No.3 in a series of Chopin pieces our Mother Mary would play in our lounge in Harrismith back in the Sixties. Our childhood was filled with sublime music emanating from down the long passage. I have invited sundry pianists to play them here as I have very few recordings on Mom’s classical playing! Thank you, guest artists and youtube!
Category: Family
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Chopin Mom Used to Play – Minute Waltz
No.2 in a series – Mother Mary would play the Bentley upright piano in our lounge. My childhood was filled with sublime music emanating from down our long wood-panelled and dunlop-carpeted on real suspended wooden floors and pressed-metal ceilinged passage.
SO: I have invited some lesser pianists to play in her stead. Thanks to them and to youtube!
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Chopin Mom Used to Play – Grande Valse Brillante Op.18
Mother Mary would play the Bentley upright piano in our lounge. My childhood was filled with sublime music emanating from down the passage. My memory bank is filled with wonderful sounds that bring back mostly happy memories! At 91 she now plays her popular pieces from memory. Her classical pieces she would read the music – she can’t see well enough to do that anymore. Sister Sheila has recorded many of her popular songs, but we have few of her classics. A great pity. SO: I have invited some lesser (! – I am slightly biased) pianists to play in her stead. Thanks to them and to youtube we can hear the music again!
Here’s No.1 – enjoy!
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Buckle the Blacksmith
After Maritzburg College, Dad joined the General Post Office as an apprentice electrician. He recalls leaving school on 1st April 1938. Here’s a spirit level he was issued that day:
– Spirit level – Wilson Lovatt & sons Wolverhampton – While he was still apprenticing, he tried to enlist to join the WW2 war effort, but was sent back. He was sent to the Himeville/Underberg area with a GPO truck and a sidekick called Freddie to do his bidding. Later he was transferred to Harrismith – which fell under Natal for the GPO although it was actually in the Orange Free State – from where he again made his way to Durban to try and enlist, and was again sent home, finally being allowed to join after Oupa reluctantly signed his papers. He left for ‘up north’ in 1941.
While in Harrismith ca.1940, he met old Mr Buckle the Blacksmith down in McKechnie street, near the railway station. He was from England.
He ended up with a few tools from old man Buckle: a back saw and a set square with a beautiful brass inlay and brass leading edge.
After boarding at the Royal Hotel, whicvh had stables, Dad moved to a plot outside town – townlands – west of town on the Wilge River, downstream of town. There he bought horses, schooled them and sold them for a profit. I assumed he’d had them shod by Buckle but he corrected me. Buckle was a blacksmith, upholsterer, wheelwright and wainwright/wagon-maker. He didn’t shoe horses. That was up to Charlie Rustov, Harrismith’s only farrier.
From his plot on townlands out west of town** he would ride out to Boschetto Agricultural College for Ladies on the slopes of Platberg, the mountain that dominates the town. Boschetto was where the girls were. They were the main buyers of his ponies. The first time he went there, he met the formidable Miss Norah Miller, the founder and principal. Luckily for him she needed a few pictures on her office wall. He was able to help and so became a firm favourite of hers from the outset.
While he was telling the story Mom remembered a story about Norah: She knocked on someone’s door. Whoever answered went back and was asked ‘Who was there?’ They said, I don’t know, but she’s got one eye, one leg and a hell of a cough! Norah had one lens of her glasses frosted out, she wore a leg brace (probably childhood polio?) and smoked like a chimney. When her leg brace buckled, Dr Frank Reitz made her a new one. A better one. He would have loved that challenge. He was a hands-on fixer.
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Harrismith author Leon Strachan found some fascinating info on Norah Miller’s leg – it was not polio. His source, Isobel Kemp (Dr Frank Reitz’s receptionist for thirty years. Isobel knew everything): It was probably osteoporosis resulting in a hip fracture in 1928, only six years after she established her college. Usually this would have resulted in incapacity and excruciating pain, but Norah was in luck: she was in the right place at the right time, and knew just the right man, bold innovator and pioneering surgeon Frank Reitz, trained at Guys Hospital in London, then did surgery specialisation in Germany.
He operated and joined the femur using an ordinary screw to hold the femur ends together! This technique would only become common decades later, in the fifties. Thirty years later she was still walking – with difficulty, but still mobile, and in charge of her college. When Cedara took over Boschetto she moved there, where she died in 1959, aged 79.
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Aug 2021: Ole man phoned me. He found some (one? more? maybe the one I photographed above?) old ‘tri-squares’ with handles made of ebony with brass inlay. Do I want them? I bought them in the late 40s and Buckle was already an old man, maybe eighty. So they are probably 100yrs old. Hell yes, I’d like to have them!
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** Old man bought his first townlands from old Englishman Bill Mundy. On the right bank of the Wilge river downstream from town; out on the road that turns south towards Swallow Bridge after leaving the west edge of town below 42nd Hill.
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Random Ancestors – #1 Ginger Bain
I know little about my ancestors, so when a friendly Essex wideboy who is into genealogy liked one of my posts and spoke about an ancestor’s challenge, I thought I’d attempt a more modest challenge: Learn about family whose names are very familiar to me, yet I know very little about them.
Another prompt came from Texas, when old mate Free State Texan JP du Plessis asked, ‘Is GS Bain your great uncle?’ when he spotted him in a polo team with Dr Frank W Reitz.
Yes indeed, I said and so I’ll start with Ginger Bain, who I have written a little bit about before – about how his rugby genes were passed on to his great-great-grand-nephew. I notice he rode ‘Da Gama,’ captained the side and, the tournament being in Harrismith, Free State, they naturally won the ‘Duke of Westminster Cup.’ Right. Who’s the Duke of Westminster?
And did they use only one horse in those days? By the time I watched polo in Harrismith thirty years later, I thought each player had four horses at his disposal? Ah, I see the rules say at least two, up to four – ‘or even more.’ A lot of polo rules seem to be ‘by agreement.’
Ginger Bain was the first-born son of Stewart Bain and Janet Burley, who owned the Royal Hotel in Harrismith. Stewart had come to South Africa from Wick, a tiny fishing village in NE Scotland. Accompanied by his brother James, they ended up building bridges for the new rail line extension from Ladysmith to Harrismith. I speculate how that may have come about here.
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Cappy Joubert
Uncle Cappy was a mentor to his three sons and to many others around him. He was a huge influence in my life. He taught me how to play cricket, how to rough-and-tumble, how to BE THERE for your family; how to do the right thing. And – big lesson in HS where the opposite was revered – that you did not have to be skynheilig to be good.
As Mobiloil’s representative in the district he had new cars every now and then, which were cause for great excitement. His winged green Zephyr 6 Mark III (made 1962-1966), then his stompgat gold Zephyr 6 Mk IV are the ones I remember best.
– Cappy Joubert’s Zephyrs – internet pics His job with Mobil took him all over the countryside, visiting farmers and the depots, so he knew the back roads around Harrismith – and sometimes he’d take us along.
He was always available to help: With sport, with Sunday school, with church, with lifts to sporting events, being Father Christmas, arranging picnics, organising games at the picnics, umpiring cricket, playing cricket, coaching cricket;
I was raised by my Mom and her Mom Annie, so was in danger of being pieperig, as they were gentle, quiet ladies. Thank goodness for frequent visits to the Jouberts, with rugged Uncle Cappy, three tough boys and – the toughest of them all – Aunty Joyce! Cappy would show you exactly how to hold a cricket bat; he would warn the boys and if they didn’t listen, physically wrestle them to the ground and donner them. I remember Etienne wrestling back, squirming, protesting and not giving up, and Cappy holding him in a vice grip on the grass until he conceded! When Etienne went one step too far for Joyce in trading chirps and talkback, Joyce would finally get to the point where she’d lean forward from the waist and jeer, ‘Etienne Joubert met ‘n bek soos ‘n skȇr!’ LIVELY action at the Jouberts!
Typical older brother, Etienne would try and get youngest of us all, Deon to do stuff, pushing the little one into taking the risk for our reward. Once when Deon refused, he said, “Chicken!” and Deon instantly and heatedly responded “I aren’t a blerrie chicken cos I aren’t got fevvers!”
Full of jokes and ‘streke,’ I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Aunty Joyce with her Cape accent – she pronounced the Afrikaans ‘so’ as sue, not sewah as we did – that put Tuffy up to this prank.
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I wrote to his eldest son Etienne one fine morning, soon after Uncle Cappy had died peacefully in his sleep on his ninetieth birthday:
Et
I was lying in bed this morning listening to the birds and de-fragmenting the hard drive in my head when this popped up on some old grey cells:
Knyptang innie broeksak Dinamiet innie gatsak VOORWAARTS die Ossewa Brandwag!
Also then, of course you have to remember his song on a moonlit night:
O, die maan skyn so helder . . . . op my POEPHOL !He was a huge influence in my life. A very good ‘normalising’ influence to go along with the more conventional, narrow influences!
I’m sure you can remember much more.
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Koos,
Yes, he did rather have many funny little sayings.
Hou die blink kant bo was another favourite.
The ‘knyptang’ one he’d say aloud in the yard so that Eben Louw could hear.
“C’mon guys, let’s play the game.” That would be when us children were arguing.
He based a lot of his life’s philosophy on Cricket & the fairness & unfairness thereof.
When he drove me to Pretoria to start in the bank he reminded me:
Never over dress or under dress. Do not drink on your own. A gentleman leaves the club before seven.
I miss him often in sticky situations.
Have a great day Koos.
Etienne
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Uncle Cappy widened our horizons where school and others tried to narrow them down. He showed us how you can be thoroughly decent and also naughty! So many skynheilige people who weren’t a patch on him would NEVER swear in front of us boys, but Cappy did – with a twinkle in his eyes. Now, mind, he never swore in front of us in front of Auntie Joyce! That’s for sure! That mischief was for boys-only gatherings.
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As he was Mobil and Annie – my gran – was Caltex, those were the ONLY fuels we would even THINK of using in our cars. Our non-existent cars. We would NEVER use Shell or BP!
So when one day we were in his car at the fuel depot and we saw a Caltex tanker filling up from the BP tank we were MORTIFIED!! What!!?
Cappy calmly set our minds at rest, ‘All fuels are basically the same,’ he said – to our loyal mystification. ‘It’s the additives we add afterwards that make them different,’ he explained.
We were half-mollified.
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'You never forget the people who were kind to you in childhood' - PD James, English detective novelist
skynheilig – pseudo-holy; fake
stompgat – short tail
pieperig – a softie
Etienne Joubert met ‘n bek soos ‘n skȇr! – ‘Etienne bigmouth’
streke – waggery; jokes; pranks
knyptang, etc – the Ossewa Brandwag was a racist, anti-semitic, anti-British and pro-German organisation in South Africa during World War II. Justifiably angry at what Britain had done to them in the Anglo-Boer war, they over-reacted churlishly. Cappy had volunteered for the war and gone off to battle; on his return his church spurned him for wearing his uniform, so he joined the Methodists – the Methodists’ gain.
O, die maan skyn so helder – romantic: the moon shines so brightly
. . . op my POEPHOL ! – on my arsehole ! The sting in the tail of his mischievous ‘romantic’ song!
Hou die blink kant bo – keep smiling; look on the bright side
Feature pic: Deon, Cappy, Joyce & Tuffy – just Etienne missing
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Polo in Harrismith
The first recorded polo game in South Africa took place in October 1874 at the King Williams Town Parade Ground between the Gordon Highlanders and the Cape Mounted Rifles.
The Military Ninth Division played during the 1880s at Harrismith, Orange Free State.
Polo was played in Cape Town in 1885 at a club formed by army officers, and in Natal by the officers stationed at Fort Napier, in Pietermaritzburg; a year later, they formed the Garrison Polo Club.
Play in Transvaal began in Johannesburg in 1894, when the owner of the Goldfields Hotel founded a polo club. The game was dominated by the military, but civilian clubs like this did sprout up in several places.
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Someone must have the history of Harrismith polo. I hope. The first polo field I remember was in the sixties on the far side of the railway tracks; you drove under the subway to get there. Across the road was the sportsfields: a hockey field and then the cricket oval. Legend has it that Jimmy Horsley once hit a famous six across the hockey field, across the road and onto the polo clubhouse roof!
During a recent visit to Harrismith I spotted this on good friend Bess Reitz’s passage wall: Her Dad and Ginger Bain in the winning team!
– tea at the old polo field in the sixties –
– note the Ford Fairlane!! –
– poms in Africa – SA Polo has a website with some history.
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A Slice of Vrystaat
I was born in Harrismith in 1955, as was Mom Mary in 1928, and her Mom Annie in 1893. Annie thought “the queen” of that little island above and left of France was also the queen of South Africa (and for much of her life she was right!).
– annie watson – mary frances – peter frank – To balance that, there’s this side of the family.
I attended the plaaslike schools in Harrismith till 1972. A year in the USA in 1973 as a Rotary exchange student in Apache Oklahoma. Studied optometry in Joburg 1974 – 1977. Worked in Hillbrow and Welkom in 1978. Army (Potch and Roberts Heights, now Thaba Tshwane – in between it was Voortrekkerhoogte) in 1979 and in Durban (Hotel Command and Addington Hospital) in 1980.
I stayed in Durban, paddled a few rivers, and then got married in 1988. About then this blog’s era ends and my Life With Aitch started. Post-marriage tales and child-rearing catastrophes are told in Bewilderbeast Droppings.
‘Strue!! – These random, un-chronological and personal memories are true of course. But if you know anything about human memory you’ll know that with one man’s memory comes: Pinch of Salt. Names have been left unchanged to embarrass the friends who led me (happily!) astray. Add your memories – and corrections – and corrections of corrections! – in the comments if you were there.
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Note: I go back to my posts to add / amend as I remember things and as people mention things, so the posts evolve. I know (and respect) that some bloggers don’t change once they’ve posted, or add a clear note when they do. That’s good, but as this is a personal blog with the aim of one day editing them all into a hazy memoir, this way works for me. So go’n re-look at some posts you’ve enjoyed before and see how I’ve improved over time (!). It’s just as my friend Greg says: ‘The older we get, the better we were.’
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Harrismith Town Hall
It’s quite an amazing building for a dorpie! When it was being built sensible locals called it Bain’s Folly, believing the mayor Stewart Bain – my great-grandad – was overdoing things. What’s wrong with the dorpsaal we already got!?
– the old town hall / dorpsaal – perfectly adequate if anyone had asked me! – Do we really need this. concerned citizens may have asked?
and this inside (thanks to Sandra & Hennie Cronje and Biebie de Vos):
Well, ready or not, we got The Grand Old Man of Harrismith’s dream town hall:
Building operations:
Newly-completed:
In front of it was the market square, which later was turned into an ornamental garden once cars with tighter turning circles than ossewas were invented:
The main entrance and the stage after a recent revamp:
And the setting for this beautiful building is spectacular:
In the end the townsfolk liked it, some called Stewart Bain The Grand Old Man of Harrismith, and he was given a fancy funeral when he died in 1939.
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Mary Frances Bland Pictorial
A Pictorial Timeline
- Ongoing – needs work:
- Better dates (which will fix some wrong sequences) and
- Captions –
Born 19 Sept 1928 
Mary with big sis Pat 
See Platberg? 
Sister Mom at the Boksburg-Benoni Hospital 
Addington beach Durban 
Scottburgh beach 
Honeymoon Lourenco Marques 
Winter wedding 1951 
Mary & Trudy 
Trish eskimo, Mom eskimo, Dad & Sheila 
Birdhaven townlands 
Mary with Trish & Jessica 
Swanepoel ladies 
with one son & two grandkids Jessie & Tommy 
90th birthday 
80th birthday 
80th birthday 
– Four Generations –
Annie, Mary, Barbara & Linda
Mary MOTHWA 
Mary Rotary Ann 
First Grandchild Linda Mary Tarr 
Sheila & Mary 
Mary & Jean Coleman
Vrystaat Confessions 