Tobogganing – We didn’t invent tobogganing in the Vrystaat, but we thought we maybe invented summer tobogganing. We did it on old car bonnets that we found in the dongas east of town between King Street and the new bypass, which wasn’t there yet – just veld. Cardboard boxes worked too, but had a short lifespan. These guys were doing it in 1872 in the snow. OK, we were in the 1960’s – not cardboard on grass, but upside -down car bonnets down dongas.
But we did invent Mountain Biking, we were sure. MTB’ing on our dikwiel fietse in and around those same dongas ca 1966 to 1970. Ramping, jumping and gooi’ing squares. Along the dongas and across the dongas. Maybe those fietses weren’t really built for that kind of action (no shocks, flimsy mudguards), as the mudguards caught on the wheels and got scraped up into weird shapes. We find the excessive use of helmets these days puzzling.
History according to wikipedia: The original mountain bikes were modified heavy cruiser bicycles used for freewheeling down mountain trails. The sport became popular in the 1970s in Northern California with riders using older single speed balloon tyre bicycles to ride down rugged hillsides. See! We were first!
Hijacking – The earliest documented instances of maritime hijacking were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. OK, that was before us. Train hijacking? OK, there was this military raid that occurred on April 12, 1862, in Georgia during the American Civil War. Volunteers from the Union Army commandeered a train and took it northward toward Chattanooga Tennessee. If you look closely, one of the raiders does look a bit like a Venning;
Streaking – When and where streaking started is unknown. A 1967 article in the student paper at Carleton College in Minnesota laments that streaking was a tradition during winter when temperatures were well below freezing. OK, so we were in 1969, maybe they beat us. Anyway it seems Lady Godiva beat us all to it: An English noblewoman who, according to a 13th century legend, rode naked – but covered by her long hair – through the streets of Coventry to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation that her husband imposed on his tenants. In later versions of this legend, a man named Tom watched her ride and was struck blind or dead. The name ‘Peeping Tom’ for a voyeur originates here;
Drifting – Although the origin of drifting is not known, Japan was one of the earliest birthplaces of drifting as a sport. It was most popular in the Japan Touring Car Championship races. Kunimitsu Takahashi was the foremost creator of drifting techniques in the 1970s. But first there was us in the late 60’s in a black front-wheel-drive Saab! The venue: the streets of the metropolis of Kestell and the athletic track in Harrismith. Steph at the wheel! Deftly dodging the bluegum tree stompe specifically placed on the track to deter hooligans. In vain.
This church saw some good drifting in its day
Selfies – I took my selfie in 1973 in Oklahoma, which was WAY before it became popular.
OK, this Robert oke did it in 1839, and this lady had better equipment – in both ways.
.
Kidnapping – Tuffy started kidnapping in 1970 but these fellas kidnapped this bride 100yrs earlier in 1870:
*Birthdays: Tuffy started the tradition of birthday kidnapping, grabbing a birthday boy and bundling him into a sleeping bag, tying the top closed. Then driving him somewhere and dumping him to make his own way home. When it was Tuffy’s turn we simply dumped him out of the sleeping bag into the pool at the du Plessis’ place as he happened to be born on the Winter Solstice, 21st June, shortest day of the year. Oh, yes – and the coldest! So he didn’t have a long walk home, lucky fella. Funny thing is, he didn’t thank us . . .
.
Rally Cross – Tim Venning in the blue Triumph 2000 roared around and between the old popular trees and oke trees and other trees on the far side of the Harrismith President Brand park across the Vulgar river. Just when you thought he had to go straight he’d cut left between trees and hare off on another tack. People watching might have dreamt up today’s rally cross.
.
Self-driving cars – Or cars fuelled by one kind of inflammable substance while the drivers were fuelled by another. Old hat. Elon Musk was still growing pimples.
=========ooo000ooo=========
donga – Dry gully or arroyo, formed by the eroding action of running water; fantastic cowboy movie scenery;
gooi’ing squares – slamming on the back brake while throwing the bike on its side, skidding dramatically while looking nonchalant; chicks swooned;
dikwiel fietse – fat- or balloon-tyred bicycles; Chicks swooned over ous who rode them;
1984 was one of the very few years since 1960 that Colorado river water from the Grand Canyon actually reached the sea. High snow melt pushed it past the point where golf courses and old-age homes drain it of all its water and so – at last! – the waters of the Colorado reached the beautiful estuary at Baja California and flowed into the Sea of Cortez again!
Unknown to many, 1984 was also the ONLY year Mexicans would have been able to taste Mainstay cane spirits, distilled from South African sugar cane, mixed into that Colorado river water. Well, recycled Mainstay and river water, as the Mainstay that reached the sea had first passed through the kidneys of a mad bunch of South Africans that Chris Greeff had assembled to paddle through the famous American Canyon.
– Dave Jones’ place – Our host in Atlanta – He paddled for the USA – – See the SAA hooch we had decanted into 2litre bottles! –
That’s because we were on the river sponsored by Mainstay Cane Spirits and South African Airways. The ‘Mainstay’ we drank was actually an SAA Boeing 747’s supply of tot bottles of whisky, brandy, gin, vodka, rum – and Mainstay cane spirits. We decanted all the little bottles we could find into two two-litre plastic bottles to help the stewardesses on board with their end-of-Atlantic-crossing stock-take. We had resolved to drink the plane dry, but man, they carry a lot of hooch on those big babies. Maybe in case they end up with all 350 passengers happening to be as thirsty as paddlers are? Here we are in Atlanta with the loot. Note the Mainstay sticker on one bottle held by our host Dave Jones, a paddler himself. Paddled for the USA in K1, C1 and C2 wildwater, US national champ and also coached the USA team. So we were saddled with not one but TWO national paddling champs who are dentists and military men, like beer and do crazy things!
Personally I reckon mixing guns, boats and teeth with beer can only bring trouble . .
– Saffers busy ‘outfitting’ as the Yanks say –
From Atlanta we jetted on to Phoenix Arizona. There we hired another lang slap car and took a slow drive to Flagstaff where we got ‘outfitted’ with kit for the trip. Fifteen canoeists from South Africa joined our guide Cully Erdman and his delightful partner JoJo Suchowiejko on a trip down the Grand Canyon from Lee’s Ferry to the take-out on Lake Mead three hundred miles downstream. We were accompanied by one other paddler, an Argentine José Luis Fonrouge who was ticking off his bucket list, having climbed Everest. Five rubber inflatable rafts crewed by experienced canyon runners carried the food and the ‘Mainstay’ and hundreds of beers, plus a motley assortment of tag-along raft passengers from South Africa. Talking of motley: Us paddlers ranged from capable rough water paddlers to flatwater sprinters to happy trippers to complete novices. Some had Springbok colours, others had a lot of cheek.
Outfitting was also needed for supplies and Greeff put himself in charge of catering for the liquid refreshments. He was good at maths back in Parys se hoerskool so he did some sums: Seventeen kayakers plus some rafters times 12 days times 10 beers each is, lessee . . . OK, and then after breakfast we’ll need . . .
Apparently the yanks thought he’d grossly over-catered and they were worried about how they were going to carry the left-over beer out of the canyon at the end. That’s if the rafts stayed afloat. Well, ons sal sien . .
– ‘our’ five rafts with the beer – high water had shrunk this beach, but we stopped to walk up a side canyon –– our river guide Cully Erdman shows us how – he has done it before –– massive Redwall Cavern at mile 33 – pics National Geographic and oars.com – thanks! –– Herve, George & Jojo with her bikini ON –
Some twists in the tale:
My boyhood kayaking heroes had been the van Riet brothers, Willem and Roelof, who won the Dusi three times just as I was first learning about the race ca 1970. As I started to participate in the race in 1972 Graeme Pope-Ellis won the first of his eventual fifteen Dusi wins. Both Willem and Graeme were with us on this trip, along with other paddling legends I had met in my recent entry into the world of canoeing. Having ‘paddled lonely‘ from 1970 to 1982, I was now rubbing shoulders with legends!
– legends of paddling – and me – out of respect for them, I’m wearing long pants –
Another twist: In the year I first saw the Colorado river after walking/running down the Bright Angel trail from the South Rim to the Colorado’s swiftly-flowing clear green water – 1973 – Willem had launched a boat at Lee’s Ferry, done an eskimo roll and come up with ice in his hair, causing him to postpone his trip. Now he was back, eleven years later – in the summer! And so was I.
The trip was put together by yet another iconic paddler Chris Greeff, winner of more kayak races than I’d had breakfasts. One of the craziest races he won was the Arctic Canoe Race on the border between Finland and Sweden. About 500km of good pool and drop rapids in cold water. When he arrived at the start with his sleek flatwater racing kayak the other paddlers and the officials looked at their wider, slower, more stable canoes and thought ‘Ha! he intends portaging around all the rapids!’ They had heard of the Dusi and how mad South Africans run with kayaks on their heads, so they amended the rules: Every rapid avoided would incur a stiff time penalty. You portage, you pay! Chris grinned and agreed enthusiastically with their ruling: He was no Dusi runner and he had no intention of getting out of his boat!
Later: On the trip, our American kayak and raft guides kept asking us about the sponsors stickers we had attached to kayaks and rafts. SAA they understood, South African Airways; but what was this “Mainstay” stuff? Ooh! You’ll see! was all we’d say. At ___ rapid on Day __ around the campfire we hauled out our two-litre bottles filled with a suspicious amber liquid. THIS we said, was that famous stuff!
Colorado Toekoe – Pre- and Post a shot of Mainstay –
The first thing about Mainstay, we told them, was its medicinal properties. Toekoe Egerton had turned blue from too much swimming, but after a slug of Mainstay he got his colour back as the ‘before and after’ pictures above clearly show.
As more Mainstay was swallowed, hilarity and a bit of insanity ensued. I have a picture frozen in my mind of Willem sprinting past me, running nimbly across the pontoons of a raft and launching himself in the darkness into the swift current of the Colorado running at 50 000 cfs shouting Yee-ha!! – A bit like this, but at night and in the summer:
– Willem could stay as he was for the rest of his life; But he chose to change to Mainstay – Mainstay –
IQ’s soared:
– George, Allie, Swys & Toekoe, full of Mainstay –– John Lee of Lee’s Ferry – a striking resemblance to our own John Lee – obviously separated at birth –
Besides this fortified and fortifying SAA loot, Greeff had also arranged for beers on the trip. John Lee tells the story:
I recall how our Yankee rafting crew were somewhat taken aback at the rather large drinks order they received prior to the departure from Lees Ferry! Despite the huge stocks, somewhere downstream in the depths of the Grand Canyon, to their utter disbelief, the only liquid left was the raging Colorado River. Stocks had run dry .
There were some thirsty, desperate river runners in camp. We were way upstream from the next available beer at Phantom Ranch’s shop.
Desperate times call for desperate measures …….
Some of us (hello Felix!) resorted to performing like trained seals, executing dashing eskimo rolls for passing J-Rigs, and being rewarded with frosties for our efforts!
One Captain (PF) Christiaan Lodewikus Greeff called quietly for volunteers, and assembled a raiding party – could also call them ‘SEALs’, one was a parabat – to address the situation. This unbeknown to our unsuspecting, law-abiding river crew.
In the dead of night, wearing beanies, faces blackened, they slid silently into the icy waters of the flooded Colorado River and headed into an upstream eddy towards the distant sounds of happy laughter from a neighbouring campsite.
Reaching tethered rafts, they found the holy Grand Canyon grail . . . multiple nets strung from the rafts, laden with tins of sunset amber liquid.
Their return to our camp was triumphant.
I cannot recall the composition of that courageous group. Suffice it to say, that I am certain that it included one Lieutenant-Colonel A Gordon-Peter (SAB with bar).
The reaction of our guides, later, was somewhat different!
Mules heavily laden with liquor were later cajoled down the treacherous track from Phantom Ranch, and our evenings were once again fueled with fun, laughter and Willie’s moerse yarns!
In closing, who will ever forget that wonderful mirage in the middle of the shimmering Lake Mead – a very naked, very tall and statuesque blonde River Goddess on a drifting raft … … or was it ?
– some of our wonderful American rafters – law-abiding folk – – lawyer lee ponders –
Well, I dunno – but there was at least one naked lady that I do know of: JoJo posed butt naked for a stealthily-taken pic on George’s camera. What a sport, she removed her bikini top and bottom for the gentlemen doing research on just how much trouble George would get into with his wife back home.
Lee plans his arguments for the court cases sure to follow: YaRonna! These were just Merry Pranksters, M’Lord . . .
– Felix – looking semi-naked – caught trout in the Little Colorado –– Foreground and background: Muddy and warm water of the Little Colorado. In the middle: Clear cold Colorado water from deep down in Lake Powell. Ryan practices the roll that didn’t work in Lava Falls a few days later –
At the confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado the Little was flooding and massively silt-laden. We stopped on a skinny sandbank and had mud fights and mud rolls. The muddy water from the flooding Little Colorado was so thick that the two trout Felix Unite caught thanked him for rescuing them!
It merged here with the clear water coming out of Lake Powell – seen behind Felix – and from here on we had traditionally red-coloured water – ‘colorado.’
Just downstream of the confluence I got sucked under by a big whirlpool that formed under my boat that I couldn’t escape. As I went down I set up to roll but stayed down until I thought ‘I’m outa here’ as I was now loose in the cockpit and my splashie had leaked. So I bailed. Up on the surface the guys told a more dramatic tale: ‘Swanie! You disappeared for AGES! Then your boat popped up; Then your paddle popped up; And still there was no you! Then at last you popped up!’ So then they started calling me Pete Whirlpool. Lots of that muddy water stayed up my snout and I had a few bad sinus headaches but Wendy – Dave Walker’s connection – very kindly stepped in and saved my butt with strong painkillers and nightly TLC. Back in Durban a month later I was rushed into theatre by another very kind lady, my boss at Addington Hospital, ophthalmology professor Anne Peters. She took me to her ENT friend for an emergency sinus washout! As Saffeffricans say ‘Ah neely dahd!’ Some Little Colorado River mud was washed down Durban’s St Augustine Hospital’s outlet pipes into the Indian Ocean that day. Probly also had a smattering of Mainstay in it.
– lunch on a small sandbank – five rafts, seventeen kayaks squeeze on – the water level was up – – seated among legends as I was, I wore my langbroek out of respect – Graeme & Wendy Pope-Ellis; Wendy Walwyn; John Lee; Cully Erdman; Me; Willem van Riet; Jannie Claassens; Herve de Rauville in red cap – – Expedition Leader Greeff bombs through – – Me in Crystal rapid –
Hikes up the side-canyons:
– Thunder River Falls up a side canyon. Canyon lore has it that the ‘river’ flows into a ‘creek’ which flows into the Colorado River –– splendid desert scenery; and always the river’s presence below – – council of elder map readers – see my map at the end of this post –
Map reading: I had a lovely large-scale map of the river through the canyon showing all the rapids. We would pore over it, going over the day and plotting our tomorrow. Here Jannie Claassens stands left, Swys du Plessis is prominent in red shorts, I am just visible behind him, Dave Walker wears a cap, Willem van Riet sports a ducktail probly cos of his last swim, Herve de Rauville kneels like a good Catholic, Allie Peter lying down in the background cursing his shoulder, Chris Greeff in the Mainstay cap ponders his next move, Bernie The Jet Garcin has a beer in his hand and a sock in his speedo, Wendy Walwyn is planning her first eskimo roll soon, and Cully Erdman in blue shorts thinks ‘Wwho ARE these okes? and where was that huge rapid Willem is talking about!?’
– internet pic – river at a lower level –– Bernie Garcin – great mate; – – and WHAT a campsite! – nice paddle, too –
Happy daze drifting in the current, lying back gazing up at the cliffs and watching the waterline as century after millenium of geological lines rose up out of the water and each day rose higher and higher above us. Willem the geologist would explain some of it to us. The latest view seems to be that the river is around six million years old, and it has exposed rocks up to two billion years old as it carves downwards, aided also by wind erosion.
– at 50 000cfs, Vulcan’s Anvil, one mile above Lava, was covered up to where the dark grey meets the brown –
Then every so often you would sit up and listen intently. Then peer ahead with a stretched neck and drift in a quickening current as the roar of the next rapid grew in the canyon air. The river was running at an estimated high of 50 000cfs – that’s about 1650 cumecs, big water. 1984 was a high year. Once you could see where the rapid was, you pulled over and got out to scout it and plot your way through it. It was no use asking Greeff. His stock answer was ‘Down The Middle!’
– Lava Falls –
For days before Lava, the bullshit build-up built up: ‘Rain? That’s not rain! That’s the mist from LAVA FALLS!’
Arriving at Lava we hopped out and checked it out, butterflies no longer flying in formation. After scouting carefully most of us went left; a few went right. One – Ryan – went snorkeling straight into the big hole and got chomped, rinsed and spat out. His blue helmet can be seen in the picture if you have a magnifying glass.
– Lava Falls – there’s a paddler there somewhere –– an all-girl team gets coached down Lava Falls –
And then typical ladies: As we strutted and boasted of derring-do, they quietly commandeered one of the rafts and rowed it ladies-only down Lava! They took one yank with them, just to show him they could . .
– Team Mainstay SAA from South Africa; At the usual take-out before Lake Mead –
At the usual take-out at Diamond Creek before Lake Mead, we stopped for a rest and some team photos. The high water had washed away the road. We had to keep going. Some miles later we hit the dead waters of Lake Mead. The river ran out of push, tamed by a damn dam. Paddling was over for most of us! We piled our kayaks onto the rafts and lay on them – there were still a few beers that needed polishing. Our five-raft flotilla was tugged out by a motorboat to another take-out point, Pearce Ferry on Lake Mead miles downstream.
– final take-out on the lake at Pearce Ferry – the river bottom right, flowing right to left into the lake –
Downstream? Except of course there was now no longer any ‘stream’ – we were on flat water. Greeff and a few other crazies – including Wendy Walwyn – you know, the types who weren’t issued with handbrakes, brains or limits, paddled the whole flat water way! Holy shit! I drank beer lying on a raft, gazing at the blue Arizona sky.
Too soon, it was over.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Drifting downstream, Dave Walker led the singing:
The canyon burro is a mournful bloke He very seldom gets a poke But when he DOES . . . He . LETS . it soak As he revels in the joys of forni- CA-TION!
and (to the tune of He Ain’t Heavy):
Hy’s nie Swaar nie
Hy’s my Swaer . a . a . aer
~~~oo0oo~~~
We went down the Canyon twice
I always say we did the Canyon twice. Once we would bomb down in our kayaks, crashing through the exhilarating big water; The second time was much hairier, with bigger rapids, higher water and far more danger: That was around the campfire at night when Willem would regale us with tales of his day on the water. ‘Raconteur’ is too mild a word! The word ‘MOERSE’ featured prominently in his epic tales and his long arm would be held high to show you where the crest of the wave sat. And this from a man who bombed ‘blind’ down the Cunene River ca.1965.
~~~oo0oo~~~
When? I wanted to know when exactly we were on the water to look up the flow on those days, but no-one knew. Now! Aha! I found an old letter (or Sheila did) written just before we flew to Arizona). I think we paddled – near as dammit – from 18 to 30 July 1984.
~- Monday? 16 July in 1984 was a Monday –
~~oo0oo!!
Postscript: While we were paddling Chris spoke of attempting to beat the record for the fastest non-stop descent of the Canyon – the 277 mile stretch we had just done from Lee’s Ferry to our eventual take-out at Pearce Ferry.
– The Dory ‘Emerald Mile’ – our 12-day trip in 36 hours non-stop – no thanks –
Only a handful of boaters have been crazy enough to undertake such a mission. After all, doing it non-stop means having to shoot Lava Falls at night! The Riggs brothers made what could be considered the first speed run in 1951 when they rowed a cataract-style wooden boat through the canyon in 53 hours; Fletcher Anderson, a pioneering Southwestern boater, made a 49-hour solo kayak descent in the late 1970s; and then in 1983, just a year before our leisure trip, Kenton Grua, Rudi Petschek, and Steve Reynolds completed a now-legendary run on a flood of 70,000 cfs in a wooden dory named the Emerald Mile. Their record of 36 hours and 38 minutes was the time to beat.
– Ben Orkin – saw little of the canyon –
Nothing came of it – it would have been a very expensive undertaking from South Africa for an obscure record only the small expedition rafting and kayaking fraternity would have known of; and anyway, why do it? But the record is ever-present in some people’s minds. In January 2016 the record was beaten twice. First by ‘Team Beer’: Ben Luck, Matt and Nate Klemas and Ryan Casey in three Piranha Speeders and a Perception Wavehopper, boats much like the ones we used. Then three days later by Ben Orkin, paddling solo in a composite Epic 18X sea kayak, a boat lighter than the models Team Beer had used and with a metre longer waterline. He reduced the time to 34 hours and 2 minutes. The Emerald Mile’s record, which had stood for over three decades, had been broken twice in three days.
I do (sort of) understand the quest for records (sort of), humans always will go for fastest; but for me,
. . floating down in awesome wonder is really the way to do it.
Before the river became crowded and the park service slapped restrictions on trip lengths, private boatmen in the ’70s vied at ‘slow-boating’, or making a trip last as long as possible. The crowning glory of slow-boating has gone down in river history as the Hundred Day Trip. Legendary boatman Regan Dale and his extended family floated away from Lees Ferry and spent a whopping 103 days in the canyon. They hiked every side canyon, spent as long as a week in favorite camps like Nankoweap and Granite Park, baked their own bread and wallowed in the vast silence of stone cathedrals broken only by the rustle of the river. The moon waxed and waned three times while they were there. It was roughly as long as the very first trip down the canyon led by John Wesley Powell in 1869, over a hundred years earlier – and 150 years ago now; and this over 300 miles whereas Powell had done 1000 miles. So the Regan Dale trip really was the slowboating trip supreme. I wonder if there will ever be trips like that again.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
In 2019 the Magnificent Grand Canyon National Park is 100 years old – what a laugh that we shortlived humans think that’s old! In 2026 unscrupulous and greedy politicians and fortune-seekers tried to have the Grand Canyon deproclaimed so it could be privatised and mined. A judge ruled against them. This time.
….
Later: A letter from Cully and JoJo – “do come again!” and “boknaai!”
John Lee wrote:
…running Crystal Creek down the left , Lava down the right was all complete childs play when compared to what felix , Cully and Bridgette put me through at Havasu Falls .
The four of us did that looooong hike up that pristine side canyon .
When we reached the aquamarine coloured waters below the falls , the travertine rimmed pools below , I immediately saw the photo-opp.
I had them climb to the rock above the falls from which they launched themselves , simultaneously and spectacularly , into space and fell about forty to fifty foot into the waters below .
Magnificent photos it turned out a long time later …….
It took them about half an hour to talk me , in turn , off that ledge .
That is by far the single most courageous thing I’ve done to date !
My fear of heights is a raging mental all-encompassing melt down …..
Still don’t know how I did it .
Then …..there was the Rattler I very nearly stood on, on the way back …..
Felix Unite wrote:
What memories! For me that GC trip remains one of my life’s highlights/milestones!
Location, action and memories of great friendship and camaraderie – not to mention how much I kakked myself!!!
Thank you all.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Chris Greeff wrote in May 2018:
R.I.P Herve de Rauville, Graeme Pope-Ellis, Swys du Plessis, Johan Claassen and Arthur Egerton ! – Also R.I.P Jose Luis Fonrouge
That Map
And here’s my famous map that was such a boon on the trip. Fifteen pages each 30cm long, the map was 4,5m long all told. Lots of detail. Which I then added to from our experiences.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Our quiet, laid-back fellow kayaker from Argentina
Jose Luis Fonrouge had climbed Mt Everest, we heard. He had also done much more:
Fitz Roy: First Alpine Style New Route – Report by Marcelo Eduardo Espejo
January 16, 1965 two climbers accomplished what is still today considered as one of the most remarkable climbs on the Patagonian spires. Jose Luis Fonrouge and Carlos Comesana reached the summit of Fitz Roy for the second time in history. They had climbed the virgin super-couloir known as the Supercanaleta. For summit proof, they retrieved a carabiner left there by the 1952’s French expedition and left an Argentinean flag in its place. See route 18 below.
Toekoe and Jose hang out:
– Jose (foreground) chills after another day paddling with us in 1984 –
Of the few words Jose spoke in the Canyon, these I remember: He had flipped in Lava and semi-rolled up three times while we watched. I asked him about it and he said, roughly, ‘Every time I looked up it looked crazy, so I thought I’d just stay upside down – it was more peaceful underneath.’
~~~oo0oo~~~
Old-Fashioned Photo Album
Pics from my photo album – copied and now discarded:
Sundry reports in the SA press afterwards
(all uploaded here as the hardcopies are being tossed)
Bouncing around on the back of a Bedford we would roar to a halt in the veld. Well, really the mixed thornveld somewhere north of Pretoria, which should properly be called Tshwane, ancestral home of the Tshwanepoels to which we have land claim rights. But that’s another (important) story. In a cloud of dust. We were a highly mobile, highly efficient ‘Field Hospital.’
. . . Right.
Seeking the shelter of trees so as not to be too visible to the enemy, and to have the shelter of trees, we would leap eagerly to the ground, pitch our big tents and carry in the stretchers, placing them in neat rows one left and one right. Then up would go the drip stands, each with a drip hanging down. Sundry balsaks and trommels would be lined up and unpacked and in no time we’d be ready to receive the wounded, the sick, the lame and the lazy who had been drilled or scared by the kommuniste nearby, us being an advance field hospital. We were much like this:
Well. In theory.
In reality the only thing that happened with any sense of urgency was the roaring to a halt by the Bedfords in a cloud of dust. After that there would be consultation and various opinions about whether the tents should be lined up like this (maybe east-west) or like this (maybe west-east). And how could we put it here? Look at this big stump in the ground here. The neat rows would be more haphazard and boiling water for tea would be accomplished before any drip stands were placed. Lots of hanging back and ‘after you.’ It was like a military operation.
Which is seldom like this:
And more often like this: A strategic planning session in the bush.
– some literal ballas-bakking caught on camera –
The most organised of the troops was our mate Rhynie Fritsch. From Durban, natch. Of the Fritsch Plumbers dynasty. As the lorry stopped he would step off with his blanket over his shoulder and his paperback in his hand and immediately stroll off till just out of sight but still well within earshot for a ballasbak. As the Bedfords started up again after we had struck camp and packed up he would reappear in time to clamber on, miffed that us workers hadn’t kept him any tea. Everyone loved ole Rhynie so you could only admire his gippo’ing.
balsaks – literally scrotums; big all-purpose canvas bags; used as seats, totes, wardrobes, pillows, laundry bags, etc;
trommels – big all-purpose tin trunks; used as seats, bedside tables, cupboards, etc;
kommuniste – vaguely-defined bad ous who refused to believe we were Ve Chosen Race;
ballasbak – ball-baking; testicle-tanning; sitting or lying back in the sun, basking with your crotch exposed to the warm rays. See the picture: The sunglass fella is doing it well, the other two not bad. In the barracks you’d usually be leaning against a wall, hidden from the corporal’s sight. On a camp, though, the corporal might be next to you, doing it better than you; an early form of solar recharging;
gippo’ing – wisely dodging what you were meant to be doing. The opposite of volunteering; Probably slang from the Egypt campaign in WW2?
When I was around six years old Sheila came marching up to me and demanded: –
“Do you know what Dad’s name is?”
Well, of course I did! I was the older brother.
It’s “Dad”
“No man, his real name!”
What did she mean? Oh, of course – I’d heard Mom call him that lots of times.
“Peter”
“No. It’s PIETER GERHARDUS!!”
What rubbish! I’d never heard such foul language! And this from my MUCH younger sister! She was a whole year younger’n me. Which was like: All of living memory!
Amazingly, investigation and enquiry proved her right!
Ernie van Biljon wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I got to go to America as a Rotary exchange student back in 1973.
You persevered where others lost interest.
What a lovely man. He should have lived to a hundred.
Rotary held their interview and selection sessions at Greystones outside Estcourt (where I had attended a Veld & Vlei leadership course earlier that year):
Which three countries would you like to go to, they asked? America, America, and America I replied – and I want to go to a small town, not a big city.
Well, they selected me anyway, but decided, “OK, smartass,” and dispatched me to Apache, Oklahoma, USA, population 1500.
“There are two strict rules” they told us sternly: “No Falling In Love; and Strictly No Driving while you’re there.”
Of course not . . .
Well, I got none out of two right but it was just infatuation; and the owner of the Chev Camaro covered for me in Apache; and the owner of the VW Beetle covered for me in Canada. Turned out I double-failed at both the Two Commandments. I broke them and I was useless at them.
Thank you, Ernie! It was a life-changing, unforgettable year!
Ernie was a great character, full of smiles and laughs. Mother Mary (96 in 2025 when she told me the story) tells how he was worried about his smoking; and how everyone, including “The Englishman,” as he sometimes called Margie, his lovely wife, wanted him to quit. “But I don’t know what to do with my hands!” he complained. Well, Mary had an answer for that: “I’ll show you what to do with your hands,” she said, “Here, put them together like this,” Ernie dutifully followed her instructions. Then put them between your legs like this, she said, putting her hands between her legs. With his mischievous grin Ernie said, “OK,” and made to also place his hands between Mary’s legs, causing great hilarity all round and distracting everyone so he could carry on smoking unchallenged.
Posed at the seldom-used front door. The side door on the left was where we filed in to get saved.
They demolished the old sandstone church! Demolish and Build! was the fashion. Pity.
Sunday school – Stella Euthemiou was my Sunday School teacher. We would gather in the hall on the left and she would lead us on the path to heaven. Well, try anyway. We would have followed her anywhere!
I suffered severe stress in the army in 1979. Once.
My two-tone 1965 Opel Rekord 4-door bench seat, column-shift sedan in sophisticated shades of grey: dark grey body, pale grey roof, grey upholstery; got indisposed while parked under the bluegum trees outside the Medics base camp on Roberts Heights – then Voortrekkerhoogte, now Thaba Tshwane. She wouldn’t start.
This was serious! We had a weekend pass and there was a party on in the City of Sin & Laughter, aka the metropolis of Harrismith, as everyone knows.
Not a problem, said KO (surname). We were all KO’s: candidate officers. He kindly offered to tow me to Harrismith behind his V6 Cortina bakkie. A short piece of nylon rope was found and we set off. I immediately thought Uh Oh!! as we hared off, accelerating furiously. Soon we reached what felt like 100 miles an hour. Slow down! I screamed silently. We hadn’t arranged any signals or communication, so I simply gripped the steering wheel and concentrated. If cellphones had been invented I’d have sms’d him: WTF RU MAD? Then I’d have worried about him reading his sms while driving at that speed.
I sat tensely, staring at the rear of the bakkie a mere six imperial feet from my bonnet. I couldn’t even see the towrope as we roared along. We’re going East so fast we hasten the setting of the sun.
Then it started to rain! Then twilight fell. Then it got dark, with the rain falling ever harder as my wipers feebly swished back, and then later on, forth. With the motor not turning, the battery got flatter and flatter and the wipers got slower and slower. Blowing the hooter and flashing my lights just made things worse – the wipers stopped if anything else was switched on. Upfront in the bakkie the music was so loud and the chit-chat so intense they didn’t even notice us. Or pretended not to?
There was nothing for it but to hang in there for hours. Worst journey of my life. My chin got closer and closer to the windscreen and my knuckles got whiter. Still the KO kept the bakkie floored! He had to get to Durbs where a girlfriend was waiting. My neck was tense and I don’t think I blinked once, staring at the top edge of the bakkie tailgate. My right thigh ached as it poised ready to brake – delicately! – at any moment.
An eternity later we pulled up in Harrismith, unhitched the towrope and off he went, on to Durban. ‘Hey, thanks!’ I said. ‘Appreciate it!’
Fu-u-uck-uck-uck!!! I had never felt such relief. The beer soon relieved the stress though. And soon the testosterone was saying ‘It was nothing.’
Jim Stainton was aghast! He had just invited me along to a rock concert in Oklahoma City and I had immediately accepted. My motto in Apache was I only say YES to all invitations to travel. Only got a year, gotta go everywhere! His follow-up questions had forced me to admit my ignorance.
Don’t say that! Don’t say you don’t know who Chuck Berry is!
Hey! I was a seventeen-year-old Vrystater. I was lucky enough to know a lot about modern music, but turns out there was this gap in the fifties when I was one month and twenty days old and Maybellene hit the charts!
But I was willing to learn, I had a ball at that concert with Jim, and I have been a Chuck Berry fan ever since!
What I didn’t tell Jim is I had even less heard of Bo Diddley! He featured with Chuck and they rocked up a storm. ‘My ding-a-ling’ was really big just then! (ok, that didn’t sound just right, but anyway . . . knowaddimean . . )
He played all his hits with huge energy, holding the big stadium in the palm of his hand. He played ‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘Maybelline’, ‘Nadine’, ‘No Particular Place to Go’, ‘Reelin’ and Rockin’’ ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Surfin’ U.S.A’, ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ etc. etc And ‘My ding-a-ling’.
That was 1973. I recently found a 2014 pic of Jim on the internets. That’s him in the red T:
Some Chuck Berry:
– “People don’t want to see seventeen pieces in neckties. They wanna see some jeans, some gettin’ down and some wigglin’.”
– “I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know, there are poets who don’t rhyme? Shakespeare don’ rhyme most of the time and that’s why I don’ like him.”
– “It amazes me when I hear people say ‘I want to go out and find out who I am’. I always knew who I was. I was going to be famous if it killed me.”
– “I would sing the blues if I had the blues.”
————-
Bo
In 1963, Bo Diddley starred in a UK concert tour with the Everly Brothers and Little Richard. The supporting act was a little up-and-coming outfit called The Rolling Stones.
~~oo0oo~~
footnote: I asked a friend last year to bring some Chuck Berry to a gathering on my patio. I decided to catch up before so I looked him up on wikipedia – to learn he had died a few days before at the ripe ole age of 90. R.I.P Chuck Berry.
In Apache Oklahoma in 1973 I lived with the charismatic funeral home owner, fire chief, ambulance driver, hearse driver and tornado alert man, Robert L Crews III. In the funeral home. While I was there we sounded the siren for tornadoes twice and watched them approach. Once we even went down into the basement as it came so close. But both times it went back up into the clouds – didn’t touch ground.
Here’s the view on one of those days:
In May we heard of the Union City disaster. We drove there to look-see. The image that stuck the most in my mind was the main street with many buildings completely gone. One shop had some shelves still standing – with product on the shelves – but the roof and walls were gone.
I found this recently: Union City Tornado Makes History
NSSL revisits its past as it celebrates 40 years with NOAA – by Rachel Shortt
On May 24, 1973, a tornado rated F4 struck the Union City area and was the first tornado widely documented by science as part of storm chasing field research. NSSL out of Norman, Oklahoma placed numerous storm chasers around it to capture the life cycle on film.
As the devastating tornado tore through the small town of Union City, no one knew the tremendous impact it would have on the development of weather radar. Researchers from the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory now look back on that day as a significant event in the history of severe weather research and forecasting.
And I was (sorta) there!
=======ooo000ooo=======
For a human interest story, see this article written in 1993, on the 20th anniversary of the tornado:
The tornado that people in Union City talk about the most twisted in from the northwest twenty years ago this week, killing two people and demolishing half the downtown buildings. It blew the cross atop St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church into a field six miles away.
Another tornado destroyed the same church in 1896, and another flattened fifteen farmhouses in 1927. Yet another reduced two barns on the edge of Union City to kindling and seemed hell-bent on roaring toward town until it hit the South Canadian River nearby, spun away to the east and died out.
Here in the heart of “Tornado Alley” almost everybody knows that a new tornado will eventually show up on the western horizon. But they also agree on this: There is not much use in being obsessed about it.
“You can’t let it rule your life,” said Leo Radtke, who in 1973 watched from the storm cellar as the house where he was born, as well as his new Chevrolet El Camino, was swept away. “If it hits, it hits, and you just start over again, which is what I did. It’s part of living in this country.”
Where the Winds Collide – ‘This country’ is a swath of the Great Plains stretching diagonally from the Texas Panhandle to southern Iowa where warm, moist winds from the Gulf of Mexico frequently collide with cold, dry winds from the west at this time of year, combining to produce more tornadoes here than in any comparably sized place on earth.
And while most of the attention is understandably focused on communities when they are actually hit, a more typical tableau of life in Tornado Alley is found in places like Union City, a town of about 1,000 people in central Oklahoma, 23 miles west of Oklahoma City. Here and in thousands of communities like it, tornadoes exist not as a present danger but as a grim memory and a future threat.
Early warning? – There have been major advances in the radar equipment that helps meteorologists to detect a tornado while it is forming and to warn of its approach. Because of those advances and improved communications through radio and television, there has been a steady decline in the average number of fatalities caused by tornadoes every year — from 311 people in the 1920’s to 138 in the 1950’s to 56 in the most recent 10-year period, according to the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
But the average warning time is still only 19 minutes, and many tornadoes cannot be detected at all until they hit the ground, meaning that the first warning is an old-fashioned one: a human being sees it and yells. And even when people know it is coming, a tornado remains one of the most destructive hazards of nature, a vortex of winds swirling at up to 300 miles an hour and often churning up everything in its path, making any effort to protect property generally futile. ‘There’s Nothing You Can Do’
“If your home is in the way, you’ve had it — there’s nothing you can do,” said Leo Demmer, 64, who has seen five tornadoes in his lifetime but escaped the path of all of them.
Mr. Demmer, a wheat farmer and cattle rancher, quickly added that he was talking more about property than people, who will almost always be safe if they manage to get underground, perhaps to the kind of storm cellar that sheltered Auntie Em and Uncle Henry when the tornado struck Kansas in the “Wizard of Oz.”
Mr. Demmer should know. As he spoke he was adding two and a half tons of concrete to help anchor his own storm cellar, made of two steel cargo containers sunk into his back yard. “It was frightening, it was beautiful, and here it was coming right at us,” Mr. Demmer said of the 1973 tornado. He snapped a few pictures, then headed for the cellar.
It was 20 years ago, but people who describe the tornado can make it sound as if it hit last week. Several recalled that in the hours and even minutes before the tornado struck, at 4:55 in the afternoon, it seemed like the balmiest of spring days.
A Scrapbook of Memories – “It was just real pretty out,” recalled Odessa Bromlow, the owner of the T&B Country Market, which at the time was a cafe. “I had just been to the beauty shop, and it was time for a shift change — then poof. The wind just started howling.” As she spoke, she flipped through a scrapbook she had put together full of headlines from the Oklahoma City papers. “Union City Devastated,” said one. “Twister Leaves Trail of Ruin,” read another. A Union City woman died because she could not get the door to her storm cellar open. The other victim was a man named Corp Sanders who had insisted on watching the tornado from a chair on his porch, even as the police officer screamed at him to run for cover.
Most People Stay – But while almost everybody here seems to have vivid memories of the tornado and the daze that settled over the town after it struck, most of those whose property was damaged eventually rebuilt and stayed put. Several people, asked what it was like to live in a place where each spring brought the threat of tornadoes, quickly said it was far preferable to living on either coast of the United States. On the east coast were hurricanes and on the west were earthquakes, they said, both of which can yield a far broader trail of destruction than a tornado.
“As terrible as it was, I’d rather deal with a tornado than an earthquake any day,” said Georgia Rother, the town clerk and treasurer. “With a tornado, at least you can see it coming. You can try to run away from it. With a quake, there’s no place to hide.” Others pointed out that even in Tornado Alley, the chances of getting killed or having a home destroyed by a tornado are very low — about as low as the chance of hitting the jackpot in a state lottery.
Early warning 2 – Many towns, including Union City, have installed emergency warning sirens on their streets — but only after experiencing the terror of a tornado when they did not have such devices.
Earlier this year Catoosa, a suburb of Tulsa, tabled as too expensive a motion to buy used warning sirens from a nearby town that was installing a more modern system. Then, in late April, a tornado struck, killing seven people and causing millions of dollars in damage. This week the neighboring town donated the used sirens to Catoosa.
For those who get their warnings by television, though, some experts fear an altogether different problem: too many warnings. Television stations throughout Kansas and Oklahoma have become ferociously competitive over the years. “Some of them will interrupt programs with a tornado alert at the slightest provocation,” said Frederick P. Ostby, the director of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center. “It’s getting to the point where people feel they can’t see any television program in its entirety during tornado season. People are getting angry about it.”
Mobile homes and fatalism – Here in Union City, when people think about tornadoes at all, it is usually with fatalism. That was especially true in a mobile-home development on the south side of town. At one trailer some old tires and cement blocks were placed on the roof to give the unit a bit more heft if a storm hit. “But I don’t suppose it will make much of a difference,” said Beverly Brookshire, a 48-year-old waitress who lives in the trailer. “If it’s our time, it’s going to hit. I just pray, ‘Lord, don’t let it be our time.’ ” Mobile homes can be unsafe in even the weakest of tornadoes. “There’s kind of a folklore out there that tornadoes actually seek out trailer parks,” said Frederick J. Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University. “But it’s not that at all. It’s really that because of poor construction, they’re simply more vulnerable.”
On Tabbo’s Warden farm ‘Rust.’ Mine host Tabbo is second from right, yet another ale in hand.
– Tony Porrell, Koos Swanepoel, Nev Shave, Charlie Deane, Dirk Odendaal, Ian Fyvie, Rob Spilsbury – Nick Leslie, Doug Wright, John Venning, Mike Curnow, Tabs Fyvie and Guy Kirk – – front: Gillon Thake – son of Doug Wright’s sister, Yomi Thake –
None of those guineas were killed by me (second from left) with my old man’s cheap Russian Baikal shotgun, R139 from Musgraves in Bloem, even though the barrel was smoking. A marksman I am not! I was ‘Rust’-y. The fowls of the air are safe when I’m aiming at them.
Kai Reitz once tried to cure my handicap of not being able to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. On his farm, The Bend on the Tugela river outside Bergville, he gently lobbed up big sandclods in a ploughed field and I filled the air surrounding them with birdshot. Then they plonked to earth. Thud! Unharmed.
It was for naught – he had to give up.
With the last two shells Kai took the shotgun. I hurled two empty shell cases as hard as I could. Blap! Blap! he hit both of them. Bang went the gun and bang went my chance of using faulty Russian alignment as an excuse.
Bloody guineas better watch out, I’ll bring my mate Kai next time!
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
As always, Sheila has the details:
This was taken on 1 September 1974, at a shoot at the Fyvies’ farm ‘Rust’ near Warden. According to my 1974 diary, we had had a wonderful party at Nick & Anne Leslie’s farm ‘Heritage’ the night before – “Had delicious supper. Danced. Sat & chatted” – most of us spent the night there, then moved over to Rust the next day, where the guys “shot about 60 fowls.”
You persevered where others lost interest.
Vrystaat Confessions 