Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: Mary Bland Swanepoel

  • On Getting Up

    On Getting Up

    Stephen Charles R, First Son of the famous Artists Village called Clarens, Vrystaat posted a story on chairs, showing this beautifully-made wooden one, on display in the Auckland Art Gallery.

    I stared at it, fascinated and was moved to comment on his blog: ‘Your first pic, the wooden chair, looks like it could stick to the rear of a person with just the wrong-sized bum, poor thing! He’d get up and walk round with people pointing at him and laughing.’

    We spoke about chairs, both confessing to using what Stefaans called, ‘a small folding campfire stool. Footstool size. Useful for lots of things. I use mine for pumping bicycle tires, weeding and any other chore for which I would otherwise have to crouch. ‘Cause I can’t get up.’

    ‘Haha!’ I replied, ‘I have one in my bakkie for changing n pumping car tyres for that same reason: Fear of being unable to rise and lying on the dirt laughing helplessly at the indignity!’

    This reminded me of two of Mom Mary’s favourite stories. At 95 and following a few TIA’s Mary’s recollection of the olden days is still strong. About yesterday she is not bad, considering, but she recalls tentatively. About some funny incidents fifty years ago, of course, she is crystal clear. These two stories both involve her good friend Hester and falls and Getting Up. Hester was a barrel of laughs, sense of humour deluxe; barrel-shaped and vertically challenged, she could tell stories and laugh like a drain; the butt of her humour often being Hester herself.

    The first story, Mary witnessed herself. They were at Hester and her husband Steve’s home. Steve was also barrel-shaped but had plenty of height as well. Visits to their home – which take note was across the road from the big Dutch Reformed Church. the NGK, the National Party at Prayer – entailed eating mountains of food to fill those barrels, and gallons of drink, followed by song, Mary on the piano. On some days if you listened carefully you could hear hymns being sung from across the road, but they’d be drowned out by the non-hymns sung by these revelers, singing lustily on that day when you’re not meant to be having fun. And now followeth a sermon: People past a certain age who imbibe and who have polished parquet floors, should not scatter rugs on those floors. Especially not rugs which are actually dried skins of dead animals, shot by your husband for biltong. Here endeth the lesson.

    Hester bustled about, slipped on a loose springbok skin and landed flat on her back under her large coffee table laden with food and drink and overflowing ashtrays, all of which were wobbling as her tummy jiggled from hosing herself at her predicament. Trapped and helpless and unable to move except for the wobbling.

    The second story Hester told. She went for a walk, slipped and landed in the gutter outside their home. Thus also opposite that church, remember. She was lying there giggling helplessly when Gerrie the town dandy, out for his constitutional, happened on her. I see him with hat, walking stick and cravat. ‘Kom Hester, laat ek jou help,‘ he offered gallantly. NEE Gerrie, LOS! she protested determinedly. Netnou beland jy ook in die sloot langs my, en wat sal die dominee dan se?

    ~~oo0oo~~

    biltong – dried meat; jerky in the ‘states

    Kom Hester, laat ek jou help – Let me help you up

    NEE Gerrie, LOS! Netnou beland jy ook in die sloot langs my, en wat sal die dominee dan se? -No! Leave me. What if you land in the gutter next to me? What will the dominee say then!?

    dominee – preacherman

    ~~oo0oo~~

    I must find a picture of dear old Hester. This one is Mary on the right with another great friend Mary Wessels.

  • None Pictures

    None Pictures

    Mom tells me that after I had me tonsils out at about age three, she took me to Kindrochart for some gentle recovery for the poor little tender chap. I clung to her skirts and wouldn’t go to anyone, I wouldn’t even look at, nor speak to, our hosts Mrs Shannon and Betty Stephens. But once, when lovely, friendly Betty – a huge fan of us kids, we called her Betty Brooks – offered to carry me up a hill after I’d run out of poof, I relented / condescended to use her as a pack horse. Mom was leading us up the hill to show me their farm Nuwejaarsvlei, where she was born and lived till she was eight.

    Mom also tells that I told on Ma Shannon! I hastened into the house one day to find Mom, ‘Ma! Shannon’s got none clothes on!’ Mom hastened out to see this sight and there was Ma Shannon in full petticoat and underwear, shoes and socks, looking quite respectable, thank you. She was preparing to have the Milraes for tea, and wanted to pull on her dress at the last minute.

    Apparently Ma Shannon tried hard to get me to call her Nana, but I’d not call her anything but ‘Shannon.’

    On the way back to the big smoke, driving on the gravel road towards Platberg, Mom was telling Betty about a book she was enjoying about a Belgian nun – The Nun’s Story – I had the book in my hands on the back seat and it seems I was disappointed in it, as I piped up, ‘. . and its got none pictures.’

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Pic: Kerkenberg – the old Binghamsberg – from Kindrochart side – from mapio.net

  • Mist or Smoke?

    Mist or Smoke?

    Mom says they loved swimming. All the boys were at the baths – the Harrismith Municipal Swimming Baths about a kilometre away up the hill past the Town Hall.

    Some days they’d get ready to go – cozzies and towels over their arms, but Granny Bland would be standing on the stoep with her hand on her hip, looking at the mist on the eastern end of Platberg and announce firmly, ‘No, you can NOT go swimming. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it!’

    – Mary and the gang –
  • Early Daze

    Early Daze

    A re-post cos Mom told me some news today (see right at the end):

    My first recollections are of life on the plot outside Harrismith, playing with Enoch and Casaya, childhood companions, kids of Lena and Bennett Mazibuko, who looked after us as Mom and Dad worked in town. The plot was in the shadow of Platberg, and was called Birdhaven, as Dad kept big aviaries. I remember Lena as kind and loving – and strict!

    I lived there from when I was carried home from the maternity home till when I was about five years old, when we moved into town.

    1955 Koos with aviaries
    – those pigeon aviaries – and me –

    I remember suddenly “knowing” it was lunchtime and looking up at the dirt road above the farmyard that led to town. Sure enough, right about then a cloud of dust would appear and Mom and Dad would arrive for their lunch and siesta, having locked up the Platberg bottle store at 1pm sharp. I could see them coming along the road and then sweeping down the long driveway to park near the rondavel at the back near the kitchen door. They would eat lunch, have a short lie-down and leave in time to re-open at 2pm. I now know the trip was exactly 3km door-to-door, thanks to google maps.

    Every day I “just knew” they were coming. I wonder if I actually heard their approach and then “knew”? Or was it an inner clock? Back then they would buzz around in Mom’s Ford Prefect or Dad’s beige Morris Isis. Here’s an old 8mm movie of the old green and black Ford Prefect on the Birdhaven circular driveway – four seconds of action – (most likely older sister Barbara waving out the window):

    birdhaven

    1. Ruins of our house; 2. Dougie Wright, Gould & Ruth Dominy’s place; 3. Jack Levick’s house; 4. The meandering Kak Spruit. None of those houses on the left were there back then.

    Our nearest neighbour was Jack Levick and he had a pet crow that mimic’d a few words. We had a white Sulphur-crested Cockatoo Jacko that didn’t, and an African Grey parrot Cocky who could mimic a bit more. Helmeted Guineafowl would visit by day, and a tame-ish Spotted Eagle Owl would visit at night.

    Our next neighbours, nearer to the mountain, were Ruth and Gould Dominy and Ruth’s son Dougie Wright on Glen Khyber. They were about 500m further down the road towards the mountain, across the Kak Spruit over a little bridge. Doug’s cottage was on the left next to the spruit that came down from Khyber Pass and flowed into the bigger spruit; The big house with its sunny glassed-in stoep was a bit further on the right. Ruth and a flock of small dogs would serve Gould his tea in a teacup the size of a big deep soup bowl. I wonder how many sugars he added?

    Jacko the sulphur-crested cockatoo
    – Me and Jacko the sulphur-crested cockatoo outside the rondavel –

    Judas Thabete lived on the property and looked after the garden. I remember him as old, small and bearded. He lived in a hovel of a hut across a donga and a small ploughed field to the west of our house. He had some sort of cart – animal-drawn? self-drawn? Self-drawn, I think.

    Koos
    – Me and Sheila on the front lawn – 1956 –

    Other things I remember are driving out and seeing white storks in the dead bluegum trees outside the gate – those and the eagle owl being the first wild birds I ‘spotted’ in my still-ongoing birding life; The storks brought babies we were told – can’t level with kids. Hope parents are more straight-up with their kids these days. I remember the snake outside the kitchen door;

    1990 Birdhaven Mum & Dad in the Kitchen
    – Scene of the rinkhals leap – this taken thirty years later, in 1990 –

    I don’t remember but have been told, that my mate Donald Coleman, two years older, would walk the kilometre from his home on the edge of town to Birdhaven to visit me. Apparently his Mom Jean would phone my Mom Mary on the party line and ask, “Do you have a little person out there?” if she couldn’t find him. He was a discoverer and a wanderer and a thinker, my mate Donald.

    1955 Barbs Birdhaven tyre Dad.jpg
    – fun on the lawn – and Bruno the Little Switzerland doberman –

    Bruno the doberman came from Little Switzerland on Oliviershoek pass down the Drakensberg into Natal. Leo and Heather Hilcovitz owned and ran it – “very well” according to Dad. Leo came into town once with a few pups in the back of his bakkie. Dobermans. Dad said I Want One! and gave Leo a pocket of potatoes in exchange for our Bruno. He lived to good age and died at 95 Stuart Street after we’d moved to town.

    1990 Birdhaven Mum & Dad on the front veranda
    – 1990 – Mom & Dad sit on the ruins of the stoep –

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    rondavel – circular building with a conical roof, often thatched;

    spruit – stream; kak spruit: shit stream; maybe it was used as a sewer downstream in town in earlier days?

    stoep – veranda

    donga – dry, eroded watercourse; gulch, arroyo; scene of much play in our youth;

    bakkie – pickup truck

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    – 1948 Ford Prefect –

    A newsflash the year I was born – check the cars.

    Our Ford Prefect was somewhere between a 1938 and a 1948 – the ‘sit up and beg’ look, before sedans went flat. They were powered by a 4 cylinder engine displacing 1172cc, producing 30 hp. The engine had no water pump or oil filter. Drive was through a 3-speed gearbox, synchromesh in 2nd and 3rd. Top speed nearly 60mph. Maybe with a bit of Downhill Assist?

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Today – 25 Sept 2021 – Mom (who turned 93 a week ago today) tells me Kathy Schoeman bought the old Ford Prefect from her and one day they drove to work to see it lying on its roof in the main street outside the town hall! Kathy had rolled it in the most prominent place possible!

  • My Jock

    My Jock

    This post was over at bewilderbeast.org, but it belongs here, in the Olden Daze blog.

    I read Jock of the Bushveld again for the how-manieth time. I enjoy it every time. Percy Fitzpatrick wrote his classic tales of his days with trek oxen and wagons on the lowveld on the highveld: On his farm Buckland Downs in the Harrismith district.

    – famous Jock – almost as handsome as my Jock –

    Always gets me thinking of my wonderful dog Jock in high school:

    – 95 Stuart Street back yard with my room left and Jock’s luxury carpeted kennel right –
    Jock with the Swanie/Bellato Vulgar River Expedition Voortrekkers' canoe
    – Jock with the Voortrekkers’ canoe wreck after the ill-fated Swanie/Bellato Vulgar River Expedition –
    – my favourite of all – Mom Mary knew –

    We got Jock from Reg and Jo Jelliman. They farmed very near Buckland Downs out on the Meul river side of town, out Verkykerskop way. He was apparently a registered Staffordshire Bull Terrier, with the formal name Copperdog-Something on his papers. They wanted to get rid of him. Something about eating eggs.

    He sullied the Copperdog family name ever so slightly again one night by wandering over to Charles Shadford’s place and slaughtering a number of his rabbits. Carnage! Staffies are wonderful and soppy with people, but can be wild with other animals! Eish!

    I spent hours with ole Jock in lieu of doing homework. He was my mate. Learnt his sit stay come etc well, but would probly rather just have lolled about grinning.

    I say, as many do, I’m a dog person, I lurved my dog. But when the time came to go overseas as an exchange student I left for a year without a backward glance. Yeah, we love our dogs. Some people do go thru hoops and over obstacles at great expense to take their dogs with them when they emigrate. Some.

    When I was away one time as a student in Joburg the ole man had Jock ‘put down.’ He was a nuisance? The prior rabbit thing maybe? And anyway, it was his dog, not mine.

    ~~~oo0oo~~

    . . and then in Westville many years later our first dog in our first home was TC – to me she was a mini-Jock:

    scan0127.jpg
    TC

    She lived to a ripe old thirteen years. I buried her at the bottom of that beautiful garden in River Drive, alongside Matt (above) and Bogart who both came after her but died before her.

    No idea where Jock was buried.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    June 2025: Out of nowhere, Mom said on a phone call, “I’ve no idea why Dad had Jock put down. He never said.”

    Ja, Mom. I’ve an idea.

  • Inmate Mary

    Inmate Mary

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

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

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

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

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

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Sinner Mary

    Sinner Mary

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

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

    Gasp!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ~~oo0oo~~

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

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

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

    Eat cake, Eat soap, Eat porridge too.

    Believe in yourself Live in Sin

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

    ~~oo0oo~~

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

    ~~oo0oo~~

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

    ~~oo0oo~~

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

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

    –oo0oo–

  • Canary Bird Bush

    Canary Bird Bush

    Yay! Science! Botany in this case: I just found out what the very first flower I ever drew was/is: A Canary Bird Bush Crotalaria agatiflora.

    I suppose for a school project? I collected a few in our garden and drew the flower and the leaf. I was fascinated by the shape of the flower: like a yellow bird, butterfly or ship.

    I saw this on iNaturalist.org thanks to prolific iNatter @troos (Troos vdMerwe) and there’s a lovely twist: He photographed it in the favourite gardens of a favourite schoolfriend of my Mother Mary’s!

    Harrismith 1945 matriculant Joey de Beer became Jo Onderstall and became a founder member of the Lowveld Botanic Society and the Lowveld Botanic Gardens in Nelspruit, now Mbombela. She wrote the book on Lowveld flowering plants.

    – Jo Onderstall’s 1984 book –

    A lovely full-circle kind of story.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Joey matriculated with Mary in Harrismith in 1945. When she heard Mary was going nursing she expostulated: What A Waste Of A Good Brain! She was right, but Mom decided she needed to do something that earned her a salary and cost her widowed Mom Annie nothing. Typical Mom. Joey went on to study phys ed teaching in Bloem, then married ‘doctor/farmer’ Bill Onderstall. They moved to Nelspruit in 1950. Bill gave Jo a camera for a wedding present and so she herself took a lot of the pictures in the articles and books she wrote. I didn’t know her mother Bessie de Beer had been chair of the Drakensberg and Eastern Free State branch of the Botanical Society, so Jo followed in Bessie’s footsteps. Must tell Mom that. Jo herself seems as self-effacing as Mom. She writes in the introduction that her name on the book ‘is but the visible tip of an iceberg’ and the fact that she took most of the photos is mentioned nowhere. All other photographers are acknowledged, but even the fact that she took the front and back cover pictures is only added in the ‘errata’ – like an afterthought! I’m guessing some of her friends insisted on that.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Yellow bird! Who remembers Johan Pheiffer who came from the city to Harrismith to visit his cousins the du Plessis in the dorp, whipped out his guitar and sang Yellow Bird?

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Later: Mom said, ‘Thanks for this.’ Sheila read it to her. She didn’t know Bessie had also been involved in things botanical. She did know that Bessie used to take people for the drivers test. ‘You would drive her round the block and she’d say OK, you have your licence. None of this parking into a garage stuff.’ So says Ma.

    Her good friends Joey de Beer and Dossie Farquhar said Mom must take science. She found it hard, but enjoyed it. She didn’t like the science teacher, Swart Piet du Toit, though. There was also a teacher called Wit Piet du Toit, who later was called Whitey. Wit Piet married one of the girls he had taught in Std 6. Beautiful girl. Later he married Doris.

    Old memories flooding back, Ma?

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Quick Chat

    Quick Chat

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

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

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

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

    OK, Ma.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Royal Brush Off

    Royal Brush Off

    ‘I’m reading a book about Princess Elizabeth’s visit to East Africa; and so I’m remembering her visit to South Africa in 1947. I’ll never forget it.’

    This is Mother Mary Methodist (91) speaking, reminiscing.

    ‘I was nursing at the Boksburg-Benoni hospital and the Royal Family cavalcade was going to pass right in front of the hospital. We all went down to the road in our uniforms and we just knew she was going to stop and chat to us because the porters had wheeled Daphne down from Ward 7 and put her hospital bed right at the edge of the road.’

    – here they come! Oh, hell, they’re gone – I added appropriate royal insignia to their car –

    Daphne was well-known: Young and paralysed from diving into a shallow pool. The ‘King’ and the ‘Queen’ and the ‘Princesses’ would definitely stop, lean forward and have an earnest chat with Daphne making sure not to get too close. Mary and her fellow nurses crowded round Daphne’s bed and waited breathlessly, the loyal Royalists (translation: verraaiers) they were. And here they come!

    Bah, Jou Moer ‘Koning’ Jors, us republicans would have said. Actually, we wouldn’t have been out on the road waiting . . we would have pretended to not even know they were visiting . . Who? ‘King’ of where?

    And . . there they go. They drove straight past. Didn’t stop; Just a vague foppish wave in the general direction!

    Of course loyal Monarchist Mary immediately made excuses for Their Royal Bliksems: ‘They were on a very tight schedule.’

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Later Mom’s friend, nurse Audrey Beyers was chosen to accompany Daphne to America for an operation. She doesn’t know what transpired, except Audrey got married and became Audrey King.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Jou Moer ‘Koning’ Jors – (rude thoughts) ‘King’ George