand it any longer, would then “gril” and rub his eyes vigorously, flabby cheeks and chins wobbling, and then carry on reading. Every so often he’d mutter “I’m sure we hadn’t got this far?” proving he was the only one listening to the story. Maybe also Katrina. But even the girls, sitting in the normal school benches, wouldn’t comment on the fact that we read ten pages a day but moved on a hundred pages at a time.

    Our new classmate ‘Tex’ Grobbelaar, meantime, would also have swiped one of his cigarettes. Rolling up a sheet of paper, he would set light to it in the stove, light the fag and smoke it right there, furtively holding it in the palm of his cupped hand in that ‘ducktail’ way and blowing the smoke into the stove opening.

    What a lovely man.

    Gould. Not Tex.

    Nor the rest of us.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Here’s Ann Euthemiou combing Mr Dominy’s hair on a trip to Kruger Park back in 1968.

    april-1968-ann-coming-mr-dominees-hair-school-trip-to-kruger

    *The Robe – a historical novel about the crucifixion of Jesus written by Lloyd C Douglas. The 1942 book reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list.* The 1953 film adaptation featured Richard Burton in an early role. (wikipedia)

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    hoerskool – house of ill repute; or place of learning if you add an umlaut; s’pose the first could also be a place of learning, right?

    gril – shudder, jowels wobbling;

    • – * which is dodgy; the New York Tines best-seller list is DODGY!

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    What a lovely welcome!

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Where Have You Been!?

    Where Have You Been!?

    Kleinspanskool schooltime ended around twelve noon or one o’ clock I guess, and we lived less than a mile east along Stuart Street and so one bleak and chilly winter day, after absorbing a lot of prescribed, standard knowledge, Donald Coleman and I set off for home in our grey shirts, grey shorts, grey socks and grey jerseys. He’d probly being absorbing wisdom from Miss Jordan, me from Mrs van Reenen, and it seems I may also have had a grey jacket at the time. Mom felt the cold keenly.

    We had lots to talk about and so we walked along on the pavement under those big old London Plane trees you can see above, mostly bereft of leaves, many of which were now lying morsdood, yellow and brown, in the deep sandstone gutters. Mainly brown. While they’re yellow they still hang onto their twigs.

    Harrismith sandstone gutter

    It was really cold but Donald had a box of matches in his pocket and a plan. We raked together a pile of the dry leaves with our chilly hands and started a nice fire and sat down to warm those same hands and our bare shins as the fire crackled away.

    It soon burnt out – leaf fires disappoint – and we meandered on in deep conversation about important things. A block or two later we made another blazing but short-lived fire to sit and chat and warm up by.

    Far too quickly we reached Hector Street and Donald turned down toward his home and I turned up to mine. Mine on the corner and his a block or two closer to the mountain.

    “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?” greeted me. The tone of the question surprised me and ruined the quiet, gentle ambience of our leisurely journey home. At his home Donald was being asked the same unreasonable question. We’d been to school. Everyone knew that, why were they asking?

    “IT’S FIVE O’ CLOCK! SCHOOL ENDED OVER FOUR HOURS AGO!” We weren’t arguing. We didn’t say it didn’t. What was their point? “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Uh, we were talking . . . time flies?

    We were left to ponder the mysteries of the adult world. They obviously marched to a different drum as we sauntered to our flutes. We knew our Moms loved us and were just worried like we weren’t.

    They didn’t know – yet – that Donald was an archeologist, paleontologist, cosmologist, naturalist, philosopher and music-lover and had LOTS to think about and consider, and me lots to learn. Life lay before us and what that was was to be pondered. They just assumed we were buggering around.

    And anyway, whose stress levels were highest? I arse you that now that I know about stress levels.

    plane-tree-platanus
    Plane trees have itchy balls

    ~~oo0oo~~

    morsdood – messily deceased; autumn leaves in winter

    Huge thanks to Sandra of Harrismith’s best blog DeDoudeHuizeYard for the pictures – exactly right! That is the SAME gutter we sat in. You can even see a few of the plane leaves, great-great-great descendants of the ones we burned, um, (surely it can’t be!) about fifty six years ago.

  • Borrowing Dad’s Car Started Long Ago

    Borrowing Dad’s Car Started Long Ago

    1024px-Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_The_Fall_of_Phaeton_(National_Gallery_of_Art)

    Helios gave his son Phaeton permission to drive the Sun chariot around the Earth. Helios was the Sun God, and a son of almighty Zeus.

    Talk about “Don’t Spare the Horses”! Typical youth, the lad Phaeton took some sporting chicks along for the ride, lost control of those horses and the chariot ran amok. The world was at risk of being incinerated!

    Grandfather Zeus was thus forced to kill him. Zap! He killed his grandson! Zeus could gooi a mean lightning bolt if you pissed him off.

    I’m sure glad the punishment became a bit milder in our day, a few millennia later.

    Come to think of it, we never did get punished. Never got caught, actually, though I can’t imagine our folks didn’t have a shrewd idea of what was happening – at least an inkling. See, we used to say we didn’t steal our parents’ cars. We ‘borrowed them on the non-permission system,’ we’d say.

    In the early days of illicit driving I used to drive the old blue VW Kombi OHS 153 around our large garden at 95 Stuart Street.

    Round the circular driveway, out into Hector Street and back in again. Back near the garages was the washing line and the kombi just fit under it. Except I’d forgotten about the flip-up airvent on the roof. It caught the wires and pulled down the washing line poles. Some feverish spadework got them more or less vertical again and the old blue kombi was parked back in its exact spot outside the garage.

    Another time I reversed into the tap at the horse trough, the pipe broke and water sprayed out in a long arc. It was evening and the folks were out. Parking the kombi I hastened to the tap and straightened the downpipe, getting drenched in the freezing water – it was mid-winter. That caused less water to gush but there was still a very visible spout. Rushing down to the front gate I found the stopcock that turned off the main water supply. That fixed it and I went to bed before the folks got home. The next morning I rose very early and turned the stopcock back on. “Hmm, the pipe must have frozen and burst last night” was the consensus at breakfast.

    My butt was saved by Harrismith’s frigid winter weather!

    ~o0o~

    *Some apparently did, though, as my friend Fanie Schoeman hastened to inform me here.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Later we were showed how to do car borrowing PROPERLY by Steph de Witt!

    More than once. And again. And again.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    ‘Son borrows Dad’s car’ predictably caused South Africa’s first serious automobile accident – 1903:

    firstcaraccidentsa

    On 1st October 1903, Mr Charles Garlick driving his father’s new 24hp Darracq with his friend Harry Markham and chaffeur Snellgrove as passengers, entered the Maitland level crossing from an open gate, only to find the opposite gate closed. Before they could open the gate or reverse out of the crossing, they were hit by the Johannesburg Express traveling at full speed.

    Snellgrove was thrown clear, Garlick suffered minor injuries and Markham, with his arm already in splints from a previous engine-cranking mishap, had a badly broken thigh.

    It was announced that the Garlick workshop would undertake repairs to the Darracq. A new chassis was obtained from Paris and the final result testified to the efficiency of Cape Town’s first motor repairers.

    • From ‘Early Motoring in South Africa’ by R.H. Johnston

    ~o0o~

  • Wonderful stuff, booze

    Wonderful stuff, booze

    Booze opened wonderful opportunities for us as kids in the olden days. Firstly, it paid the bills, as Mom and Dad ran the Platberg bottle store for profit. Socially it was a big help too – as our hawk-eyed parents and their crowd became bleary-eyed and witty and hilarious, so their surveillance levels dropped and we could get on with doing more interesting things than we could when they were sober.

    So it was at the MOTH picnic one year on the far bank of the mighty Vulgar river down in the President Brand park where, after a lekker braai and quite a few pots the folks were suitably shickered and plans could go afoot.

    img565

    The older boys formed a syndicate which consisted of them hiding and the younger boys being sent in to do the dangerous stuff. See if you can get us some beer from the pub, was the thinking. So (some of or all of) Pierre, Fluffy, Tuffy and I approached the MOTH barman and WW2 ex-serviceman Ray Taylor – as always alone at the bar, teetotal. The other old WW2 servicemen and their wives a little way off making a lot of noise. Uncle Ray, quiet as ever, was easily distracted by my accomplices and as he was being his kind and obliging self to them, I slid a full case of dumpy beers off the makeshift bar counter and turned round, hugging it vertically straight in front of me against my chest. I walked straight away with my back to Uncle Ray into the darkness of the poplar and oak trees towards the river. I had become a thief. Recruited into a crime.

    Under the suspension bridge the receivers of stolen goods waited. Etienne Joubert, a Brockett and a Putterill, I seem to recall. They took the loot and told us to move along then. We were too young to be allowed to partake; we were simply a small part of the supply chain!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Etienne remembers: “I remember this incident well. We drank them on the river bank upstream. We had female company as well, but best we do not dwell on that subject. There was also unhappiness about the brand that was procured . . . (Me: Bloody cheek! We put our reputations at risk for those teenage beer drinkers!)

    Dear old Uncle Ray with his Alsatians (Etienne continues) . . Twice I went on walks with him up our beloved Platberg! He was an interesting man, who behind a façade of dullness was very wise!!

    Stories like this bring back a thousand other memories……!! Cheers vir eers, Et

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Another memory of The Far Side – of the river: Roaring around the dirt roads between those big trees in Dr Dick Venning’s light blue Triumph and in his Land Rover, Tim Venning at the helm. Hell for leather, running commentary all the way, huge grin on his face, sliding sideways around the tight corners.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Uncle Ray was attacked by baboons on one of his Platberg walks. Not sure if his dog/s were with him, but he said he fought off the babs with his walking stick. We were told he had suffered “shell shock” in the war.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Theft and Punishment

    Theft and Punishment

    Didn’t steal much as a kid. But I did slug down a bottle of Monis red grapejuice on the quiet in the back storeroom of the Platberg Bottle Store / Drankwinkel working for Mom & Dad one Saturday morning. You can see the door to the storeroom in the pic. Warm, straight out of one of those cardboard boxes all the bottles were packed in.

    DSCF8184
    – Platberg Bottle Store – the dark side – Note that BrandyAle poster – booze “fights the high cost of living”!! –

    That afternoon we went for a long drive out Witsieshoek way in the beige 1956 Morris Isis (no, not Islamic State of Iraq & Syria, just Isis, after the river in England that most call the Thames).

    After a while the car door had to be flung open for me to have a hearty grapey chunder out onto the gravel road in the veld. It would have looked like blood, so I imagine a confession then also would have had to take place. Can’t remember.

    I haven’t liked red grape juice since. Communion in the teetotal Methodist church had me being possibly the only sinner rudely reminded of theft and puke every time the shed for you came round. Divine retribution? Communion? Confession? He does seem to move in mysterious ways!

    Here’s the cave on the Witsieshoek road:

    cave-witsieshoek-road

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    As an aside –

    – just like this one – but no visor – no spotlights – not two-tone –

    The Morris Isis was named after the River Isis – which is actually just the Thames in Oxford, you know how Poms are with names. The Morris Isis was “designed for work in the Dominions, Colonies and Protectorates” . . . “the factory’s output . . . is entirely for export. Great attention was given to providing a low appearance without sacrifice of ground clearance. The all-metal 5-seater saloon body is stated to be practically indestructible and climate-proof.”

    The 1956 version had the fascinatingly bizarre feature that both the gear lever and the handbrake were on the floor to the right of the driver, wedged in the narrow space between the seat and the driver’s door. When changing gear it looked like you were fiddling for something you’d dropped between your right thigh and the door.

    Morris Isis gear lever

    The Morris Isis Series II was based on the Morris Oxford Series III. The engine power increased to 90 bhp. The manual version had a four-speed box operated by a short gearstick located on the right-hand side of the front bench seat. The handbrake lever was located just behind the gearstick.

    Sales remained weak, and the line ended in 1958. It had a top speed of 90 mph and could accelerate from 0-60 mph in 17.6 seconds. Fuel consumption of 26.2 miles per imperial gallon (10.8 litres/100 km) was recorded. The test car cost UK£1025 including taxes.

    Morris_Isis_II_ad.jpg
    – other wimps don’t want power! they don’t want acceleration! – No, only us Aussies like those things! ‘Cos we’re Aussies! Other guys like going slowly, of course. Marketing people never change. And guys love flattery and BS.
    Morris Isis interior

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • And Now Greg Seibert Has Died

    And Now Greg Seibert Has Died

    Greg came to Harrismith from Ohio in 1972. We lost touch, then thanks to Sheila, picked up as though no time had passed! Greg was helping Sheila research ancient family history and was also sending lovely pics of his schooldays in Harrismith. We were so looking forward to seeing more of them. Photos. Oh, and also of him!

    – Greg later on, computer expert, husband and Dad – and genealogist! –

    He planned to visit once when his brother Jeff came to South Africa to do some work for General motors. He didn’t, so Jeff and I went to Hluhluwe without him!

    He was planning to visit, among other places, the de Witt’s game farm near Tshipise – near the Tropic of Capricorn – with Steph.

    Then Steph died. So he didn’t. But he was going to! He was going to come and visit us. We were going to see Greg again.

    Now he’s gone, suddenly, out of the blue.

    R.I.P Greg! Dammit!! What a blow! What a loss!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Wonderful memories of walking down Normandien pass in the Drakensberg with Greg, just me and him along lonely dirt roads and railway tracks, through these tunnels and ending up near Van Reenen – at Moorddraai where we were fetched – I think by Father Sam van Muschenbroek? I had to keep asking Greg to slow down! He was a fast walker and I was in no hurry!

    Near van Reenen where Greg Seibert & I hiked thru tunnels
    – one of those tunnels, but not Greg’s pic –

    The top pic is one Greg took in our physics class back in 1972.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Greg’s last message:

    On Apr 28, 2016, Sheila had written:

    Gregor! Where the hell have you been? Are you okay? You just dried up and went away! A bit like our money is doing right now! All’s well here – am having fun putting old pics on FB – am loving the responses. I hope you’re okay.

    Lots of love, Sheila

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Greg replied that same day:

    Sheila!
    I'm doing just fine. Been a bit of work finishing up the estates of mom and dad. Was quite ready for mom to go, but dad went kinda suddenly. 
    Such is life. What brought about this great burst of picture activity?  
    I'll have to get back to posting more of mine again.

    My brother is probably going back to Port Elizabeth later this year. 
    I might try to come with him this time since my last trip got all messed up. 
    Glad you are doing well!
    Grego

    Sent from my iPad

    So Greg’s poor kids lost their Grandma, their Granpa and their Dad in quick succession! Darn, that’s tough!

    Greg’s brother Jeff had come to SA in 2014 on a work trip for General Motors. I took him to Hluhluwe Game Reserve in Zululand. Greg did not accompany him then. He should have; I wish he had. He never did make it back to SA to visit. Damn! R.I.P friend. We shared some unforgettable times.

    ~~oo0oo~~