Tonight’s saga is about youngest of three, Sheila’s tonsillectomy.
All you kids had your tonsils removed when you were three. Sister Bester (Sparrow’s mom) was in charge at the Harrismith Hospital. She was known for saying, when about to plunge a needle into you: “Ek gaan jou nou seermaak” and she wasn’t kidding – her injections hurt.
After the op, we were back in the ward when Sr Bester came in, peered at Sheila, then whipped her out of the cot and hurried her back to theatre. I grabbed Sr Bester’s hand and went with her. At the theatre door I said, “I’m going to wait right here!”
She needed a transfusion. Dad was called out of his bed to donate blood (we’re all ‘O’ – the whole lot of us) . Afterwards, all was fine.
Barbara had to go back to Dr Frank Reitz’s rooms after her op. But Sheila’s was the most dramatic. You were the only one who didn’t bleed after the op.
Well, Ma, I always was the best behaved, right? Um, … non-commital laugh.
Mom herself had only had her tonsils removed at about 23, just before or after her wedding. Not fun.
In my brief spell as a dead-keen boy scout in the short-lived 1st Harrismith troop, I found out that to be a good patrol leader you need a good ‘thy rod and thy staff.’ A hiking staff.
It needed to be good strong wood, not too thick not too thin, and its length should be from the ground to the bottom of your nostrils. You with your hiking boots on.
And I found the perfect staff where I found lots of fascinating treasure over the years: In the workshop were two very long wooden poles, not perfectly round, about an inch in diameter, marked with thin shallow sawblade cuts roughly an inch apart for the full length. Some of the cuts had numbers punched next to them.
I chose the stronger one and sawed it to exactly the prescribed nostril-to-ground length.
Perfect: My hiking staff – made from Annie’s Caltex with Boron underground fueltank dipstick! I had watched Annie’s petrol attendants remove the iron manhole cover on the forecourt, unscrew the lid to the tank, lower the long dipstick, raise it, note the wet Caltex with Boron mark and how many litres that meant, then take it into the office for Annie to reconcile that amount with the pump readings. No software required.
The dipstick got retired – maybe when software took over, dunno when? Then around 1970 I launched it on its new career in the Great Outdoors.
In 2022 it went into storage in the Lodder’s garage in Hilton KZN, where I hope to retrieve it some day when they get back from the USA.
Maybe we’ll go hiking together again, me and my rod and my staff … and the Lodders!
Next to Mom’s piano in the lounge was a glass-fronted darkwood cabinet. In it was her collection of sheet music – classic and light popular. The overflow was in her piano stool; the padded tapestry lid was hinged and opened up to reveal more sheet music.
Here’s some of her light music collection
S.1186-2014
Sheet Music Print Show Me The Way To Go Home; Music sheet for Show Me The Way To Go Home by Irving King, published by Campbell Connelly, 1925 Irving King Campbell, Connelly & Co. London 1925; 1921 Lithograph, intermediate pages composed of printed text
And a list she made as an ‘aide memoir’
Here she is playing at Azalea in Pietermaritzburg. Note how she deftly ducks answering my excellent suggestion:
Matron Rose ended the session with, ‘Mary Poppins, come and eat.’
The big annual prize-giving took place in 1972 – my matric year – and I didn’t win a single trophy, cup, certificate or handshake. But I was not to worry, Annie insisted. Here’s the letter she wrote me from George in the Southern Cape where she spent the only three years of her ninety outside Harrismith:
15th
Have just received your mother’s letter, containing the report on school prize-giving. Good for you son – I’m very pleased with your results. I’m sure you are not upset about not winning a cup. Think of the bother of cleaning them. In any case you can always show off the Bland Racing Cups! The heat here is horrific and no sign of rain.
Love to all
Annie
So there! Who needs to win trophies anyway? Unless it’s for horseracing. That’s different and highly prized. Even if that sport may have contributed to losing the farm.
I just love the characteristic unemotional, no-nonsense approach. That’s me Gran! Academics! Who needs them?
The feature pic is Annie in George, looking queenish with matching twinset and corgi accessory.
Here she is in George again round about the same time, in a dress and uncomfortable shoes cos it’s a wedding. Corgi at her feet. Not her corgi, mind you. She didn’t do animals, she played golf and drove motorcars. Also owned and ran a Caltex garage and a Volkswagen motorcar agency. At one time she sold 1200cc VW Beetles for R1199.
I think these are the vaunted Bland trophies up on top of the cupboard in the dining room at 95 Stuart Street. Horse-racing! Now those are trophies worth polishing!
Not personally, you understand – you get someone to polish them.
~~oo0oo~~
After the farm was lost and circumstances were more frugal, Annie would say at the dinner table, gently mocking: ‘I still ring the bell, then I get up and fetch it myself.’
Dad, I can’t think what to have for our third supper camping. Don’t wurrie Jess, I’ll do the first night, you just do two suppers. What’ll you do Dad? she asked, maybe regretting opening her mouth. Don’ wurrie Jess, I have a plan.
Her query had reminded me that our cottage came with three stainless steel braais, two built-in, and three braai grids, and two huge bags of charcoal – not your garage forecourt size – and eight plastic-wrapped bags of braaihout. I packed the grid, a bag of braaihout, fahlahter, safety matches, and two T-bones. I was going to become a brauer. How hard could it be? Puh-leez!
At Bonamanzi there’s a built-in brick braaiplek, no grid. I go scouting the sixteen sites, only two occupied, and find a loose grid, collecting twigs as I go. At dusk I set the well-packed pyramid-shaped pyre alight and stand back watching the blaze with satisfaction, marveling at how easy this is and how okes gaan aan about their secret and foolproof ‘methods,’ etc, ens, and blah blah. When I have glowing hardehout coals – and admittedly still a bit of flame, I’m hungry so I sandwich the Spar-marinaded vacuum-packed very thinly-sliced bargain T-bones into my nifty snap-shut stainless steel braai grid that came wif the cottage, and plop them on top of the camp grid over the red hot coals. With a bit of flame. I’m attending them noukeurig when the other campers drive in in the dark and I make the mistake of shouting across my coals, How was your drive?
Turns out he thinks he should tell me. He bustles over and tells me. I didn’t catch his name but if it isn’t Earnest it should be. Great detail about how their drive was not good, no elephant. Then where he’s from and what his 4X4 is and which one he actually wanted to buy (Nissan Pathfinder / Nissan Patrol) and how – exactly how – he built his own camper trailer on his parents farm and what he kitted it out with with his own hands and how although the trailer was old, the wheel bearings were still shiny silver when he took them apart. Also the pros and cons of a gazebo.
I’m shuffling and he’s getting into his stride and I’m polite. A fatal combination, which brings Jess with a torch to say, Dad you’ve burnt the meat!
Arts n Crafts were not I nie. I made a skinkbord in houtwerk and it was coming along nicely. I could envisage a gold OK maybe bronze medal at the Landbou Skou. One of those ribbons, a rosette, maybe a card saying ‘excellent dovetail joints’ or some such.
Sanding was a pain tho, so when Giel wasn’t watching I gryp’d the belt sander and ‘sped things up.’
Oops! That machine has quite a kick! Varktap. End of my skinkbord!
Sheila, tell me again where Generaal de Wet fits in to Ouma’s family. Apparently he won a battle in the Freestate where the Hysterical Tour is headed right now, so I need to brag about my connections.
When the Brits win the battle Ken Gillings is brainwashing us about, I tell them about Annie and her love of Mrs Queen, but this battle I’m gonna need my Boer connections.
Who else can I claim?
~~oo0oo~~
Sheila: Not de Wet, but de la Rey and Botha
Not de Wet – but de la Rey. Ouma’s ouma (her mother’s mother) was Boer Generaal Koos de la Rey’s sister – she married a Bezuidenhout and produced a daughter who married a Bodenstein and they produced Ouma. So we are directly descended from de la Rey’s father, not Gen Koos de la Rey himself.
Boer Generaal Louis Botha was married to John Bland’s first cousin, Annie Bland Emmett. John FA Bland II was Granny Bland’s husband. He was a lawyer in Harrismith – his own wife called him Mr Bland!
Mr John Bland and Annie Bland Emmett were both grandchildren of Josiah Benjamin Adam Bland – the first Bland who came to SA in 1829. He became mayor of Mossel Bay – the main street is named after him. I have the letter of introduction he had for the Cape and the ship captain’s receipt for his passage on the Nautilus; Hugh Bland has the ring he was wearing. He married a du Plessis and had lots of kids.
There is something about the English Blands from Harrismith going to Ceylon as POWs during the Boer War, but I’m not exactly sure who they were – must have been two of our Granddad Frank’s brothers?
~~oo0oo~~
Me:
Aha! So: General Koos de la Rey had a sister who had a great great great great (4 greats) grandson: Me, Koos.
Anyone who fought for the Brits?
~~oo0oo~~
Sheila:
No, not four greats – just two.
Sister of de la Rey married a Bezuidenhout. Her Daughter married a Bodenstein. Then her Granddaughter (our Ouma) married a Swanepoel. Ouma and Oupa Swanepoel in Maritzburg.
So her Granddaughter was Ouma. Her Great Grandson was our Dad. And her Great Great Grandson was YOU!
I don’t know of any Pom soldiers.
And that’s it, I’m afraid.
~~oo0oo~~
So I’m two greats down from the sister of ‘The Lion of The West,’ and have zero bragging rights in any Freestate battles, zero connection to Die Dapper Generaal De Wet! *sigh* Gonna have to keep my mouth shut on this Hysterical Tour outing.
They actually called it stoei, and it was considered character-building, but all I could think of was sweaty smelly bodies, encountered way too intimately for my liking. I dunno why, but I wasn’t fond of smelling okes’ buttholes. Same when I played slot and 8th man in rugby. But this was early in my life, before under 11 rugby, and before Heilige Giel made me a man.
Stoei oefening was in the Harrismith Masonic Hall in Bester Street, across the road west of the town hall. And when you’re secretly more interested in the petrified tree lying on the lawn outside than in a new stranglehold to grip a sweaty ou in, you should perhaps realise you’re never going to go far in this, the sport of kings (ja, ja, depends who you ask). Maybe I’d have done better wrestling in the Pharaohs’ days, when it seems they weren’t quite into ‘grappling’ as much. I’d still be the oke on the left, though.
When you arrived at the Masonic Hall back in my heyday of wrestling, ca.1964, you’d first have to go up the beautiful wooden staircase with its carved banisters and get a grip on the thick heavy mats stored against the wall, then dump them over onto the ground floor, then roll them out. They were there to prevent you getting hurt by the hard floor, as hurting you was the job of the other ous. When the torture ended and Ma came to fetch you in the light blue Volksie you had to schlep them back up the stairs and store them away before you could escape.
The coach was a meneer Joubert, and his sons – Anton and Leon – were kranige stoeiers. And kranig is what you needed to be if you wanted to advance in stoei. To the next level, where stronger okes could bend you into even tighter shapes and get you to smell your own butthole if they felt like it. That wasn’t really one of my sporting goals and I think it showed.
Around about then I developed asthma and I suspect that smell caused it.
Inside the hall – now a furniture shop – showing the ceiling I stared at while knotted; that petrified tree; the Masonic Hall foundation stone laid by an ancestor: ‘Worshipful Master’ Alex Caskie, with another ancestor ‘Warden’ James Bain – Thanks for the pics are due to Horst Muller of https://www.ruralexploration.co.za – his site is very interesting, worth a visit!
~~oo0oo~~
See what I mean about stoei? – “Cave paintings in the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia dating back to Neolithic age ca.7000 BCE show grappling of two naked men surrounded by crowds.” Give me the 150 million year old tree any day, thanks, it seems more civilised.
After a five-night wilderness trail in Mfolosi Game Reserve, we went for a game drive in my kombi on the way out of the park. We being Doug, Andre co-pilot and me driving. Kingfisher Canoe Club canoeists all. Needing a leak after a few bitterly cold brews I left the wheel with the kombi trundling along amiably on the gravel road and walked to the side door of the kombi, ordering Hawarden to take over the driving.
Not good at taking orders, he looked at me, waited till I was in mid-stream out of the open sliding door and leant over with his hiking stick and pressed the accelerator.
The driverless kombi picked up speed and I watched it start to veer off-road, necessitating a fast shake, a squeezed premature end to my leak, and a dive for the wheel.
I agree not a completely successful trial, but it predated Musk. And I’d suggest better than his efforts, as no-one died.
Vrystaat Confessions 