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 . .

  • 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:

    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

    =========================

    Harrow Rd Flyover & Res_2.jpg
    Where the lucky plumber’s bakkie got its guineafowl

    =======ooo000ooo=======

    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

  • The 1947 Chrysler Maritzburger Deluxe

    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).

    Black Maria
    – 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~~

  • Prohibition lifted, re-instated

    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

  • Running from the Law

    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.

    phone booth old SA

    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.

    1969Harrismith FabFive (1)

    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