Vrystaat Confessions

Category: Family

  • James M Patterson

    James M Patterson

    Damn! My Host Dad and good friend Jim died.

    James Merrell Patterson Obituary

    July 24, 1936 – May 28, 2021 (84 years old)

    We are sad to announce that on May 28, 2021, at the age of 84, James Merrell Patterson (Apache, Oklahoma), born in Lawton, Oklahoma passed away.

    He was predeceased by: his parents, James Earl “Buck” and Merrell Fleta Patterson (Dietrich); and his sister Molly (Sybil). He is survived by: his wife Katie; his children, Mary Kate and Jimmy (Cyndi); his grandsons; his sisters, Patsy and Lotsee; his nieces and nephews; and his great-nieces and great-nephews.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Jim, you were a legend. The kindest, best, funniest Dad a seventeen year old could have wished for. I still tell people how you taught me to go ‘countin’ fence posts’ in your red pickup truck, cooler box filled with Coors as we drove around while you taught me about life. Katie too, taught me about life: Peter, who do you think chooses their partner? ‘Why, the man of course, Katie!’ – gales of laughter. Lemme tell you Peter, when Jim walked into the bank I said to my girlfriends, ‘I’m gonna marry that man.’

    Fifteen years later I introduced Katie to Trish – who had chosen me. They got on like a house on fire, those two wimmin!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Today is gonna be a sad day of reflection for me. Also wonderful memories. Great fondness. I must get hold of Katie and Mary-Kate.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    I see Peggy Manar (83) and Eugene Mindemann (85) also died – both in October 2020. And so things change. Like Jim and Katie, they too (and their spouses Tom and Odie) were wonderfully kind to me in my year in Apache back in 1973. As were the Hrbaceks, the Paynes, the Crews, the Lehnertzs, the Swandas, the Rotary club, the school, everyone. A magic year, 1973.

    So many memories. I’ll come back to this post and add over time.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Another Jim moment: Jim was asking me what subjects I was taking in my senior year at Apache High School.

    But first lemme explain: I had finished school back in South Africa. I was done. I was here to have fun and learn new things – things other than school. So I told him: I had to take American history as I was a foreigner; I had to take English as I spoke the Queen’s English and that needed fixin’; Then I took Ag shop, Annual staff, Phys Ed and Typing.

    He looked at me in amazement: (or was it envy?) – ‘What? They didn’t have Basket Weavin’?!’ he asked with a huge grin.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Mary-Kate helps Dad Jim with the whisky! Walter Hrbacek & Eugene Mindemann in the background, left and right of M-K. Melissa Manar in front
  • Sister Bellows

    Sister Bellows

    Mom tells the story of a sister in frail care who used to shout very loudly late at night. Mom kept wishing she wouldn’t, but it happened regularly. It seemed that was just her way.

    One night she yelled at someone while standing right outside Mom’s open door and that was it. Mom plucked up the courage and called out to her to ask her to please speak less loudly. She didn’t hear, so Mom called out a bit louder, whereupon the sister stuck her head into Mom’s doorway and said firmly:

    “Please speak quieter! I’ll have no shouting here in frail care!”

    Mom Mary (93), ever seeing the bright side of life, chuckled with laughter telling me the story!

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Inmate Mary

    Inmate Mary

    They put us out on the veranda in the sun. It got quite hot out there. There were four of us and we started singing.

    We sang: ‘I’m behind a prison wall; The bed’s too hard and much too small; There’s no pyjamas here at all; Oh, Mother, what’ll I do now?‘

    Always complimentary, Mary had to make it clear the food at Azalea is excellent, they weren’t complaining like George, just singing his song!

    She wondered what pyjamas inmates would wear in prison and we agreed probably they’d wear their clothes night and day.

    And you can be sure, even at 90 they were thinking of their Moms as they sang Oh Mother. Dear Mom Mary would be thinking of her dear Mom Annie.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Sinner Mary

    Sinner Mary

    Jessie’s second pre-school was ‘Sinner Lizabeth.’ I think it’s Anglican, but I don’t know, cos I wasn’t interested. I was only interested in the fact that Aitch had chosen it, so I knew they’d look after my Jessie. And they did: Rose and two Pennys treated her good the two years she was there.

    But today I found out about Sinner Mary. This was news to me. I gasped.

    Gasp!

    Right through school Mary, now universally know as Mary Methodist after playing the organ in the Harrismith Methylated Spirits church for something like a hundred years, was churchless!

    Her Mom Annie, my gran, was blissfully unimpressed and uninvolved and probably played golf on Sundays. I’m guessing she would use as an excuse, if pushed by the pious, that Harrismith didn’t have a Presbyterian church (it had folded).** I’m not going to say that proves God is Methodist, but you can see right here how the thought did flit across my mind. That would be if She existed, of course.

    So Mary the scholar was churchless! I love it! She tells me her teacher Mr Moll – who taught singing, woodwork and religion – never gave her very good marks probly cos he knew she didn’t go to church! She’s joking of course, and her bad marks were probably 80%, but anyway, Tommy Moll was very involved in the Methodists.

    So when Mary got married they had to ‘make a plan’ and the wedding made the newspapers. The headline blared: ‘Four denominations at one wedding’ or something. Not ‘and a funeral.’ (Sheila had the actual cutting so I now know my recollection was exaggerated).

    The bride ‘was Presbyterian’ they said (but we now know she was actually – gasp -a ‘none’); the groom was Dutch Reformed (‘another faith’ they said, but he too was in reality a ‘none’); the Methodist minister was on leave, so the Apostolic Faith Mission man tied the knot.

    Later, when Mary returned to Harrismith, having lived in Pietermaritzburg for a while, where she became Mom to Barbara, she decided to get church. She chose the Methodists as a lot of her friends were Methodists. She maybe forgets she told Sheila the Methodist boys were nicer than the Anglican boys, so she tells me something about not liking the Anglicans’ ‘high church’ aspect. So this twenty five year old mother leaves her baby Barbara with Annie and Dad at Granny Bland’s home in Stuart street, where they have the room with the big brass double bed, and goes off to confirmation classes with a group of schoolkids. She aces the class, gets confirmed in the Lord, sanctified, and starts her epic Methodistian journey, which continues today, sixty seven years later, her only sin on the way being an occasional single ginger brandy with ginger ale while everyone else was drinking bucket loads. When she plays the piano of a Sunday in the frail care dining room in Maritzburg these days, those are Methodist hymns she’s thumping out joyfully.

    I sort of feel like I have an excuse for being churchless now if I need one. ‘I’m just taking my twenty five years off now, Ma,’ I’ll tell Mary when she asks.

    (BTW: In the pic, Mary is the bridesmaid, back left. The bride is her dear friend and cousin Sylvia Bain who married John Taylor, another ‘none’ I’ll bet).

    ~~oo0oo~~

    – Jess in Livingstone uniform with her Mad Hatter Tea Party hat – 2008 –

    After ‘Sinner Lizabeth’ pre-school, Jess went to a remedial primary school whose school song, which they sang with gusto, went:

    Live in Sin, Live in Sin, Progress Voorspoed, Live in Sin

    Eat cake, Eat soap, Eat porridge too.

    Believe in yourself Live in Sin

    Can’t say we didn’t give our JessWess a good grounding.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    “Have faith, have hope, have courage too. Livingstone Remedial.” Tom loved telling me the “Live in Sin” real words, Dad!’

    ~~oo0oo~~

    I see anyone can apply to become an Apostolic Faith Mission Marriage Officer! Just download the application form online here. Maybe this is an out if we can find errors in that 1951 dominee-ring application!?

    ~~oo0oo~~

    ** Harrismith’s historian Leon Strachan tells a lovely story – I’ll find it – of how Hans Lötter met a Harrismith couple on the train ride from Durban to Harrismith. He was going there to settle, having bought a bookstore sight-unseen. He asked them ‘What church does Harrismith NOT have?’ They racked their brains, then said ‘There’s no Presbyterian Church.’

    ‘Ah, then I’ll be Presbyterian,’ Hans announced firmly.

    –oo0oo–

  • Quick Chat

    Quick Chat

    I can’t talk long cos they’re coming to take me away. From my warm armchair – its falling to pieces, mind you – in front of the heater and wrapped under a blanket. To the piano, where I’ll play a bit before lunch. Lunch is a roast and vegetables and then ice cream cos its Sunday. And Sundays we get egg and bacon for breakfast.

    You know Kosie, it’s amazing how an old tune suddenly comes back into my head and I start playing it. Then I keep playing it each day and it gets better every time!

    You go, Ma! Remember to eat your vegetables, or you won’t get any ice cream. **Laughs** I eat all my vegetables except pumpkin, and that’s why I haven’t got curly hair. That’s what we were told when I was small.

    Oh, Dad says the temperature is going to drop steeply tomorrow, you must wear warm clothes, she tells her 66yr-old son.

    OK, Ma.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Sweet

    Sweet

    The Old Goat’s usual crap when he phones: ‘What’s for supper?’ Sweet potato, I say. Blah blah, something about the price, always the price. The price here, the price in America, the price of everything . .

    Ouma used to bake them in the oven with lots of sugar and some butter, he recalls. I can remember the taste as if it was yesterday.

    Wasn’t yesterday. That was a helluva long time ago.

    ca.1927 if he was 5yrs old.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Bloody Marys

    Bloody Marys

    Mary Bland and Sylvia Bain, cousins, decided there was NO WAY they were going to miss the dance in the Harrismith Town Hall. This is quite possibly Mary’s single biggest act of defiance or wilful disobedience in her whole life. See, they were meant to be in Durban then, to start their midwifery course at Addington Childrens Hospital.

    But to the dance in the dorp they went. Mary with Pieter, who she later married; and Sylvia with John, who she later married.

    The next day they left (by train?) and in Durban they got their new quarters and their new uniform, which they loved: ‘It had a long fishtail headdress down the back almost to our waists. It looked beautiful.’

    Also, their new matron was Mary Hawkins and they knew her sisters in Harrismith and in fact, Mary’s Mom Annie had dated her brother ‘Hawks’ Hawkins for quite a long while.

    – Addington Childrens Hospital – Maybe by 1949 it looked more like on the right? –

    When they were summonsed to Matron Hawkins’ office they waltzed in merrily feeling glam and looking forward to a warm Harrismith welcome; only to be met with a frosty blast and a good dressing-down from Bloody Bill, as Mary Hawkins was known by those who knew her! Or sometimes Bloody Mary. She had been the Matron of all SA nurses in the war, and this was shortly after the war, and she was in no mood for nonsense. They were LATE starting their course and she’d not cut them any slack just cos they were from her home town!

    – Mary left and Sylvia, new in Durban – ca.1949 – day off –
    Mary Bland and Sylvia Bain before they became wilfully disobedient
    – Hey! At least they did get their certificates in the end! – they thought the training was not as good as at Boksburg-Benoni hospital –

    Somewhere there’s a newspaper photo of Mary and Sylvia with a New Year crop of fresh Durban babies. Must find it.

    – Ah, here it is – Sheila had it –

    ~~oo0oo~~

    The feature pic shows Mary and Pieter also in 1949, also outside the Town Hall, but another occasion.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    pics from skyscrapercity.com; and kznpr.co.za – thank you. kznpr is Hugh Bland’s site; Here’s the cover of Hugh’s book on the Addington Childrens Hospital:

    Hugh Bland and Mary Bland are related if you go way back to Josiah Benjamin Adam Bland and John Francis Adam Bland, so they have both played a part in the Addington Childrens Hospital. Hugh didn’t deliver any babies, though, so his role was way less important than my Ma’s.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Mary’s Koedoe

    Mary’s Koedoe

    Mary tonight reminded me of her trip to South West Africa back in the seventies, I think, where ‘they all talk Afrikaans, you know.’

    She tells of staying with one young fella who was fascinated by her accent. He told her she talked funny. What do you mean, asked Mary, indignant that her Free State Afrikaans wasn’t judged perfect by this lil five-year-old.

    ‘Tannie praat so Talking Talking,’ he said.

    The pic shows Mom feeding a (probably Afrikaans-speaking) kudu.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Shades of my Afrikaans also being judged in SWA in 1969, see below – the full post of our tour is here.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    We camped near Windhoek where my Dad had arranged that I got fetched by some of his relatives I had never met. Third or fourth cousins, I suppose. In the car on the way to their home they had lots of questions, but before I had finished my second sentence the younger son blurted out “Jis! Jy kan hoor jy’s ’n rooinek!” (Boy, You can hear you’re English-speaking!) and my bubble burst. All of my short life I had laboured under the mistaken and vain impression that I was completely fluent in Afrikaans. Hey! No-one had told me otherwise.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Shoot Me

    Shoot Me

    We should have been more Biblical. Us Swanie kids should have listened in Sunday School and been a lot more faithfully Biblical. Maybe even evangelical?

    Doesn’t the Bible say quite clearly and unambiguously, ‘Obey Your Father!’? or ‘Obey Thy Father’? And patriarch Pieter Gerhardus Swanepoel said quite clearly and unambiguously, ‘Shoot Me When I Turn Sixty!’

    We shoulda been obedient children.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Luckily for him (now aged 100 – 2022) the Bible might also say ‘Obey Your Mother.’ Does it? Lemme check.

    Yep. Ephesians 6 v1 – Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    That command – disobeying it – coulda had serious consequences! Our disobedience (or mine, as a son) could have led to this:

    If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, . . . that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother (Ah, Mom woulda saved me) lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place . . . And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die . . . (Blimey! But ‘God Loves Ya!’ Eish!) – Deuteronomy Chapter 21 v18

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Again, thank goodness for Mother Mary!

  • Who You Gonna Call?

    Who You Gonna Call?

    For a while, I was an obstetric ambulance driver. Just for a short while early one morning in 1983.

    So Wendy wakes the Reed and announces it’s time: Stacey the firstborn is on her way and they need to get to the hospital sommer right now. Oka-ay, now where did the Reed put his car keys? Or at least the spares?

    Searching for stuff when you’re not completely calm is fruitless. Rather phone Koos. Who comes roaring around the corner into 10th Avenue, Berea, Durban, KwaZuluNatal, South Africa at three ay emm in the grey and grey 1965 Concorde deluxe four door, column shift Opel. Or was it my puke-green 1974 Peugeot 404 station wagon? Memory fades, and it could be either. Both had slick column shift gear levers anyway. And anyway, it’s a good thing we have vehicles like this for times like these. Spacious bench seats. Ample boep-room between seats.

    I whisk them off to the hospital in no time. Efficiently. The robots change when I go through, the clouds dissolve and the sky turns blue . . thanks, Don Maclean. The Concorde is stable around the corners, swift on the straights.

    Wendy was in the ward long before 4am the way I remember things.

    Stacey, on the other hand, appeared in that ward only at about 6pm that evening. She’s still laid back.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Decades later we discussed the details.

    May 2021, Steve Reed wrote: Was it from there (Whittington Court) that you made your pre-dawn mercy mission to the obstetrics department on 8th June 1983? Possibly not, because you bought that flat in 1984 or were you renting it before then?

    – whattacar – built with special event like this in mind – top left is the correct colour for part-time ambuminces –

    Me: Memories dim and they’re very malleable. Mine is of getting into my puke-green Pukealot stasiewa OHS 5688 outside my residential hotel on the Berea – or perhaps the Communal house in Hunt Road.

    Wie weet?

    But not Whittington.

    Where did I drive to? I remember Debbin North, but no more detail except I dimly see a flat, not a house? Where were you when Stace was born?

    Steve: We were living in 10th Avenue – a little duplex near Greyville a few streets up from Windorah. You visited us there after Stacey was born. I remember your living in a flat not very far away …  closer to what was Berea Road. I remember it being pretty spartan – Were you sharing with someone?

    I think it may have been your Opel that you came round the corner on two wheels but memory murky. Maybe it was the Pukalot.

    I had been spray painting a cot for Stacey’s arrival. Slammed the tip up garage door shut and went to bed with all keys locked inside the garage. Another set of keys had been left at work in Durban North. Somehow I had no key for either of our cars.

    Me: So you took Stace home to 10th Avenue? Amazing. I was convinced I roared across the mighty Umgeni River. In the stasiewa, I thought, cos I was imagining being an ambumince driver.

    Me: Ah! I might have been staying with Dave Thorrington-Smith in his flat near Botanic Gardens. Spartan it was.

    Steve: At 5am you took a moer of a lot of waking up… but damn I was happy to see you. Bliksem!

    Me (silently): 5am? He’s trying to downplay my heroics.

    ~~oo0oo~~