Deon Joubert came running out of the house and shouted to his older brother Etienne: “Etienne! Mom says you must tracker tray on!”
Etienne knew exactly what Deon meant: It was winter in Harrismith, the sun was going down, we were playing outside, so Ma Joyce was saying he must put on a jersey.
Afrikaans: “Trek ‘n trui aan.”
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jersey, cardigan, sweater, pullover
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Pullover psychology is not as easy as some think. When your Ma said you had to tracker tray on it changed the whole dynamics of the important stuff that was going on right then. The interruption might mean you’re no longer King of the Castle but end up as the Dirty Rascal. And that’s if the dreaded interrupting jersey was brought to you. If you were summoned inside to fetch it yourself that was a DISASTER and you would rather spend five minutes arguing with your Ma about how you weren’t cold than spend the two minutes it would take to run in and pull it on.
Many Ma’s seem to have a strong need to thermo-regulate their offspring and just don’t understand “catching your death” was never nearly as scary to us as losing our place.
Anyway, statistics I just invented prove that of the 487 million kids who have been told they’ll catch their death of a cold, only one ever did. And he recovered.
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Accused of being chicken once, Deon was indignant:
I aren’t a bloody chicken cos I aren’t got fevvers! he protested quite rightly.
Kleinspanskool schooltime ended around twelve noon or one o’ clock I guess, and we lived less than a mile east along Stuart Street and so one bleak and chilly winter day, after absorbing a lot of prescribed, standard knowledge, Donald Coleman and I set off for home in our grey shirts, grey shorts, grey socks and grey jerseys. He’d probly being absorbing wisdom from Miss Jordan, me from Mrs van Reenen, and it seems I may also have had a grey jacket at the time. Mom felt the cold keenly.
We had lots to talk about and so we walked along on the pavement under those big old London Plane trees you can see above, mostly bereft of leaves, many of which were now lying morsdood, yellow and brown, in the deep sandstone gutters. Mainly brown. While they’re yellow they still hang onto their twigs.
It was really cold but Donald had a box of matches in his pocket and a plan. We raked together a pile of the dry leaves with our chilly hands and started a nice fire and sat down to warm those same hands and our bare shins as the fire crackled away.
It soon burnt out – leaf fires disappoint – and we meandered on in deep conversation about important things. A block or two later we made another blazing but short-lived fire to sit and chat and warm up by.
Far too quickly we reached Hector Street and Donald turned down toward his home and I turned up to mine. Mine on the corner and his a block or two closer to the mountain.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!?” greeted me. The tone of the question surprised me and ruined the quiet, gentle ambience of our leisurely journey home. At his home Donald was being asked the same unreasonable question. We’d been to school. Everyone knew that, why were they asking?
“IT’S FIVE O’ CLOCK! SCHOOL ENDED OVER FOUR HOURS AGO!” We weren’t arguing. We didn’t say it didn’t. What was their point? “WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?” Uh, we were talking . . . time flies?
We were left to ponder the mysteries of the adult world. They obviously marched to a different drum as we sauntered to our flutes. We knew our Moms loved us and were just worried like we weren’t.
They didn’t know – yet – that Donald was an archeologist, paleontologist, cosmologist, naturalist, philosopher and music-lover and had LOTS to think about and consider, and me lots to learn. Life lay before us and what that was was to be pondered. They just assumed we were buggering around.
And anyway, whose stress levels were highest? I arse you that now that I know about stress levels.
Plane trees have itchy balls
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morsdood – messily deceased; autumn leaves in winter
Huge thanks to Sandra of Harrismith’s best blog DeDoudeHuizeYard for the pictures – exactly right! That is the SAME gutter we sat in. You can even see a few of the plane leaves, great-great-great descendants of the ones we burned, um, (surely it can’t be!) about fifty six years ago.
Helios gave his son Phaeton permission to drive the Sun chariot around the Earth. Helios was the Sun God, and a son of almighty Zeus.
Talk about “Don’t Spare the Horses”! Typical youth, the lad Phaeton took some sporting chicks along for the ride, lost control of those horses and the chariot ran amok. The world was at risk of being incinerated!
Grandfather Zeus was thus forced to kill him. Zap! He killed his grandson! Zeus could gooi a mean lightning bolt if you pissed him off.
I’m sure glad the punishment became a bit milder in our day, a few millennia later.
Come to think of it, we never did get punished. Never got caught, actually, though I can’t imagine our folks didn’t have a shrewd idea of what was happening – at least an inkling. See, we used to say we didn’t steal our parents’ cars. We ‘borrowed them on the non-permission system,’ we’d say. In the early days of illicit driving I used to drive the old blue VW Kombi OHS 153 around our large garden at 95 Stuart Street.
Round the circular driveway, out into Hector Street and back in again. Back near the garages was the washing line and the kombi just fit under it. Except I’d forgotten about the flip-up airvent on the roof. It caught the wires and pulled down the washing line poles. Some feverish spadework got them more or less vertical again and the old blue kombi was parked back in its exact spot outside the garage.
Another time I reversed into the tap at the horse trough, the pipe broke and water sprayed out in a long arc. It was evening and the folks were out. Parking the kombi I hastened to the tap and straightened the downpipe, getting drenched in the freezing water – it was mid-winter. That caused less water to gush but there was still a very visible spout. Rushing down to the front gate I found the stopcock that turned off the main water supply. That fixed it and I went to bed before the folks got home. The next morning I rose very early and turned the stopcock back on. “Hmm, the pipe must have frozen and burst last night” was the consensus at breakfast.
My butt was saved by Harrismith’s frigid winter weather!
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*Some apparently did, though, as my friend Fanie Schoeman hastened to inform me here.
‘Son borrows Dad’s car’ predictably caused South Africa’s first serious automobile accident – 1903:
On 1st October 1903, Mr Charles Garlick driving his father’s new 24hp Darracq with his friend Harry Markham and chaffeur Snellgrove as passengers, entered the Maitland level crossing from an open gate, only to find the opposite gate closed. Before they could open the gate or reverse out of the crossing, they were hit by the Johannesburg Express traveling at full speed.
Snellgrove was thrown clear, Garlick suffered minor injuries and Markham, with his arm already in splints from a previous engine-cranking mishap, had a badly broken thigh.
It was announced that the Garlick workshop would undertake repairs to the Darracq. A new chassis was obtained from Paris and the final result testified to the efficiency of Cape Town’s first motor repairers.
From ‘Early Motoring in South Africa’ by R.H. Johnston
Vrystaat Confessions 