The mighty Vulgar river had risen! It was flowing way higher than usual, and had overflown its banks. We needed to get onto it!
So Pierre and I dusted off the open blue and red fibreglass canoe my folks had bought us and headed off downstream early one summer morning from below the weir in the Harrismith park.
By the time we started, the river had dropped a lot. Still flowing well, but below the heights of the previous days. This left a muddy verge metres high where the banks were vertical, and up to 100m wide where the banks were sloped and the river was wide.
When we got to Swiss Valley past the confluence of the Nuwejaar spruit, we had a wide wet floodplain to slip and slide across before we reached dry land, leaving us muddy from head to toe. Dragging the boat along, we headed for the farmhouse where Lel Venning looked at us in astonishment. I don’t think she even recognised us.
“No, You Haven’t! You can’t fool me! APRIL FOOL!” she exclaimed when we said we’d paddled out from town.
Pierre and I looked at each other and he said “Happy birthday!”
~~oo0oo~~
Category: 8_Nostalgia
Looking back with fondness on those things we couldn’t wait to get rid of, or away from, back then . .
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I’m fifteen?
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Brief Sojourn at Hotel Command
Fresh from officers course at Roberts Heights (then it was called Voortrekkerhoogte, now it’s called Thaba Tshwane) this brand-new lieutenant is sent as adjudant to Natal Command, fondly known as Hotel Command. I’m given my own room just above Marine Parade and told to leave my shoes outside the door. Not for religious reasons – because someone else miraculously cleans them overnight!
In my very own office in Metal Industries House the PF (permanent force – career officer) outgoing adjudant gives me the list of hospitals which fall under my care: Mosvold, Ngwelezane, Christ the King, Madadeni, Appelsbosch, Hlabisa, Osindisweni, St Appolonaris and Manguzi are the names I still remember. I’m responsible for the civilian force docs posted to these outposts, so I go through their files to see wassup. Wait! This guy is due to leave Mosvold tomorrow! I better phone him NOW! He thanks me profusely and says “Usually we’re told late or not at all!”. Another one thanks me for giving him a whole week’s notice. Both notices had arrived on this desk more than a month earlier!
Once I have everything sorted out and organised after about a month I ask around: Yes, says my boss Naval Captain Dr Mervyn Jordan, head of SA Medics in Natal in his dapper white uniform, I can requisition a Land Rover and visit “my” hospitals! I can’t wait. I start planning an adventure to all the Zululand hospitals for starters.
But just then I get a transfer order myself, and though I’m sorely disappointed to miss my planned “Grand Tour of the Provinces” I cannot miss this:
“You are hereby ordered to report to Addington Hospital where you will be given your own flat in Doctors’ Quarters across the road from the Nurses Res where hundreds of nubile nurses await your arrival”.Hey, orders are orders!
~~~oo0oo~~~
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Graham DryBright Lewis
For army basic training we were posted to Loopspruit outside Potchefstroom. We were ‘medics’ we were told. The place had been a reform school before and we were billeted in old houses converted into barracks – or most of us were. Our gang (platoon?) got the science lab, and boy, were we lucky. The other guys spent their days sanding and polishing old wooden floors. We had linoleum. All we did was sweep and – unfairly – we often won the prize for neatest inspection. Every so often that meant a weekend pass, so we were careful to keep the place clean, removing our boots at the door and shuffling around on ‘taxis’ – cloths you step on and scoot around on, cleaning as you go.
Uniforms and beds were inspected too, so evenings were spent cleaning and ironing and smartening. Some would even sleep on the floor, unwilling to mess up their crisply-straightened beds. One of our guys found this all a bit hard. Graham. What a lovely bloke, but Tidiness R Not Him. He would get bombed by the corporals for untidiness, so we took to doing his ironing and smartening for him, forbidding him to move as we shone his boots and dressed him for inspection. If he moved he would get boot polish on his browns, so we ordered him: SIT! STAY!
One weekend we were all given a pass but Graham was ordered to forfeit his. On our arrival back in camp Sunday evening we were greeted by the disturbing sight of our dazzling floor looking dull and scratchy. It had lost its shine!
Graham explained: Bored all alone over the weekend he had spied an electric polishing machine and some ‘DryBright’™ polish in one of the houses and thought he’d do us all a big favour and get the floor to a dining shazzle the likes of which had never before been seen in military history.
Well, the more he polished the duller it got. So he polished some more. Eventually he managed to get it to the disastrous state we now saw before our ‘thinking-of-lost-weekends’ eyes! Fortunately we knew where Graham’s heart was, so we saw the funny side and set to rescuing the situation as best we could.
But we never let him forget it: Graham DryBright Lewis!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Here’s the man a few years later. Probly explaining his floor-polishing theories:
– Graham ‘splaining things to Stephen while his girlfriend thinks . . . – His lovely partner for the evening is thinking Omigawd . . . as many of our partners seemed to do back then, I dunno why . .
~~~oo0oo~~~
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Hitch-hikers
1979 Army “basics” – basic training – and my buddy Graham DryBright Lewis and I are hitch-hiking from Potch to Harrismith. Waiting for a next ride outside Villiers in the darkness of that Friday night a clapped-out bakkie stopped. At last. Jump on, says the weirdo who looks three sheets to the wind, while handing us a quart of beer to share.
We jumped.
We drank.
Screaming along the road to Warden we glance nervously over our shoulders through the back window into the cab and over the driver’s shoulder. The speedo needle was quivering at 135kmh! We glance at each other, trying to be casual. Nonchalant.Suddenly a loud schlap schlap schlap schlap sound and the bakkie lurches. Burst tyre!
We start skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the left;
Then skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the right;
Then going backwards staring at the white line racing under the back of the bakkie towards us as we sit facing what should have been backwards;
Then spinning round to see the white line receding away from us – as it should.We come to a halt still upright and facing forward – and on the correct side of the road. RELIEF!
COME! I barked at Graham. Grabbing our balsaks we hopped off and walked back where we’d come from into the night without a backward glance or a single word to the driver. I did not want to engage with him in any way at all. Fucked if I was getting into Stockholm Syndrome with the twerp who’d almost killed us! We walked till completely out of sight and out of earshot in the dark night.
Where we hitched a ride with another stranger.
~~~oo0oo~~~
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Drifting in the Twilight
or Roamin’ in the Gloamin’
When I paddled the Berg river marathon in 1983, that crazy 200km (‘241km Pete!’ Giel van Deventer reminds me. He’s the Berg historian) f-freezing f-flatwater f-foolishness, the oldest oke in the race was Ole man Myers (ancient: Sixty if he was a day).
Ian lost his boat one night when the waters rose – he’d left it too close to the bank on finishing that day’s leg as he scurried off to swallow the sponsors sherry. Most canoe races you drink beer as you finish, but it’s too blerrie cold for beer in the freezing Cape winter. Sherry!
The next day he had to find his canoe downstream and take it back to the start – and so he arrived at that leg’s finish VERY late – even after me.
We were eating supper – a whole chicken each washed down with copious slugs of KWV sherry – when word spread round the camp: ‘Ian is here! Come! Let’s gather on the bank to welcome him.’
He paddled up in the dark singing:
“Roamin’ in the gloamin’
by the bonny banks of Clyde . .“What style!
– a salute! to Ian Myers – I loved – and learned from – his calm, unfussed approach. Carry on; and carry on singing; moenie panic nie.
~~oo0oo~~
moenie panic nie – don’t panic; as Douglas Adams also reminded us in Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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The 1947 Chrysler Maritzburger Deluxe
I wasn’t there. It really felt like I WAS there, and I wanted to be there so bad, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. All I know is the Arabs decided to reduce the availability of their oil, thus raising the price of petrol and reducing the speed limit to 80km/h. It was ca.1973, petrol stations closed at night and we were forbidden to carry extra fuel. Also that Tabs and his cousin Des decided around then to buy a 1947 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe. A maroon one. Like good mafiosi, they formed a syndicate to buy it. I think they had in mind a getaway car with a trunk that could hold lots of moonshine.
I also found out that Tabs and Des set off for the sleepy hollow city of Pietermaritzburg with a few jerry cans full of contraband fuel in the capacious boot of their ‘new’ 1947 maroon Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe to attend the Natal Teachers College Ball. Probably at more than 80km/h.
I also know – well, I heard – that when the cops pulled them over late at night after the ball was over (sing that part), Des was driving clad only in his frayed & damp baggy skants underpants – had they been for a swim in the Epworth Girls School pool? – and I know that there were lots of ladies on the capacious sofa-like back seat who suddenly found Des sitting on their laps in those same capacious underpants, saying ‘Why, I doubt I even know how to drive such a vehicle, officer.’ The cops apparently very rudely said he was anyway way too drunk to have driven and threw them all in the back of the Black Maria (that part can be sung too, they wrote a song about it).
– TC ladies inside – When it was time to drive off they asked whose vehicle the maroon Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe was. Everyone pointed at Des; so he was hauled out of the back of the Black Maria and made to drive the big maroon beast to the cop shop.
I also heard that when in the custody of the gendarmes in the back of their police van, those same innocent young ladies let the air out of the cops’ spare wheel.
But as I say, I don’t really know WHAT happened that night . . .
~~oo0oo~~
My friend Charlie Mason remembers something his old man told him years ago:
‘He was too drunk to sing; So we made him drive.’
~~oo0oo~~
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Prohibition lifted, re-instated
The rumour on the Kestell bus was that in South West Africa the laws pertaining to grog did not actually, y’know, pertain. Specifically, the drinking age laws. You could order a beer in a pub in South West Africa even if you were only fourteen or fifteen, as we were. In fact, so the rumour went, it wasn’t a rumour, it was a fact.
It was 1969 and we were on tour in the little Kestell bus. Kestell had launched a seuns toer and then discovered they didn’t actually have enough seuns in Kestel to toer. So they extended the invite to Harrismith se Hoer School’s seuns: Who wants to join us on an adventure? R25 for 15 days! Pierre, Pikkie, Tuffy, Fluffy and I jumped at the chance, our folks said yes, and we were off on a historic adventure which included a World-First in Kimberley on the way: The world’s first streak, Pierre and Tuffy giving their thighs a slapping as they raced kaalgat from the showers to our campsite in Kimberley’s Big Hole (or their caravan park anyway). Some historians think streaking started in California in 1973. Well, they weren’t in Kimberley in 1969, were they?
We crossed into Nirvana at the Onseepkans border post armed with our newfound legal knowledge and confidently entered the first licenced premise we found: A fine Hotel on the main street of the small metropolis of Karasburg. It was hot, the beer was cold and we were cool. We sat in the lounge and supped as though we had done this for YEARS.
We decided to order a refill while that friendly man who hadn’t batted an eyelid when we ordered our first round was still around. His relaxed response had confirmed the now well-known fact that South West Africa was a bastion of good sense and sound liberal values. I got up to press the buzzer which would bring him back.
Unfortunately, the buzzer stuck and it buzzed too long, which must have annoyed the owner or manager, as he came stomping into the lounge to see vuddafokgaanhieraan.
He looked at our short stature, our short pants and our tall beers in astonishment and demanded Wie is julle? and Waar’s julle onderwyser? and other seemingly pointless questions which were disrupting the peaceful liberal ambience. He dispatched me to go and fetch our onderwyser forthwith and instructed the others to sit, stay.
But as he turned his back the rest of our gang disappeared after me, taking their beers with them. And like the good mates they were, they brought mine along too!
Early next morning we hightailed it out of the metropolis of Karasburg and headed for the nearby Finger of God. Was it going to wag at us sternly for our little alcoholic misdemeanour?
~~~oo0oo~~~
seuns – boys
toer – tour
kaalgat – no clothing; ‘as the day they were born’
vuddafokgaanhieraan – What’s up, gentlemen?
Wie is julle? and Waar’s julle onderwyser? – Time, gentlemen, please!
onderwyser – teacher
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Running from the Law
The first time I ran from the cops was about 1969 in the wee hours of a Harrismith Vrystaat morning. We were lurking, having climbed out of our bedroom windows to rendezvous on the dark streets of the silent metropolis as unaccompanied minors.
Near Greg’s cafe we spotted one of The SAP’s Finest, drunk behind the wheel of his light grey cop van. Remember them? Ford F150’s with that metal mesh over the windows.
Being upstanding citizens we phoned the pulley stasie from a tickey box to report him.
Next minute we heard a squeal of tyres and we were being chased in the dead of night by that same drunk himself – his buddies had obviously radioed him. Maybe that night’s desk duty-poppie was his stukkie?
No ways he could catch us fleet-footed schoolboys in his weaving van. We ducked and eventually dived under the foundations of Alet de Witt’s new block of flats and watched him careen past us. We emerged boldly and walked home, knowing we would hear him in the silence of a law-abiding village night LONG before he could spot us. Anyway, we didn’t want to be late for school.
No doubt he took another sluk of brandy and went looking for someone dark to beat up.
- Chips! The gendarmes are coming!
That was also the last time I ran from the law, come to think of it.
~~oo0oo~~
pulley stasie – the fuzz house; the police station
tickey box – public phone booth – see picture
stukkie – significant other; connection
sluk – swallow; slug; gulp
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Eat Your Heart Out Chuck Norris!
Camping on the slopes of Platberg below Khyber Pass Pierre, Tuffy and I had made a fort of ouhout branches and cleared a big spot to make a fire. Sitting around talking shit when we heard a rustle and a shout and who appeared before us but Guillaume. He was excited that we were overnighting and asked to join us. Sure! we said. With pleasure!
He first had to head back to town, though, to go to movies. He had recently left school and had a date with one of the onnies. The one with the micro miniskirts! The one we had lustful thoughts about. That little blonde one with the pageboy hairstyle. That one!
Well after midnight there was another rustle, another shout, and Guillaume squeezed back through our hedge with a blanket over his shoulder and a plastic packet in his hand. He sat on the blanket, took a bloody ox heart out of the packet, stuck it on a stick and roasted it over the coals.
Look: We knew he was the nephew of the famous Deneys Reitz of Boer War Commando fame; and the son of legendary Dr Frank Reitz – but MAN, were we impressed! I mean Action Man had walked up a mountain in the dark, carried the lightest provisions (when we looked at the size of our rucksacks and sleeping bags), roasted and ate an ox heart – and pomped a teacher. All in one night!
Eat your heart out, Chuck Norris!
~~~ooo0ooo~~~
ouhout – Leucosidea sericea, lovely aromatic scrub bushes and trees found in stream beds in the Drakensberg our inselbergs, and surrounding foothills
onnies – teachers; from onderwyser
pomped – made love; who we kidding? had sex; shunted; or so we surmised
More great pics of Platberg here.
~~~oo0oo~~~
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The Night We Hijacked the Orange Express
Trudi won Miss Personality at Maritzburg Varsity. We could have told them that she’d win beforehand if they’d asked. Her prize: A trip to Rio de Janeiro! Steph arranged a farewell party at Shady Pines in Stuart Street in the mighty metropolis of Harrismith Vrystaat on the night of her departure; after which we would deliver her safe and pickled to the Harrismith stasie. You didn’t know trips to Rio de Janeiro start at Harrismith Railway Station?! Ha! It goes to show . . . bone up on your geography.
At the station we bid her farewell in moviestar style, Trudi hanging out the window, fans crowded on the platform, much hubbub (just like in any good romantic movie). Here we are, hubbubbing:
party goers saying bye – Bibi de Vos pic Here’s Trudi with her hatbox:
credit: alamy free use All the mense are on the platform looking up to Trudi. Except some ringleaders are missing. Where could John and Nick be? Ah, the-ere they are, off the very far end of the platform on the tracks talking to the train driver. I recognise Nick’s leg of plaster of paris in the gloom. I scurry over and get there just in time to hear: “Nooit, meneer, this are not a melktrein, this are ve Orange Express! No stops before Beflehem.”
He reminds me of the rumour that you can’t find three wise men in the Vrystaat. But he does turn out to be wise after some rooinek private school farmer persuasion, as he partially relents: “OK, ve bess I can do for yous is I’ll slow down when I pass Rivierdraaistasie.”
Right!
We hop on, and soon the train pulls off. John the agile gymnast has a case of beer under his one arm and a wicked grin under his one moustache. We make our way to Trudi’s cabin. “What on earth are you guys doing here?” We repeat a very hasty goodbye because already the train is FLYING! I myself am now rather nervous and if it wasn’t for the medicinal value of beer I might have said something sensible. We each take position at a door and watch as the poles whizz past us in a blur. Past the crossing to Swiss Valley where Nick (whose leg is in plaster so he is chosen to drive the getaway car, having proved his mettle and driving skills by breaking his leg when he pranged his car – just like in any good gangster movie) was going to meet us. The railway crossing whizzes past and it feels like we’re accelerating!
– the lantern held aloft – Suddenly a decrease in speed and, peering forward, some lights in the dark. Get ready to jump. Arse over kettle each one of us hits the ground and tumbles. I almost stayed on my feet but then had to duck for the big sign RIVIERDRAAISTASIE one word. But one man didn’t fall: He who held the case of beers on stocky legs kept it together! Likely helped by that brush moustache acting as a windbreak and steadying the ship. We ran back up the track into the dark as a man came stumbling out of the stasie kantoor, lantern held aloft (just like in any good Orient Express movie), yelling that famous Afrikaans query, ‘Vuddafokgaanhieraan!?’
When we gathered, a sober head prevailed. Probly Nick’s, limping driver of the getaway car. “Boys, we can’t go! We can’t ‘drop’ the train driver. The stasiemeester will have to put in a report and our man the driver will get into trouble. We have to go and talk to the stasiemeester.“
So a delegation is sent back to the stasie, one limpong, one carrying a carrypack as a peace offering. The rest of sit in the veld in thecpotch dark awaiting their return, supping thoughtfully on John’s case of ales. And we await and await.
Eventually – just when we think maybe they’ve gone to jail – they return, much merrier and cleverer than when they left. Apparently as they started to say Naand Meneer, ons is jammer . . the oke said: “That’s the BEST thing that’s happened to me in all my years at Rivierdraai Stasie!” and insisted they sit and join him for a dop, pulling a bottle of brandewyn from the top drawer of his desk (just like in any good cowboy movie).
~~oo0oo~~
A sequel:
Is nothing a secret in a small dorp? I get home before sunrise, and later that same morning my Mom peeps her head into my bedroom in my garden cottage, The Country Mansion: “Were you on that train?” asks Mary Methodist in her woe-unto-us voice, “I’m so glad you’re home safely,” what a special Mom. At about nineteen years old, though, I couldn’t understand why she was fussing. It did sort-of dawn on me decades later, just like in any good psychodrama movie, when I had a nineteen year old who inherited all the wrong genes from me.
– my Country Mansion on the left – ~~~oo0oo~~~
stasie – Harrismith: famous station; opened just in time for the Boer War, still going; Rivierdraai: now also a famous tiny siding station; now derelict
stasie kantoor – station master’s office furnished with govt issue desk and chair; desk has a top drawer
nooit meneer – sorry, china; beg pardon, sir; no way, José
china – my frie-end!
melktrein – slow moving train; frequent stops; never called ‘express’
stasiemeester – station master; CEO
Vuddafokgaanhieraan? – what’s up, gentlemen?
naand meneer, jammer – evening sir; we apol . .
dop – stiff tots from that brandy bottle in the top drawer
brandewyn – brandy; or whatever was on special at Platberg drankwinkel
drankwinkel – drinking shop; bottle store; liquor store
A Prequel
Riverdraai had received belangrike and almost-as-exciting visitors along its railway line once before!
The South African Railways – actually SA taxpayers – provided a fairly new Royal Train for Mr and Mrs King of Britain when they visited Southern Africa in 1947, so that they could get to Rivierdraaistasie and then ride horses to Platberg, our mountain above Harrismith. The spoorweg ous painted the coaches white, and the Garratt locomotives a deep royal blue for the trip to Rivierdraai. We actually provided three trains for the donners. The Royal Party travelled in the White Train, recycled from the 1925 Prince of Wales and 1934 Prince George Royal Tours, thank goodness, to save a bit of ponde. A Pilot Train ran 30 minutes in front of the White Train and carried lesser officials, tame gushing press people and servants. And bringing up the rear, a Ghost Train followed the White Train carrying spare parts for the trains, maintenance gear for the trains, and maybe inappropriate boyfriends for princesses? No horses, though.
Our dorpie Harrismith down the track had to provide horses for the royal bums (get the double entendre there?). I only know that Margaret got Piet Steyn’s grey; I’m sure they all got good mounts from the good people of the dorp. They rode to the akkerbos and back and I’m sure they had fun and I’m sure the Rivierdraaistasie stasiemeester gave them a nice welcome.
But I bet he didn’t haul out his secret brandewyn stash for them!
An Update
Darn! The desk with the brandy bottle in the top drawer has gone . .
– Ah, the sign didn’t have ‘stasie’ – just RIVIERDRAAI one word – ~~oo0oo~~
belangrike – important; Rivierdraaistasie was used by the 1947 royal visit when King Jors brought the tannie and two dogters to visit HS and Platberg
tannie – queen
dogters – princesses
spoorweg ous – railwaymen
donners – bliksems
bliksems – blighters
ponde – money; pounds shillings n pence
akkerbos – oak forest on the slopes of Platberg
Vrystaat Confessions 