Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: cars

Raptures & Ruptures at ‘The Dev’
From: Pete (me)
Subject: The Hotel Devonshire – famous again
Sent: 23 May 2011

I see the “rapture” crazies chose the Dev to await the end of their world.
In some ways the Dev was the beginning of mine!

“Buite die Devonshire-hotel in Braamfontein, waar Suid-Afrikaanse aanhangers van die wegraping-kultus saamgetrek het om op die eindtyd te wag, het hulle vir oulaas mense op straat probeer oortuig om by hulle aan te sluit.” (Rapport newspaper)
– various guesses – before and since –
~~~oo0oo~~~

Brauer wrote: In some ways the beginning, yes. But in many ways fuckin’ close to the end. No doubt the reason why they chose it – for symbolic reasons . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

I wrote: Actually, – – and come to think of it . . .

How we survived some of those lightly-inebriated evenings in our um, almost roadworthy jalopies . . .

Maybe THAT’S the miracle they’re referring to!

I have a clear thutty-year-old mental picture of laughing at some oke hanging out of the left rear window of a car spray-painting it with chunder in Wolmarans Street. I’m in another car, witnessing the sight. (Our car probably full of sober okes on their way back from Shul. Probly a Friday).
Who and whose car is mentally blurry, though. Beige colour. Thin exhaust pipe.

Austin Apache, maybe?

~~~oo0oo~~~

Steve reed wrote: Ah that dapper little beige beauty. Memories of crossing Nugget Street on Wolmarans at high speed when Swain Pull has a flash of genius and yanks up the handbriek, Barely a murmur of “Oh Pete” from mesdames Fotherby and Forsdick on the back seat as we 360. Thank heavens in 1977 the ABS EBD BA and ESC all kicked in after the 5th beer. Only one airbag in the vehicle in those days however.

~~~oo0oo~~~
I wrote: I learnt that trick from Pierre du Plessis. He used to do it in his old lady’s little Ford Prefect. Difference, I suppose, was sober and in Harrismith’s quiet streets where we knew the cops by name.
And speaking of chundering: Pierre himself threw a mighty one outside Bergville after a wedding to which we had not been invited, but had partaken in. Thoroughly. Luckily it was his own Datsun 1200 bakkie in which he was a passenger.
Light green. The bakkie. The other was multi-colour yellowish.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Steve wrote: I do remember partaking in an engagement party to which we had not been invited at a little Drakenberg resort. Arrived just as the happy couple were having a post party nightcap with the family. The bloke’s fiance took quite a fancy to us rough boys [we fancied through our drunken haze] and one of us asked her to dance. The blokes family got into an angry huddle and declared the party over – stat. We were sadly abandoned and the generator was switched off leaving us sad creatures to polish off all their left-over booze in the dark. We seemed not to mind this too much.

~~~oo0oo~~~

I wrote: The wonderful Devonshire! Remember the pool of beer on the tables? Remember the Hotel School okes?! Disgraceful. Was it them who auctioned the chicks?

Hold on! Another sudden flashback picture: “Nugget” – short, wild hair and an Irish-looking beard. Poes-dronk through the beer-splatter in the Dev. Remember him? Got his name, it was said, when he rolled down Nugget Hill, blind as only the thoroughly drunk can be.

He had a huge mate Syd Someone (Oertel?), who did civil engineering between beers. I met both these characters through Pierre, who also did civils – inappropriate name if ever there was one – at Wits Tech, remember? Another bloke was called “Irish.”

One would have thought these brain cells would have been obliterated ages ago.

~~~oo0oo~~~
Steve reed wrote: To me the most worshipped oke in the Dev was the bloke from hotel school who could drink a quart of Castle standing on his head.

(Ah, such tertiary skills!)

~~~oo0oo~~~

“Buite die Devonshire-hotel. . . . ” – Outside the Dev a rapture cult of crazies gather to be swept up to heaven bang on the appointed hour. Nothing happened. Funnily enough, none of them had given their possessions to charity . . . they musta had faith like potatoes.

handbriek – handbrake
12 Oct 2015
P Addled Brains

That Pretoria restaurant probably spiked our drinks with omega fish oil because when they finally asked us to leave we were brilliant.
We wisely allowed Terry to drive my white Ford Cortina 2-litre deluxe GL while Pierre and Old Pete and I gave comments, directions, instructions, witticisms and dropped pearls – or bokdrols – of wisdom.

‘Twas a balmy night and the breeze was slight. The canoe on the roofrack seemed to Brauer to be a better bet for catching that breeze, so he nimbly hopped out of the window and sat in the cockpit of my Dusi boat, a white Limfy with red deck with matching red tie-downs. I was on an army camp and had brought the boat to get some time off as I was ‘training for Dusi’ on Roodeplaat dam.

Terry thought ‘Uh! Oh! HKK’ and pressed on the accelerator to get us home quicker, which meant the breeze inside the car was now adequate. With Brauer’s departure the average IQ in the car had also risen appreciably.
Outside meantime, Brauer started undoing the paddle possibly thinking he could speed up matters if he also paddled through the air. My warnings that the rope tying the paddle on was also the rope holding the boat on, just spurred him to loosen it more. You know how he is.
Which caused Terry to press harder on the accelerator thinking if I go really fast maybe the cops won’t notice there’s a carbuncle on my roof and now we were FLYING! This was not good . . .
Brauer’s ass was saved by a red light where we managed to haul him down and explain gravity, wind resistance, speed, inertia, impact, abrasions, contusions and broken bones to him. As usual, I was the stabilising influence.

He did seem to understand at last, as he poured some stiff drinks when we got home to the Gramadoelas in Tshwane – ancestral home of the original Tshwanepoels, to which we have land claim rights. But that’s another (important) story for another barmy evening.

~~~oo0oo~~~

bokdrols – like pearls, more temporary, though

Dusi – The Dusi Canoe Marathon

HKK = Uh, Oh! Here Comes Trouble

Limfy – Limfjorden kayak; sleek fibreglass speed machine (Hey! It was – in 1959!)

Gramadoelas – upmarket suburb in Pretoria, or – more correctly – Tshwane; some call it Maroelana

~~~oo0oo~~~

Comment followed –

Terry Brauer: No-one ever believes that story Pete! My two Peters really have aged me rapidly I fear. When I look back I guess I deserve some accolades for hanging in there!

Me: ‘Some accolades!?’ You deserve a Nobel Peace Prize, a Victoria Cross, various gold medals, an Oscar and a salary increase with perks including danger pay! And that’s just for surviving Pete – I haven’t factored Ryan into that deal . . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

4 Sep 2015
I Must Go Down To The Seas Again . .
```
. . to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking
```
Maybe Steph was thinking of Masefield’s poem when he suggested we’d done enough short jaunts with our parents’ cars late at night while the dorp was sleeping and good kids were in bed dreaming of homework well done.

Been to Kestell? – Tick;

Been to Swinburne? – Tick;

Been to Queen’s Hill? – Tick;

Had a head-on collision with a hill on Queen’s Hill? – Tick;

Drifting laps around the atletiekbaan in Pres Brand Park? – Tick;

Donuts on the high school netball courts? – Tick;

What was left to do? Maybe this was the first sign of his lifelong love of the sea – in time to come he would sail a huge ocean-going catamaran and go deep-sea fishing on his skiboat off Sodwana. In those far-off days of our youth, all that was yet to come.

Whatever – (let’s face it, more likely Steph was just thinking ADVENTURE! REBELLION! ADRENALIN!) – he started us plotting a biggie.
It was certainly him who came up with the bold idea. Steph was without doubt our hoof van kakaanjaag:
I know. Have we been to the sea? Does the Vrystaat even have a sea? NO! Let’s go to Durbs, dip our toes in the Indian Ocean and bring back a bottle of sea water, and – as always – be back before sonop.

RIGHT!!

– Ford Corsair –

We must plan:
– We need the white Corsair, not the black Saab; It’s faster. Here’s what it looked like except Gerrie’s was white. And four-door. Otherwise like this.

– We must leave much earlier. We can’t wait for our parents to fall asleep; We need longer.

But not too much planning:

– I don’t remember discussing fuel or mileage or consumption. Those weren’t really fashionable topics in those days.

So Steph strolls into his Mom Alet’s bedroom, the one nearest the long getaway driveway, to talk to her as she lies reading in bed in their lovely sandstone home The Pines in Stuart Street. At a given signal we start wheeling the Corsair out of the open garage and down the long driveway. The driveway is downhill – that helps – and made of two long concrete strips – that doesn’t help: the wheels fall off the edge GghgGghgGghg! SHHH! shhh!

And they’re off!
There’s no beer this trip. This is more serious. It’s a journey, not a jaunt. We have a mission.

We roar past Swinburne; We roar past van Reenen; We leave the Orange Free State; We enter Natal, the Last British Outpost; We zoom down van Reenen’s Pass; Past Ladysmith and on, further into unknown territory.

Suddenly: Flashing Blue Lights! Oh Shit! They’re after us. We slow down a little bit. Just to the speed limit. We sit straight in the car, no slouching. We practice ‘innocent face.’ We rehearse our story: Ja Meneer, Nee Meneer. The flashing blue light fills the car – then overtakes us and whizzes past and shrinks into the distance.

We slow down. We think. We reconsider. Wordlessly, we make a U-turn and head back to the big HY, City of Sin and Laughter.

Oh well, it was a good idea while it lasted. And anyway, that story about the health benefits of bottled sea water is just a myth.

~~oo0oo~~
```
I must go down to the sea again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over
```
R.I.P Steph de Witt – Our histories are forever entwined. You are part of who I am. My sense of self would be poorer without those short-lived mad crazy daze!

Your long trick’s over and I have no doubt there’s a quiet sleep and a sweet dream for you. Whattalife. MANY a merry yarn we got from you, our laughing fellow-rover!

~~oo0oo~~

dorp – our village, The City of Sin and Laughter

atletiekbaan – athletic track; our oval, cinder track

sonop – sunrise, when swimming training started

Ja Meneer, Nee Meneer – Yes Sir, No Sir

stoutgat – us
31 May 2015
Raiders of the Lost Saab

The black Saab is packed to capacity as we roar off in the dead of night to Kestell, that mecca of silence and stillness and, uh peace, I guess. Or was that Vrede? We aimed to fix that in our 1961 black two-door Saab 93. Riiing! ding ding ding ding Riiiiing! – that’s the two-stroke engine you can hear.

Steph, Larry, Pierre, Tuffy and Me. Warmly dressed against the Harrismith winter chill, we’re packed shoulder-to-shoulder, hardly able to lift our elbows to down the 455ml can of beer we each have. Black Label Long Toms. A sixpack. We’re a little bit young and slightly illegal to buy it ourselves, so we had to contract the procurement job out to Steph’s gardener. It’s 5.5% so better value than Castle 5%. The sixth one of the carry-pack we’ll share. Tuffy’s empty can goes clanking along the Warden Street tarmac before Steph has even hit third gear. Glugged. He’s focused. He knows the object is to get that stuff circulating in the bloodstream, then crossing the blood/brain barrier and getting into the thinking part of your brain soonest, to provide fun and courage and laughter.

– the occupants – Pierre, me, Steph, Tuffy, inset Larry –

When the Saab goes quiet we stop briefly to tap the fuel pump with the half brick kept under the bonnet for just that purpose, and we’re off again. Riiing! ding ding ding ding Riiiiing!

– Saab engine and half-corobrick spanner-mallet-tool –

After cavorting on the gravel main street of Kestell and losing a tyre off the rim on one of our laps drifting – did I mention we invented drifting? – around the biggest thing in Kestell, the Groot Klip Kerk, we pick up the car to change the wheel as there’s no jack. Come to think of it, the word ‘domkrag’ might have been invented that night!

The guys at Jakes Grove’s garage kindly fix things for us and we’re away, heading for Jan van Wyk’s place on the way home.

Jan’s farm is a turn-off to the left on the way back home. He’s the sitting hoofseun at Harrismith se Hoer, 1970 edition. It’s 3am and there’s something we need to tell him.

Tuffy tackles an ox en-route

Driving down the farm road with its middel-mannetjie the passenger-side door suddenly flies open as we drive past a few cattle blinded by our headlights. Next thing we know there’s a dust cloud and some concerned moo-ing. Tuffy has launched himself into a flying tackle of one of the cows / bulls / oxen. We stop and Tuffy gets back into the car dusting off his khaki grootjas with a smug look of “that’ll teach them” on his dial. Long toms always went straight to the clever-witty-and-brave lobe of his brain, especially when he downed them in seconds flat. We didn’t know it yet, but he was practicing to be a parabat and a recce.

Arriving at the homestead all is in darkness. The dogs sniff us as we tiptoe into Jan’s room and wake him. Maybe we aren’t quite as stealthy as we think, as a voice comes from down the passage ‘Jan, maak tog vir hulle tee.’ His Ma. Ma’s. They always know what’s going on.

As we leave we spy pa Hertzog’s big Chev Commando parked in the open garage with a few big sacks next to it. Mielies, probably. Takes a bit of effort but we manage to raise it and push the sacks under it, leaving the rear wheels just off the ground. The beer is obviously still circulating, making us innovative, witty and irresistible. Oom Hertzog van Wyk probably had a good chuckle as he heaved his car off the sacks, we felt sure.

~~oo0oo~~

Larry left for home – Cobleskill, in upstate New York – soon after, missing the school photo session. We sent him this: Pierre, matric; me, Std 8; Steph, matric; Tuffy, Std 9 to remind him that, as the oldest among us, he had led us astray. Happily astray.

.

– a picture of innocence –
– as can be clearly seen here, I should have been driving – I’m the only one here who’d had his eyes tested –

~~~oo0oo~~~

Vrede – peace; the name of a town; dorp, really; misnomer

dorp – village; hamlet; no metropolis

Groot Klip Kerk – see the action picture of us drifting; It’s the building in the background;

middel-mannetjie – hump between the tracks in a rustic road to tickle the undercarriage;

domkrag – car jack; literally ‘stupid strength’; Us;

hoofseun – head boy;

Harrismith se Hoerskool – Place of learning; but without an umlaut: place of ill repute; place where you could learn some tricks;

grootjas – greatcoat issued by the army or bought 2nd-hand from army surplus stores;

parabat – parachute battalion; mal ous; jump out of aeroplanes

recce – recconaissance battalion; mal ous; jump out of helicopters

‘Jan, maak tog vir hulle tee’ – Give these drunks something to sober them up, would you? Moms always know what’s happening

Mielies – maize, corn;

drifting – right foot flat; steering wheel turned full lock; hold till you cannot see a thing from all the dust; turn the steering wheel to opposite lock; rinse and repeat; any passengers present should be yelling advice at the driver, telling him they should be driving;

~~~oo0oo~~~

Update: R.I.P – Jan van Wyk died in a car accident ca.2010. Shit.

Update again: R.I.P – Steph de Witt died in a car accident 2015. Shit.

11 Apr 2015
Safety First, Old-Style

I was telling you earlier that the Road Safety slogan in the Vrystaat in days of yore was Friends Don’t Tell Friends They Can’t Drive Because They’re Drunk, Because Then Friends Will SHOW Friends How They Actually Drive Very Well When They’re Drunk, Thank You Very Much, and this was proven half true one night when I told Tabs, ‘Listen, I think you’ve had a few too many and the best thing to do is to let ME drive.’

It was all Bess Reitz’s fault. She was buggering off to America and insisted we drink beer at the Holiday Inn . .

. . and that we then repair to her garage opposite the Town Hall to drink beer. We were all sad to see her go, so we had drunk more than usual.

It was OK though, the cops wouldn’t catch us as a lookout was posted in the tree on the pavement outside Dr Reitz’s old surgery next door in the form of accomplished gymnast and ceiling beam swinger John Venning. Where a normal person would climb up a tree till the branches started thinning, John climbed up into the twigs, then the leaves, till his head, shoulders and belly button popped out from the very top. From this crow’s nest vantage point he kept a 360° lookout shouting, ‘Where are the coppers!?’ and ‘The coast is clear!’ and ‘Ahoy!’ and ‘The gendarmes are coming!’ and other helpful stuff.

Now it was true I had been with Tabs all night drinking and he could have said the same of me, but it was me talking, making my sensible suggestion. And anyway Pierre agreed with me, and volunteered to follow us and bring me home safely from Gailian after I’d delivered Tabbo safely home. We were all about safety, see.

– and Bessie would have vouched that I was in showroom condition –

Tabs was perfectly rational and amenable to my eminently sensible suggestion. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll drive to the top of forty two second hill and then you can drive. I want to show you what my SSS can do.’ I was perfectly rational and amenable to that suggestion, and so we set off down Warden Street.

At 190mph.

Tabbo had a green two-door Datsun SSS 1800 (Geoff Leslie had famously called his red Datsun 1600 his ‘Triple Ess Ess Ess’) and that thing ~~fucked off~~ went fast. We touched the tar twice on the way down Warden street and flew up 42nd Hill at a hell of a rate of knots. By slamming into 4th gear halfway up Tabs kept our speed up, slacking off only to about 189mph. I was highly relieved when Tabs pulled over as promised and I took over, proceeding at a much more sedate pace.

Soon after, I turned sedately into Gailian and the road took a sharp left and I didn’t. Changing down into second I let out the clutch but I hadn’t taken my foot off the gas, so we leapt forward into the only deep ditch in the flat vlakte veld for miles around. Tabbo irresponsibly bit a huge chunk out of the dashboard. I thoughtfully didn’t, as the steering wheel stopped me from doing the same. Seatbelts hadn’t been invented yet. Or more accurately, the wearing of seatbelts hadn’t been invented yet *. OK, the wearing of seatbelts hadn’t yet become popular. OKAY! We weren’t forced by law to wear seatbelts yet.

As it turned out, speed hadn’t been the problem after all – it was the sudden stop that dented Tabbo and made him bleed untidily in the SSS.

Fortunately for us, Pierre was right behind and ambulanced us to hospital where the local vet stitched up Tabbo’s lip and he ended up looking quite handsome after that. As the doc said Vasbyt Tebs, he said ‘Hit it Doc!’ but gripped my hand tightly as he said it. It was True Valour in the face of Adversity, and a movie or documentary could be / should be made.

But the sudden stop, the bleeding and the hospital afterwards were NOTHING. We now had to face the hard part: Telling Stella. They were in bed in the wee morning hours dark; we couldn’t see them, we could just hear Stella after Tabs’ confession that ‘we’ had crashed into the ditch. She asked if we were OK. Hector was silent.
~~oo0oo~~
* I looked it up: The first U.S. patent for automobile seat belts was issued to Edward J. Claghorn of New York not long before our escapade, in 1885. So we weren’t used to them yet.
~~oo0oo~~

11 May 2014
Woken by the Tamboekie

Harrismith was not richly endowed with pubs. It had kroegs, but pubs, not so much. So before the Holiday Inn brought mid-West America to the Vrystaat vlaktes, we were forced to drink and drive.

In those days the Road Safety slogan was Friends Don’t Tell Friends They Can’t Drive Because They’re Drunk Because Then Friends Will SHOW Friends How They Actually Drive Very Well When They’re Drunk.

Not as snappy as Speed Kills but nevertheless a very valid slogan.

Favoured watering holes were Little Switzerland on the Oliviershoek Pass and, because after a skinful you want to actually negotiate a whole mountain pass, the Royal Natal National Park Hotel.

One legend of Harrismith District Mobile Imbibing was Rob, whose surname will remain a secret because he might have become sensitive to this well-deserved reputation earned during his lengthy youth later when he was probably telling his own kids to BEHAVE themselves. And Speed Kills, and Wipe Your Feet, and Two Drinks is Enough, and Abstain until you’re Married, you young ‘uns, and other things that would have raised a knowing grin on the faces of his old friends if they had overheard this theoretical speech.

I mean, his rollovers (how many?) culminated in his lying on his neck on the roof of Steph’s white VW Beetle and when Steph said “Rob! Are you OK?!” he murmured “Shh! My favourite tune is playing” as he adjusted the radio tuner which had gone off a touch as the vehicle bollamakissied.

Speaking of pubs, booze, cars and road safety:

The Catholics have it all wrong when they appoint Saints.

I mean NOT ONE of the barmen who put up with our shit has been nominated as far as I know – and they should be. They really deserve sainthood. Like the Little Switzerland barkeep who watched as we emptied the fine display of pampas grass in the foyer, stuck the stalks up our naked rears, set fire to the fronds and ran around the hotel corridors where innocent paying guests were slumbering, yelling “Flaming A’s! Call the Fire Brigade!” A pram was commandeered in the mock fire-fighting response – enough said, a grown man in a pram going Whee! Whaa! Whee! Whaa! – A fiasco.

Also a sainthood for Mother Mary, who loaned me her grey 1970 Ford Cortina to take an Aussie Exchange student there one night.

like this one

On the way back I thought I heard faint snoring and a swish-swish-swish sound from far away. I woke up to find I was going along at a fair rate with tamboekie grass hitting the windscreen, Yabsley the Oz asleep on the seat next to me. I slammed on the anchors and got out to look. I didn’t have a clue if I’d gone off on the right or the left of the road, but following our track back through the long grass we found the road above the pass, reversed and wound our way home much soberer. Had I killed Michael Yabsley I’d have changed the course of Aussie politics, as he went on to become an MP and the Aussie Liberal Party’s federal treasurer.

There should have been a law against drinking and driving.

I do tell my kids to BEHAVE themselves, but I have a hard time keeping a straight face.

——-ooo000ooo——-

I found a 1963 video of Royal Natal National Park.

——-ooo000ooo——-

kroeg – males-only bars

bollamakissied – somersaulted; rolled

8 May 2014
A Brief Encounter

I had skipped rugby in matric, then played seven games of high school American football in Oklahoma. When I got to Johannesburg I was ready to play rugby again, but as there was little sport at the Wits Tech, friend Glen Barker joined Wanderers club. He had a car, so I joined him and off we would go in the green 1969-ish Toyota Corona 1600 he inherited from his gran to the field in Corlett Drive for practice.

I doubt there were 30 players among the under-21’s so we made the B side – probably by default; Opposition teams I remember were Oostelikes; Strathvaal; Diggers; Pirates; Rugged bliksems all.

At Strathvaal in the Wes Transvaal we played and lost and I was removing my boots at the side of the field when a senior coach asked me to please fill in for the senior 3rds – they were short. Their game had already started so I laced up and waited on the sideline for a gap. I ran on as a scrum formed and they got the ball. Moving up from inside centre I went to tackle my man and – BOOM! was carried off on a stretcher.

Who knows what happened, but at about ten seconds it was the shortest game of any kind I’ve ever played! Those miners were built like brick shit houses and seemed to enjoy them some explosive contact!

The yellow & blue hoops of Strathvaal!

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

I played a short international soccer game too, once.

25 Apr 2014
A trumpet? Or were we just trumped?

We would meet on The Bend, Kai’s paradise on the Tugela outside Bergville. The guys from Doories in Johannesburg studying to be optometrists and engineers at the Wits Tech and the gals from NTC in Pietermaritzburg, studying to be teachers of the future fine upstanding youth of SA. We would meet specifically to practice setting a good example.

We’d sing and dance, play loud music, down many beers, fall in love, salute General Armstrong the whisky bottle, dance, laugh, swim in the river, jump off the dam wall, have a ball, dance, laugh, recover and start all over again. In hunting season some of us might shoot a few guineafowl.

Sundays we’d load up and go back to school like responsible students. Speronsible, as Lloyd Zunckel would say.

On this occasion Lettuce Leaf loaded up the off-yellow Clittering Goach to head SE back to PMB and Spatch loaded up the beige Apache and Scratchmo loaded the green VeeDub to head NW back to Joeys. We decided to help Lettuce pack out of the kindness of our hearts, slipping a dead guineafowl in amongst the girls’ suitcases. Ha ha! That’ll give them a surprise when they get back!

Here Scratchmo chunes the Clittering Goach’s under-bonnet-ular bits, pretending he knows what’s going on to impress Lettuce:

Back in Johannesburg later that Sunday night, we couldn’t wait to phone them from the nearest ‘tickey box’ or public phone.

How was your trip? Fine.

How were your suitcases? Fine.

How was Lettuce’s boot? Fine.

Oh! Um, was there anything unusual in the boot? No. Why?

DAMN! We suspected Scratchmo Hood Simpson, and interrogated him accusingly: Are you so in love that you removed the fowl to spare the girls the smell? No, it wasn’t him. But, but . . someone must have removed it. Damn!

Oh, well, it was a great idea for a prank! Pity it failed . . . .

A week later we got a parcel slip:

A parcel from PMB awaits your collection at the General Post Office in Jeppe Street.

It was big and quite heavy and read: Contents: Musical Instrument.

Interesting.

Unwrapping layer after layer of paper and one plastic bag after another we unveiled: THAT GUINEAFOWL! The girls had suckered us! We had been (in 21st century-language) SERVED!

Hummed? It honked! It ponged! – that was obviously their “musical instrument” clue! Heave! Vomit! Yuk!

So what to do with it? Holding it at arms length we carried it out. It was 5pm rush hour. Traffic backed up under the Harrow Road flyover. Innocent hard-working people on their way home. A little plumber’s bakkie looked easy, so as the light turned green we deposited the offending deceased foul fowl discreetly on his loadbed. He’d have an interesting mystery when he got home!

We then made our way to the nearest tickey box. We had a concession phone call to make to PMB.

Girls 1 – Guys 0

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

Where the lucky plumber’s bakkie got its guineafowl

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

bakkie – pickup truck;

1 Feb 2014
An Old Mystery: Whose fault?
There were two reasons we ‘borrowed’ Gerrie’s 1961 black Saab 93 4-cylinder 2-stroke late one night: (1). If you don’t give a car a run the battery can go flat, and (2). We had Larry the American Rotary Exchange student from New York with us, who might have heard that the Free State can be a very boring place with “nothing to do.” Especially at night. And also (3). A moving car is a safe place for schoolboys to drink beer in. These are facts.

Quietly wheeling it down the driveway we held our breath until we’d pushed it far enough, then quickly started it and we were OFF! Freedom! Beer! Speed! Steph was multi-tasking, driving and handing out the ‘longtom’ cans of Black Label beer his family’s obliging gardener had bought for us from Randolph Stiller’s Central Hotel offsales. My folks lost the sale because of their silly and pedantic “over-18’s” policy.

Tuffy always finished his before we hit third gear . . .

A quick routine stop to tap the fuel pump with the half brick kept under the bonnet for just that purpose, and we headed for new terrain.

We had already done the town athletic track and the school netball fields on other occasions, leaving our trademark donuts and figure-of-eights in the gravel.* This time our destination was Alfred vd Zeyde’s National Botanic Gardens on top of Queen’s Hill, stopping only once more to tap the fuel pump with the half-brick kept under the bonnet for just that purpose.

In the dark we met Kolhaas Lindstrom in his car. He was legit: He’d already left school and was a licenced driver. “Dice?” he challenged, and the game was on! Whizzing through the veld Rring-ding-ding-ding-RRriiing! It’s a two-stroke, remember?

Don’t believe the Minister of Transport, speed doesn’t kill you. Speed exhilarates. It’s the sudden stops that kill you. And the sudden stop and loud bang came as a surprise to us. Dead silence reigned until in an awed American upstate New York accent Larry exclaimed from the back seat, “We’ve had a head-on collision with a hill!” .

That broke the ice. The hill, meantime, had probably broken the suspension.

But no. A committee undercarriage inspection revealed all four wheels suspended in mid-air. Trying to gun it out left the front wheels whizzing around uselessly. Well, that is why there were five of us, so we man-handled it over the ditch and away we went, cleverer than before.

Forty five years later I flew in to inspect the scene of the mystery. Which was still unsolved and now a very cold case. The mystery was this: How could it be that such great and experienced drivers crashed? I mean some of us had been driving for . . well, months! And in not too many years’ time, we’d be licenced drivers.

I flew in via google earth. And there it was: A fault!! It was Queen’s Hill’s fault, not ours!

A great big fault – or ditch? – runs North-South across the whole hill. THAT was what caught us by surprise in the long grass.

I have little doubt that if one were to measure its width you’ll find it just a bit greater than the wheelbase of a 1961 Saab93!

~~~oo0oo~~~
- * Next time you’re wondering who made those ‘crop circles’? Think a) Homo sapiens; b) Homo sapiens subspecies pranksterii; c) Alcohol; These are facts.
31 Jan 2014
Hitch-hikers

1979 Army “basics” – basic training – and my buddy Graham DryBright Lewis and I are hitch-hiking from Potch to Harrismith. Waiting for a next ride outside Villiers in the darkness of that Friday night a clapped-out bakkie stopped. At last. Jump on, says the weirdo who looks three sheets to the wind, while handing us a quart of beer to share.
We jumped.
We drank.
Screaming along the road to Warden we glance nervously over our shoulders through the back window into the cab and over the driver’s shoulder. The speedo needle was quivering at 135kmh! We glance at each other, trying to be casual. Nonchalant.

Suddenly a loud schlap schlap schlap schlap sound and the bakkie lurches. Burst tyre!
We start skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the left;
Then skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the right;
Then going backwards staring at the white line racing under the back of the bakkie towards us as we sit facing what should have been backwards;
Then spinning round to see the white line receding away from us – as it should.

We come to a halt still upright and facing forward – and on the correct side of the road. RELIEF!

COME! I barked at Graham. Grabbing our balsaks we hopped off and walked back where we’d come from into the night without a backward glance or a single word to the driver. I did not want to engage with him in any way at all. Fucked if I was getting into Stockholm Syndrome with the twerp who’d almost killed us! We walked till completely out of sight and out of earshot in the dark night.

Where we hitched a ride with another stranger.

~~~oo0oo~~~

28 Jan 2014