Vrystaat Confessions

Category: 8_Nostalgia

Looking back with fondness on those things we couldn’t wait to get rid of, or away from, back then . .

  • Just Call Me Wally

    Just Call Me Wally

    It was 1981 and we were new in Durban. Me and young David Simpson from Pee Eee. We decided to watch the Comrades Marathon, an 89km exercise in insanity being run “up” from the coast at Durban to the heights of Sleepy Hollow that year. Those days it was easy to follow the race: You just got in the way, parked wherever you wanted, and got out whenever you felt like shouting encouragement to the possessed.

    Early in the morning we stood near 45th cutting and soon the runners arrived. Near to us was a short stocky old bald whispy-haired fella shouting enthusiastic encouragement and giving two-thumbs-up to virtually every runner, some of whom – quite a number – seemed to recognise him.

    Once the last stragglers had passed we started to head off to Dave’s puke-green VW Beetle with CB numberplate, but noticed the old bullet seemed lost. Can we help you? we asked. Do you know the way to the finish? he asked. Sure, and we’re going there, we said, Wanna come along? I’d love that, he said gratefully, and that’s how two complete Comrades ignoramuses ended up driving Wally Hayward in the back of a Beetle to the finish of the 1981 Comrades – a race he had run five times AND WON FIVE TIMES!

    Well, you couldn’t spend a morning with Wally without hearing a whole bunch of tales and we milked him for more and fell under the spell of this warm and unassuming bundle of energy. At the finish the three of us sat on the grass and heard an announcement that some old bullet who won the race decades ago was there and was going to do a lap of honour. The wonderful brave soul – I think Phil Masterson-Smith, the 1931 winner – shuffled slowly around the track to tremendous applause, none louder than that coming from Wally who watched intently, quivering like a bird-dog with a huge grin and a wistful look in his eyes. I winked at Dave and snuck off to the announcer’s tower and told them we had the 1930 winner Wally Hayward with us, and could they make a fuss of him, too?

    They could indeed! And so, 51yrs after first winning the race Wally hit the track, totally surprised – but also totally chuffed – and ran that 400m with a smile like a truck radiator and his knees flying past his ears looking for all the world like an escaped ostrich! I bet his 400m time would have been way up there among the quickest ever for a 73yr-old!

    Yes, Wally had won in 1930, then again in 1950, ’51, ’53 and 1954! He had run this crazy ultra-marathon only five times in all and won it every time he entered, the last time at the age of 45, a record of oldest winner which still stood in 1981. It was only broken much later – in 2004.

    It took us a while to find him after his lap of honour, celebrity that he now was, but yes, he still wanted a lift back to Durban please.

    I s’pose he didn’t know the way!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Six years after we enjoyed this magic day, Wally ran Comrades again, thirty three years after his last run and shortly before his 80th birthday. He ran a magnificent race, beating half the field and beating the famous winner Bruce Fordyce on an age-handicapped calculation. Bruce himself, generous soul, mentioned and emphasised this after the race.

    Wally’s memoirs were published in time for the 1999 Comrades by a wonderful friend of mine, fellow Comrades runner and Dusi paddler and character Bill Jamieson. He titled the book: “JUST CALL ME WALLY”.

    Wally Hayward 88

    89km in 9hrs 44mins just before his 80th birthday.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Dave Simpson wrote to me on seeing this post:
    Hi Pete,
    Well, this does bring back memories – 33 years ago at that! Actually, we originally only planned to go as far as Fields Hill.
    When Bruce Fordyce past us outside the Westridge Park Tennis Stadium, with his bunch of early race ‘klingons’ and yelled out ‘Walleeeee’ as he strode past the great man – we knew we were dealing with someone special. The rest you’ve said.
    Great story.
    Hood

    Me: I’d forgotten that! It was Fordyce’s first win that year. The first of nine.
    In the back of my mind I thought we did know there was something special about him, but we weren’t sure who he was.
    When he asked for a lift, did we already know who he was?

    Dave again: No, we did not know who he was. When he asked for a lift, he told us that he was there with his mate, who wanted to follow his son who was a plodder at the back of the field. Dear Wally just assumed that we, like him, wanted to watch the front runners.
    As it turned out, Wally was wrong – we just wanted to be with Wally!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Among many other running achievements, Wally had also won the Harrismith Mountain Race. After the race, in typical generous Wally style, he called it, ‘The toughest race in the world!’ – just what we Harrismithians wanted to hear, and we’ve used his words ever since!

    The Wally Hayward medal

    Wally Hayward died in May 2006 at the age of 97. In November, the Comrades Marathon Association announced that a new medal, the Wally Hayward medal, would be presented to runners for the first time in 2007. These special medals are awarded to those runners who fail to earn Comrades gold medals – awarded to the first 10 men and women finishers – but still come in under the six-hour barrier first broken by Hayward in 1953.

    Wally Hayward was one of the greatest ever Comrades runners, with five wins in five starts over twenty four years, then two more finishes, up to fifty eight years after his first run. Comrades Association chairman Dave Dixon said in announcing the new medal, ‘He had a remarkable Comrades career, and is still the oldest person ever to finish the race.’

    – Bruce Fordyce spoke about Wally during his commentary on the 2026 race –

    ~~oo0oo~~

    thanks to brandsouthafrica for some of the info here – read how Wally was branded a professional and barred from winning more Comrades; thanks also to Bill Jamieson’s book ‘Just Call Me Wally.’ Bill was a great character, Comrades runner and fellow Kingfisher Canoe Club member. Charles Mason wrote about Bill in his book Bakgat. In his later years Bill would visit me and regale me with his stories and his worries. A lovely man.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Years later, Dave Simpson met another SA sporting icon:

    – Dave, in his VW green, meets Gary –

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Hello Cock goes missing

    Hello Cock goes missing

    Uncle Jack Kemp had a big dilemma. He loved a party and there were two parties on, one at our house and the other at Ronnie from Threeburgh’s place. To get from the one brandy bottle to the other he had to walk down our front steps, down our little-used front path and out the gate onto Stuart Street. He then had to cross the road and walk northwest to the other corner where Ronnie and Martie were whooping it up – and they could whoop it up!

    Then he had to retrace his steps in case there was something more exciting going on where he had just come from.

    After a few such sorties he went missing and Isabel Necessary asked her Koosie (pr: coosie) to Go And Look For Him Please My Love, throwing back her head to let out a peal of loud cackling laughter, drink in one hand and ciggie in the other.

    I found him under the willow, flat on his back with the unspilt brandy glass balanced on his big boep. Hello Cock, he rasped. ‘Hello Cock’ he’d say to everyone. Saved him remembering names.

    Uncle Jack was fine, he had just run out of steam and vertical-ness and was thinking about his next move. What lovely people were Jack and Isabel Kemp!

    95 Stuart St

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    In the map the four dots mark our yard. Just above the top dot is the van Tubbergh home, showing the short route Uncle Jack had to negotiate. In the picture of the front of our house, there’s a willow tree on the left. Just out of picture on the right is the willow tree under which dear Uncle Jack came unstuck, where schoolboy me found and ‘rescued’ him.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

  • Geronim-Oh-No!!

    Geronim-Oh-No!!

    When modern man decided to pinch water from the Tugela river and pump it uphill to satisfy the Vaalies’ thirst, our area around Harrismith and Bergville saw a flurry of activity and an influx of new people. A bus arrived at school and a flock of new kids tumbled out. They were cruelly christened Die Dam Paddas by us parochials.

    New things started appearing in the distrik: Sterkfontein dam; TuVa township (Tu Va – Tugela/Vaalies, geddit?); a vertical tunnel in the Drakensberg for the hydro-electric turbines; canals and smaller dams. All had to be built.

    One of the latter was Driel Barrage on the Tugela river on Kai Reitz’s farm The Bend, so once we’d had sufficient beer one fine day we drove down on the back of Kai’s big Chevy pickup to look at the construction and to say some insightful engineering things about it.

    A very high wall had been built starting out from dry land until its highest point in the middle of the river. Very interesting, but we don’t have to . . . . Oh, we do?

    So we climbed up it and inched our way on our bums along the 30cm wide wall to its highest point. Some walked, but they were just being foolish, right? OK, so we’ve seen it, can we go now?

    The muddy brown water way below us was completely opaque, no way you could see even one centimetre into it. It could have been knee deep or ten metres deep, who knows, so we definitely won’t be . . . . Mandy! ARE YOU MA-AA-aa-aD?!

    She’s jumped! Holy shee-yit!! Ah neely dahd, she took forever to plummet as I watched in slow motion, and then she entered with a big splash and disappeared, which I s’pose was better than if she hadn’t.

    Eventually she surfaced with a huge grin on her face and now I knew I was stuffed. I’d have to jump. Unless the others chickened out, but no, there went Sheila and so before long I had to stand up, act casual and plummet meself.

    Unbelievable what a fierce hold brave women have over us cowardly um, circumspect men . . .

    driel-barrage-close-up
    – red: the walk of fear – yellow: the plummet of death –

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

  • A trumpet? Or were we just trumped?

    A trumpet? Or were we just trumped?

    We would meet on The Bend, Kai’s paradise on the Tugela outside Bergville. The guys from Doories in Johannesburg studying to be optometrists and engineers at the Wits Tech and the gals from NTC in Pietermaritzburg, studying to be teachers of the future fine upstanding youth of SA. We would meet specifically to practice setting a good example.

    We’d sing and dance, play loud music, down many beers, fall in love, salute General Armstrong the whisky bottle, dance, laugh, swim in the river, jump off the dam wall, have a ball, dance, laugh, recover and start all over again. In hunting season some of us might shoot a few guineafowl.

    The Bend Gen Armstrong

    Sundays we’d load up and go back to school like responsible students. Speronsible, as Lloyd Zunckel would say.

    On this occasion Lettuce Leaf loaded up the off-yellow Clittering Goach to head SE back to PMB and Spatch loaded up the beige Apache and Scratchmo loaded the green VeeDub to head NW back to Joeys. We decided to help Lettuce pack out of the kindness of our hearts, slipping a dead guineafowl in amongst the girls’ suitcases. Ha ha! That’ll give them a surprise when they get back!

    Clittering Goach & Guinea

    Here Scratchmo chunes the Clittering Goach’s under-bonnet-ular bits, pretending he knows what’s going on to impress Lettuce, him being an aspiring Electronic Engine-Knee:

    The Bend Spatch Lettuce

    Back in Johannesburg later that Sunday night, we couldn’t wait to phone them from the nearest ‘tickey box’ or public phone.

    How was your trip? Fine.

    How were your suitcases? Fine.

    How was Lettuce’s boot? Fine.

    Oh! Um, was there anything unusual in the boot? No. Why?

    DAMN! We suspected Scratchmo Hood Simpson, and interrogated him accusingly: Are you so in love that you removed the fowl to spare the girls the smell? No, it wasn’t him. But, but . . someone must have removed it. Damn!

    Oh, well, it was a great idea for a prank! Pity it failed . . . .

    A week later we got a parcel slip:

    A parcel from PMB awaits your collection at the General Post Office in Jeppe Street.

    It was big and quite heavy and read: Contents: Musical Instrument.

    Interesting.

    Unwrapping layer after layer of paper and one plastic bag after another we unveiled: THAT GUINEAFOWL! The girls had suckered us! We had been (in 21st century-language) SERVED!

    Hummed? It honked! It ponged! – that was obviously their “musical instrument” clue! Heave! Vomit! Yuk!

    So what to do with it? Holding it at arms length we carried it out. It was 5pm rush hour. Traffic backed up under the Harrow Road flyover. Innocent hard-working people on their way home. A little plumber’s bakkie looked easy, so as the light turned green we deposited the offending deceased foul fowl discreetly on his loadbed. He’d have an interesting mystery when he got home!

    We then made our way to the nearest tickey box. We had a concession phone call to make to PMB.

    Girls 1 – Guys 0

    ~o0o~

    Harrow Rd Flyover & Res_2.jpg
    – The underpass intersection where the lucky plumber’s bakkie got its free guineafowl –

    Stephen Fry had it right: Education is what you learn from your peers, friends and other hooligans between classes

    ~o0o~

    bakkie – pickup truck;

  • An Old Mystery: Whose fault?

    An Old Mystery: Whose fault?

    There were two reasons we ‘borrowed’ Gerrie’s 1961 black Saab 93 4-cylinder 2-stroke late one night: (1). If you don’t give a car a run the battery can go flat, and (2). We had Larry the American Rotary Exchange student from New York with us, who might have heard that the Free State can be a very boring place with “nothing to do.” Especially at night. And also (3). A moving car is a safe place for schoolboys to drink beer in. These are facts.

    Quietly wheeling it down the driveway we held our breath until we’d pushed it far enough, then quickly started it and we were OFF! Freedom! Beer! Speed! Steph was multi-tasking, driving and handing out the ‘longtom’ cans of Black Label beer his family’s obliging gardener had bought for us from Randolph Stiller’s Central Hotel offsales. My folks lost the sale because of their silly and pedantic “over-18’s” policy.

    Tuffy always finished his before we hit third gear . . .

    A quick routine stop to tap the fuel pump with the half brick kept under the bonnet for just that purpose, and we headed for new terrain.

    We had already done the town athletic track and the school netball fields on other occasions, leaving our trademark donuts and figure-of-eights in the gravel.* This time our destination was Alfred vd Zeyde’s National Botanic Gardens on top of Queen’s Hill, stopping only once more to tap the fuel pump with the half-brick kept under the bonnet for just that purpose.

    In the dark we met Kolhaas Lindstrom in his car. He was legit: He’d already left school and was a licenced driver. “Dice?” he challenged, and the game was on! Whizzing through the veld Rring-ding-ding-ding-RRriiing! It’s a two-stroke, remember?

    Don’t believe the Minister of Transport, speed doesn’t kill you. Speed exhilarates. It’s the sudden stops that kill you. And the sudden stop and loud bang came as a surprise to us. Dead silence reigned until in an awed American upstate New York accent Larry exclaimed from the back seat, “We’ve had a head-on collision with a hill!” .

    That broke the ice. The hill, meantime, had probably broken the suspension.

    But no. A committee undercarriage inspection revealed all four wheels suspended in mid-air. Trying to gun it out left the front wheels whizzing around uselessly. Well, that is why there were five of us, so we man-handled it over the ditch and away we went, cleverer than before.

    Forty five years later I flew in to inspect the scene of the mystery. Which was still unsolved and now a very cold case. The mystery was this: How could it be that such great and experienced drivers crashed? I mean some of us had been driving for . . well, months! And in not too many years’ time, we’d be licenced drivers.

    I flew in via google earth. And there it was: A fault!! It was Queen’s Hill’s fault, not ours!

    A great big fault – or ditch? – runs North-South across the whole hill. THAT was what caught us by surprise in the long grass.

    Queen's Hill - Annotated

    I have little doubt that if one were to measure its width you’ll find it just a bit greater than the wheelbase of a 1961 Saab93!

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    • * Next time you’re wondering who made those ‘crop circles’? Think a) Homo sapiens; b) Homo sapiens subspecies pranksterii; c) Alcohol; These are facts.

     

  • I’m fifteen?

    I’m fifteen?

    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~~

  • Brief Sojourn at Hotel Command

    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~~~

  • Graham DryBright Lewis

    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!

    floor polisher Lewis.jpg

    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:

    Lovely chick thinking OmiGawd! as Lewis 'splains things to Reed
    – 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~~~

  • Hitch-hikers

    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~~~

  • Drifting in the Twilight

    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