Vrystaat Confessions

Category: school

House (mistress) Trained

Willie the housemaster of the Doornfontein residence of the Witwatersrand College for Advanced Technical Education was a good ou. In the fickle lottery of life he drew the short straw when we moved into the large, highly-prized room adjacent to the housemaster’s conjugal apartment on the corner of Louisa Street and St Augustine Street that he shared with his long-suffering wife.

Willie tried his best. We ignored him.

You couldn’t really ignore the real boss of the res, Sarie Oelofse though. She was fearsome. When we checked in to res on day one as fresh new arrivals in 1974, she made it very clear that she vatniekaknie.

Let us pause briefly right here to think about what sort of doos would christen a place a “College for Advanced Technical Education / Kollege vir Gevorderde Tegniese Onderwys”. Fuck me! Catchy title, china! One can imagine flocks of proud alumni saying “I went to the College for Advanced Technical Education.”

But back to onse Sarie: She was tall, had been through some husbands, and was crowned by a snow white mop on top. No one would dare give her kak, we thought. Then we met Slabber. Sarie marched into our room one day in our first week as inmates in first year and asked in her strident voice, “Vuddafokgaanhieraan?” We were drinking against the rules and making a happy, ribald commotion against those same rules.

We were ready to capitulate and come with all sorts of “jammer mevrou’s” and “ons sal dit nooit weer doen nie’s” and untrue kak like that when Chris Slabber – an old hand, in his third year in res – stepped forward and said “Ag kak, Sarie, hier: Kry vir jou ‘n dop,” and poured her a large brandy.

Sarie melted like a marshmallow on a stick roasting on an open fire. Reminded me of that Christmas song by Nat King Cole. She sat down, smiled coyly and lost all her authority in one gulp. It was wonderful. From then on, we wagged the dog. We continued to show her huge respect while doing whatever the hell we wanted. We helped her, and she turned a blind eye. The formula Chris Slabber had worked out while living over the road in the old St Augustines Street cottages worked like a charm. It needed regular dop provision, of course, but that was no PT: Whatever we were drinking we would just pour Sarie some and she would remain completely reasonable and amenable.

It was what you could call win-win. Educational, in fact.

~~~oo0oo~~~

vatniekaknie – intolerant of rambustious student behaviour

doos – person lacking your clear insight

kak – uphill

Vuddafokgaanhieraan? – What gives, gentlemen?

jammer mevrou’s – apologies

ons sal dit nooit weer doen nie’s – perish the thought

Ag kak, Sarie, hier: Kry vir jou ‘n dop – Have a seat, ma’am

dop – libation. Actually, any alcoholic drink

~~~oo0oo~~~

Another lady lived off the premises, just outside our windows in St Augustine Street. Her name was Agnes and the poor thing would attempt oblivion by swallowing methylated spirits. ‘Riding The Blue Train,’ a wild and dangerous ride. When going strong she would rant and rave and give us plenty of lip with some choice foul language. We would shout out the window: AG SHURRUP AGNES! and she would come right back with FUCK YOU YOU FUCKEN POES! Feisty, was ole Agnes. Sleeping rough in winter, she and her companions would huddle around whatever they could set alight for some warmth. One night she must have got a bit too close to the fire and then belched. A fatal meths burp roasting on an open fire. Reminded me of that Christmas song by Nat King Cole. ‘Twas the end of Agnes. The police mortuary van came to take her on her last wild ride.

The street was quieter after that. I had to step up into the vacuum.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Many decades later – 2020 – I was misled into drinking a lot of wine into the wee hours at Mike Lello’s lovely home overlooking the Palmiet valley. Mike had also stayed at the Doories res, about five years before me, and Sarie Oelofse had been his House Mistress too. He had fond memories of the old duck, including gently carrying her to bed. And then leaving her there, dead drunk! So not what you were thinking. He stayed in her wing of the establishment, down at the bottom end, under the same big roof as the dining room. They got on so well, indeed, that Sarie even attended his and Yvonne’s wedding, how’s that!

30 Dec 2017
My Best Man (confessions about . . )

My Best Man, I have always said, is one of the most honest upright people I’ve known. I’ve said this for many years. It isn’t strictly true.

One dark night in Deepest Darkest Doornfontein, shortly after having been crowned The unOfficial Inebriated World Dartsh Championsh of The World, the story of which famous victory has appeared in print elsewhere, we were smuggled out of the bar in secret to avoid a massacre by the vengeful forces that had lost to us in the final.

Behind the bar counter, through the kitchen, past the chest freezers and out the back door into the courtyard of the New Doornfontein. Out into that dark night.

Through the kitchen. Did you get that part? Through the hotel kitchen. Past a number of chest deep freeze cabinets. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the lids lifting, a hand reaching in and a packet being shoved under an old jersey. The jersey was probably part of the uniform of the new unOfficial Inebriated World Dartsh Championsh of The World.

When we got to the safety of our large and lavish room in the plush Doories residence a few blocks away we were highly relieved and thankful to have survived. So we reached into the huge old off-white – or once-white – Westinghouse we had inherited with ‘Fridge Over Troubled Waters’ written on the door in black coki pen and calmed our nerves. Poor old Willie the housemaster came round to ask us to Please turn down the sound, manne, my wife is trying to sleep. We felt for him.

Then an interesting aroma started to fill the room: BACON. Eskort bacon. Being fried on the two-plate hot plate. By My Best Man.

.

.

Somehow he had managed to procure a small snack and was generously preparing to share it. Not to mention the word purloining or anything and with no video camera evidence (they hadn’t been invented yet), it remains only a suspicion that THAT’s what had been lifted from the chest deep freeze of the New Doornfontein Hotel. Illicitly. Nor do we know for sure that THAT’s who had dunnit. Did I mention he has a small trace of Jewish blood running through his veins, which would then make this not only a crime, but also a sin?

It was delicious. And was also the only Doornfontein escort we ever scored with . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

I had hidden this evidence docket, but then I got a confession from the perpetrator here and so now it has gone public, to be read by both my followers. One of whom is probably the said perp.

~~~oo0oo~~~

As we revved up on another evening after a night’s carousing, we rollicked as poor old Willie the housemaster asked us Please to behave manne, my wife is trying to sleep. We felt for him.

Gradually another bright idea took hold in the most inebriated head in the gang: Converting the hostel angle-iron bed into a fold-away stretcher. You can’t bend angle-iron, but My Best Man had done a year’s engineering before he started optometry, so through persistence and focused dedication, he did. His skilful panel-beating expertise is depicted in the big pic above *.

The sheer force of this exercise bumped the bed against an heirloom 5-gallon glass flagon with two ears. An heirloom purchased months before in a Yeoville junk shop. SMASH and tinkle. It must have been tempered glass, as there were millions of tiny pieces! My investment reduced to splinters. The crash brought the housemaster Willie to the door from his large housemaster residence adjacent. Please manne, I’m arsing you now to be a little bit quieter. My wife is trying to sleep. We felt for him.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Barks – Woof Barker, another character about whom a dog-eared book should be written – sometimes inexplicably went to bed early. Something about a good night’s sleep. Can you believe it? One night we got home handsome and clever and Barks had locked his door. Which was his right, except the Fridge Over Troubled Waters was in his room, and the beer was in that fridge. When we failed to rouse him, Chris Slabber said “Hold My Beer and Stand back!” and next minute BA-BLAM! he shot off the doorlock! It seems people from Die Pêrel with CJ numberplates carry small arms with them in case of moeilikheid. I didn’t know that. Access to refreshment was thus obtained. It was like the bloody Wild West!

Asseblief manne, said poor gentlemanly housemaster Willie, My wife is trying to sleep. We felt for him.

– CJ number plate like Slabber’s –

We wondered what Barks meant when he brought us a bullet he’d found near his pillow next morning. What was ‘e on about?

~~~oo0oo~~~

.

You’ll have a positive outlook on this eventful evening if you remember:

“Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars” – Stephen Fry

~~~oo0oo~~~

Asseblief manne – stop it, you hooligans! or ‘Gentlemen, Please’

Die Pêrel – the city of Paarl in the western cape province; average of eighteen teeth per head; papsak territory

papsak – wine containers without corks or Platter recommendations

moeilikheid – shit; troubled waters

~~~oo0oo~~~

This * jumping thing got worse and developed into a habit.

29 Dec 2017
Football Turnaround – So Glad You Could Leave!

I played football in Apache Oklahoma in 1973 for the Apache Warriors.

– Apache Football Team 1973 – I was No. 47 – and surplus to requirements –

The coaches did their best to bring this African up to speed on the rules and objectives of gridiron. We played two pre-season warm-up games followed by five league games. And lost all seven encounters!

Myself I was kinda lost on the field, what without me specs! So here’s me: Myopically peering between the bars of the unfamiliar helmet at the glare of the night-time spotlights! Hello-o! Occasionally forgetting that I could be tackled even if the ball was way on the other side of the field! They decided to play me more on the defense squad, less on offense, which makes sense when you don’t know what you’re doing. Then for some reason, I was also on the punt-receiving squad.

At that point I thought: Five more weeks in America, five more games in the season, football practice four days a week, game nights on Fridays. I wanted out! There was so much I still wanted to do in Oklahoma and in preparing for the trip home. I went up to Coach with trepidation and told him I wanted to quit football. Well, he wasn’t pleased, but he was gracious.

We were a small team and he needed every available man, how would they manage without me?

By winning every single one of the last remaining five games, that’s how!!

Our coach Rick Hulett won the Most Improved Coach Award and the team ended up with one of their best seasons for years!

I like to think the turnaround was in some small way helped by the way I cheered my former team-mates on from the sideline at the remaining Friday night games! But I suspect it was the fire in the belly of my teammates determined to succeed without me!

– much improved since I quit! –

These news cuttings are all post-me!! –

One of the games I cheered was against Mountain View. We beat them 23-7, the third winning game since I quit. That weekend Jenny Carter from Bromley in Zimbabwe, the Rotary exchange student from Mountain View was staying with us at the Swandas. We gave her a hard time at the Friday night game, and Sunday morning for breakfast we framed the Saturday news report of the game and put it on her place at the table!

edit:
I see Apache football has had some great results recently!

The second game after I left was against Cyril, rated 17th in OK and expected to whip us handily; but we beat them! I traveled to Cyril to cheer!

~~~oo0oo~~~

9 Nov 2017
Barbara se Ouma woon in Boomstraat

She actually did. My sister Barbara’s granma lived at 131 Boom Street Pietermaritzburg.

Born in the bedroom on the left on 15 December 1922

Right across the road was this school. Going to the Afrikaans school would have meant a bus ride, and Oupa was frugal.

And so started the ver-engels-ing of Dad. The rooinek-erisation. Pieter Gerhardus became ‘Peter’.

~~oo0oo~~

*ver-engels – Anglicisation

*rooinek – Boer word for Poms – anyone from ‘England’ – any of those islands left of France. Literally ‘red necks’ – but not American rednecks. NB: This excluded those Irishmen who fought for the Boers against the plundering, wicked, invading, looting Poms. Even though Irishmen can have very red necks.

~~oo0oo~~

From here (the way I understand it) they all went to Havelock Road Primary; Yanie the oldest went on to matriculate at Girls High; Lizzie the second child went on to Russell High School adjacent to the little school across the road, leaving in Std 8 to go and work; Boet finished Std 6 at Havelock Road and got his first job at Edel’s Shoe Factory, his second in Howick at Dunlop. On the way back one day he crashed his motorbike and injured himself badly. Lizzie arranged a bursary for Dad the youngest to go to Maritzburg College where he left in April in his matric year to join the post office as an apprentice electrician.

– a pre-school, a primary school and three high schools – click to enlarge –

~~~oo0oo~~~

Ouma and her first grandchild Liz – 1942

Some pics of Oupa, and his handwriting in 1971

Close, but different:

22 Mar 2017
Mother Mary Memories

Mr Pretorius was a new teacher in Harrismith. This is back in the ‘forties. One Geography lesson he asked a question and the answer he wanted was the town “Heilbron.”

Johnny Priest (chosen perhaps because the teacher knew he wouldn’t know?) answered, “The Free State” at which Mr P lifted his eyes to the heavens, rolled them and sighed sarcastically, “Why don’t you just say, The Union of South Africa?” at which Johnny hastened to say, “I meant the Union of South Africa”.

~~oo0oo~~

High school teachers Mr Coetzee taught Afrikaans and Mrs Coetzee taught English. One day in matric she asked Linden Weakley a question. He was slouched low in his chair with his legs stretched in front of him and crossed, his feet almost under her desk. He was a languid chap, Linden. He answered as he was, not moving. “Uncross your legs” she said. So he did. “I mean GET UP!” she said, more sharply this time.

Once Mom was playing tennis with Linden when their opponent got cramp in a leg. Mom, ever helpful, went to the net to tell him to how to cope and what to do to get rid of it. “Let him keep his cramp” said Linden. “I want to win this match!”.

~~oo0oo~~

Outside toilets

Toilets were outside, well away from the house, usually at the back border of the yard where the alley ran past, so that the ‘Night Car’, or ‘Honey Cart’, could get to them easily. If you had a big yard it could be a long walk. Mrs de Beer used to say theirs was “Halfway to Warden”!

“Oh, the embarrasment”, says Mother Mary, “of meeting the Honey Cart at night when walking home from the bioscope!”

~~oo0oo~~

Jack Shannon was dancing with Brenda Longbottom from across the road at Granny Bland’s once. Watching them, Annie said critically, “He can’t dance for toffee.”

~~oo0oo~~

Mom’s doctor in Harrismith was Dr Hoenigsberger, who was married to Janet Caskie, an Australian cousin of Mom’s Granny Bland. They lived in a big brick house similar to Granny Bland’s, just over the road. He was the government doctor (district surgeon) and part of his job was to attend to the inmates in the Harrismith Gaol. On the way back from there one day in his big _____ automobile, he hit the bridge over the Kakspruit and landed up in the spruit below the bridge. He was taken home, a bit shaken.

Later one of his friend phoned the house and one of his sons (Leo or Max) answered. “Hello, is the doctor in? We want him to come around and play bridge with us” said the voice.

“No, I think he’s had enough bridge for one day,“ answered the son.

~~oo0oo~~

Wealthy Casper Badenhorst was apparently very tight with a dollar. Had plenty, spent little. When Harrismith people free-wheeled downhill in their cars they would say “Ons ry nou op Casper se petrol.“

~~oo0oo~~

After matric Mary went to do nursing at the Boksburg-Benoni hospital. Older sister Pat had gone there three years before, with Janet. Pat was highly regarded by her colleagues and she took Mom to her first ward, ward 10 in the old block to introduce her to the nurse already there, Nurse Groenewald. The ward was on the fourth floor and they got into the old rattle-trap lift but no go – it was out of order. She found out it was often that way.

So they started off up the stairs at speed. Mom got to the top out of breath. She soon got fitter and learnt to run up those steps with ease.

~~oo0oo~~

“Ons ry nou op Casper se petrol” – We’re riding on Casper’s petrol – freewheeling

12 Mar 2017
Basket Weaving

When I got to Apache Oklahoma in 1973 I had already finished high school. Not much academic enthusiasm or effort had gone into my matric and I was keen to put minimal effort into this second matric, or ‘senior year’, at Apache High. In my mind I had been sent to America to socialise and be an ambassador, ‘period’.
So I carefully selected my subjects – I had to take American history – I was OK with that. I learnt about George Washington. I had to take English (compulsory for all foreigners). I added typing, ag shop (agricultural workshop – farming, welding, etc making me a member of the FFA – Future Farmers of America), annual staff (making the school annual, acting as a journalist, and selling ads in town – a hoot! Actually, they chose me, you couldn’t just elect to do it. I was lucky). I’m sure there was a sixth. Yes, Oklahoman history, I think. My mind wasn’t really on these details. No wait, it was Phys Ed.
Here’s me focusing on my typing. I’m with fellow annual staffers Robbie Swanda and David Lodes slaving over our hot typewriters. I reached a blistering 19 words a minute with ten mistakes.

Typing – roaring along at 19wpm with 10 mistakes

Robbie Swanda & David Lodes, fellow typists and Annual Staff members bashing out the Apache 1973 school annual

When I told host Dad Jim Patterson my subjects he grimaced. Then he grinned and said – “Peter, are you sure they didn’t offer Basket Weavin’!”
Jim was a great teacher. He taught me all about ‘counting fence posts’. He would pack a sixpack of Coors into a coolerbox full of ice and we would drive around the district in his old red Ford F150 pickup along the farm roads with Jim recounting all the tales of who lived where, what they farmed and some history of the area. We were ‘counting fence posts’.
Here’s Jim waking up on the back of that pickup one camping trip:

3 Jan 2017
What a Lovely Man
We grew up next door to Gould Dominy on a plot outside town. Our plot was Birdhaven, theirs was Glen Khyber. We knew him as Uncle Gould and would watch fascinated as he drank tea out of the biggest teacup you ever saw. Size of a salad bowl. A flock of small dogs would be running around his ankles as he drank, seated on their wide enclosed and sun-filled stoep.

Then he disappeared and re-appeared years later at the hoerskool as religious instruction (‘RI’) teacher. Seems he had been teaching music at some naff school in Bloemfontein all those years. St Andrews or St Somebody. He’d probably deservedly been promoted back to Harrismith.

He had been very fond of me as a boy but he was re-meeting me as a teenager and that was about to change. Or would have had he not been such an amazingly tolerant and loving gentleman.

His classroom was at the back of the school in the row of asbestos prefabs. For the cold Harries winters it had a cast-iron stove that burnt wood or coal in one corner.

We were terrible. We would saunter in while he caught a quick smoke outside, grab his sarmies and scoff them, move the bookmark a hundred pages forward in his copy of The Robe* (that he was considerately reading to us as our “RI” in lieu of bible-punching) and pull up our chairs around the black stove and sit with our backs to him. Maybe to compensate, Katrina would sit right in front of him and give him her full attention. She was a mensch.

Dear old Mr Dominy would come in and start reading while tickling the inner canthus of his eye with a sharp pencil till he couldn’t stand it any longer, would then “gril” and rub his eyes vigorously, flabby cheeks and chins wobbling, and then carry on reading. Every so often he’d mutter “I’m sure we hadn’t got this far?” proving he was the only one listening to the story. Maybe also Katrina. But even the girls, sitting in the normal school benches, wouldn’t comment on the fact that we read ten pages a day but moved on a hundred pages at a time.

Our new classmate ‘Tex’ Grobbelaar, meantime, would also have swiped one of his cigarettes. Rolling up a sheet of paper, he would set light to it in the stove, light the fag and smoke it right there, furtively holding it in the palm of his cupped hand in that ‘ducktail’ way and blowing the smoke into the stove opening.

What a lovely man.

Gould. Not Tex.

Nor the rest of us.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Here’s Ann Euthemiou combing Mr Dominy’s hair on a trip to Kruger Park back in 1968.

*The Robe – a historical novel about the crucifixion of Jesus written by Lloyd C Douglas. The 1942 book reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list.* The 1953 film adaptation featured Richard Burton in an early role. (wikipedia)

~~~oo0oo~~~

hoerskool – house of ill repute; or place of learning if you add an umlaut; s’pose the first could also be a place of learning, right?

gril – shudder, jowels wobbling;
- – * which is dodgy; the New York Tines best-seller list is DODGY!
~~~oo0oo~~~

What a lovely welcome!

~~oo0oo~~
25 Nov 2016
Blaas, Boetie!

Marching in the cadets was a ballache. Once a week we would arrive at school not clad in grey shirts, grey shorts and grey socks, but in khaki shirts, khaki shorts and khaki socks. It was ‘kadet dag’ or something equally sinister. Softening us up and brainwashing us in the glory and honour of fighting for the vaderland.

This had to stop, so Lloyd and I decided to try out for the orkes. Still the kadet orkes and you still had to wear khaki but we thought it might be less onerous. Also you could shushine your khaki putties for some light relief. I was assigned a drum and drumsticks. Zunckel was give a bright brass trompet, slightly battered.

– actually a bugle –

What was lekker was instead of marching up and down like drones in the school grounds with some kop-toe ou shouting LI-INKS . . . . OM!! we headed off out the gates towards town. There we were, pale Vrystaters going on A Long Walk To Freedom! Often there wasn’t even an onnie with us, and nobody shouting. We marched to the beat of the huge bass drum. Boom Boom Boom. Left Right and all that, rinse and repeat. We would march right into town, once going as far as the post office.

Bonus was you also got to keep an eye on the pomp troppies – seen here on an official outing – we dudes in the marching band in the background, eyes riveted on their swaying parts.

Such freedom couldn’t last. Some parade was coming up and it was time for quality control. Kadet uber-offisier von muziek n kak, Eben Louw, lined us up, got us started on some military propaganda lied and walked slowly from one to the other, listening intently as we parum-parum-pummed away. He watched as I bliksem‘d the drum more or less in time, nodded and walked on.

Then he got to Zunckel. He leaned closer, then put his ear right near Lloyd’s trompet. “Blaas, jong!” he muttered. Niks. Not a peep. The Zunck had been faking it, pretending to blow with his right pinky raised impressively. Never had learned how to make that thing squawk.

Back to barracks he went. ‘RTU’ the parabats would say.

~~oo0oo~~

Oh no! This post was a dredged-up memory from 45yrs ago. I sent it to my and Lloyd’s big mate Steve Reed in Aussie, who forwarded it to Lloyd’s sister Filly in Zimbabwe where I thought Lloyd would have a chuckle reading it.

But no, I learned instead that Lloyd had passed away a few months ago. Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Too soon!

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

blaas boetie, blaas jong – prove you actually know how to blow a trumpet and you’re not just fakin’ it; You’re faking it aren’t you?

kadet dag – toy soldiers day;

vaderland – fake concept designed to get you to do things without asking embarrassing questions;

orkes – brass band with drums n stuff;

kop-toe ou – brainwashed individual;

LI-INKS . . . . OM!! – Military command to get a bunch of people all dressed alike to go somewhere. Instead of saying to sixty people, ‘Listen chaps, please get your arses over to the mess hall. See you there in three minutes’, you line them up in twenty rows of three and start shouting blue murder and generally getting really irritated with each other. Forty minutes later you arrive quite near the mess hall in a cloud of dust and blue air all hot and bothered, the only thing you learnt being one new way to cuss your mother-in-law; Massively inefficient;

onnie – paid brainwashed individual;

pomp troppies – short skirts – nuff said:

25 Nov 2016
Pow Wow

I was warmly welcomed by the friendly Native American folk in Apache. I really enjoyed them and I think they enjoyed me. They invited me as their guest to a Pow Wow one night.

Here’s a teepee in the Apache showgrounds.

At school the American Indian society presented me with gifts. Debbie Pahdapony Grey does the honours:

Oklahoma was Indian Territory before we whites stole it all back, and there’s quite a bit of Indian history about. Read something about it here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shocking-savagery-of-americas-early-history-22739301/

For more, read Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn, who has revealed the very ugly, savage treatment of the indigenous Americans in his book The Barbarous Years.

European and U.S. settler colonial projects unleashed massively destructive forces on Native peoples and communities. These include violence resulting directly from settler expansion, intertribal violence (frequently aggravated by colonial intrusions), enslavement, disease, alcohol, loss of land and resources, forced removals, and assaults on tribal religion, culture, and language. http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com

Here Melvin Mithlo readies Joe Pedrano for an event.

Museum stuff at Fort Sill north of Lawton, south of Apache. Apache chief Geronimo died here, 23 years after being taken captive. His Apaches were the last tribe to be defeated.

Brief History

Earliest Period – 1830
The tribes usually described as indigenous to Oklahoma at the time of European contact include the Wichitas, Caddos, Plains Apaches* (currently the Apache Tribe), and the Quapaws. Following European arrival in America and consequent cultural changes, Osages, Pawnees, Kiowas and Comanches migrated into Oklahoma, displacing most of the earlier peoples. Anglo-American pressures in the Trans Apalachian West forced native peoples across the Mississippi River; many including Delawares, Shawnees and Kickapoos-found refuge or economic opportunities in present Oklahoma before 1830. However, some of those tribes split in the process.

*Naisha-traditional reference to the Plains Apache

1830 – 1862
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 culminated federal policy aimed at forcing all Eastern Indians west of the Mississippi River. The Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Seminoles–the “Five Civilized Tribes”– purchased present Oklahoma in fee simple from the federal government, while other immigrant tribes were resettled on reservations in the unorganized territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 precipitated further Anglo-American settlement of these territories, setting off a second wave of removals into present Oklahoma, which became known as “Indian Territory.” In 1859, with the state of Texas threatening genocide toward Indians, several tribes found refuge in the Leased District in western Indian Territory.

1865 – 1892
The Civil War (1861-1865) temporarily curtailed frontier settlement and removals, but postwar railroad building across the Great Plains renewed Anglo-American homesteading of Kansas and Nebraska. To protect the newcomers and provide safe passage to the developing West, the federal government in 1867 once again removed the Eastern immigrant Indians form Kansas and Nebraska reservations and relocated them on Indian Territory lands recently ceded by the Five Civilized Tribes. The same year, the Medicine Lodge Council attempted to gather the Plains tribes onto western Indian Territory reservations. Resistance among some resulted in periodic warfare until 1874. Meanwhile, the last of the Kansas and Nebraska tribes were resettled peacefully in present Oklahoma. Geronimo’s Apache followers, the last to be defeated, were established near Ft. Sill as prisoners of war.

24 Nov 2016
Where Have You Been!?

Kleinspanskool schooltime ended around twelve noon or one o’ clock I guess, and we lived less than a mile east along Stuart Street and so one bleak and chilly winter day, after absorbing a lot of prescribed, standard knowledge, Donald Coleman and I set off for home in our grey shirts, grey shorts, grey socks and grey jerseys. He’d probly being absorbing wisdom from Miss Jordan, me from Mrs van Reenen, and it seems I may also have had a grey jacket at the time. Mom felt the cold keenly.

We had lots to talk about and so we walked along on the pavement under those big old London Plane trees you can see above, mostly bereft of leaves, many of which were now lying morsdood, yellow and brown, in the deep sandstone gutters. Mainly brown. While they’re yellow they still hang onto their twigs.

It was really cold but Donald had a box of matches in his pocket and a plan. We raked together a pile of the dry leaves with our chilly hands and started a nice fire and sat down to warm those same hands and our bare shins as the fire crackled away.

It soon burnt out – leaf fires disappoint – and we meandered on in deep conversation about important things. A block or two later we made another blazing but short-lived fire to sit and chat and warm up by.

Far too quickly we reached Hector Street and Donald turned down toward his home and I turned up to mine. Mine on the corner and his a block or two closer to the mountain.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?” greeted me. The tone of the question surprised me and ruined the quiet, gentle ambience of our leisurely journey home. At his home Donald was being asked the same unreasonable question. We’d been to school. Everyone knew that, why were they asking?

“IT’S FIVE O’ CLOCK! SCHOOL ENDED OVER FOUR HOURS AGO!” We weren’t arguing. We didn’t say it didn’t. What was their point? “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Uh, we were talking . . . time flies?

We were left to ponder the mysteries of the adult world. They obviously marched to a different drum as we sauntered to our flutes. We knew our Moms loved us and were just worried like we weren’t.

They didn’t know – yet – that Donald was an archeologist, paleontologist, cosmologist, naturalist, philosopher and music-lover and had LOTS to think about and consider, and me lots to learn. Life lay before us and what that was was to be pondered. They just assumed we were buggering around.

And anyway, whose stress levels were highest? I arse you that now that I know about stress levels.

Plane trees have itchy balls

~~oo0oo~~

morsdood – messily deceased; autumn leaves in winter

Huge thanks to Sandra of Harrismith’s best blog DeDoudeHuizeYard for the pictures – exactly right! That is the SAME gutter we sat in. You can even see a few of the plane leaves, great-great-great descendants of the ones we burned, um, (surely it can’t be!) about fifty six years ago.

24 Nov 2016