Build-A-Boat

When we grew up outside Harrismith ca 1959 we couldn’t use the lounge. The lounge was filled edge-to-edge by an upside-down speedboat. The old man built his first speedboat in this lounge, now showing some wear-and-tear many decades later:

Younger sis Sheila, in the picture with Mom & Dad, says he also added the stone cladding to that fireplace.

Later we moved to town; to 95 Stuart Street on the eastern edge of the town ca.1961; In 1972 Mom and Dad moved from the house we grew up into a new owner-built house in Piet Uys Street near the middle of town.

After us three kids had all left home and Mom & Dad had retired, he developed another urge to build a boat. Luckily this time in a boatyard with the help of boat builders.

One cold winter’s day ca.1990 we took it, shiny new, for a spin on Sterkfontein Dam outside Harrismith: Me, Dad, two Eskimos and Sheila, the semi-eskimo.

We zoomed over the spot where Mom estimated her old farmhouse was – on Nuwejaarsvlei, where she grew up. She worked out where the farmhouse had been by lining up ‘Horsehoe Hill’ and ‘Sugar Loaf Mountain,’ as they called the hilis on their farm.

Update 2025: Today on a phone call we spoke of this again and Mom said how she loved those walks to the hills on the farm with her Dad Frank. He had taught her those names for them. ‘How long ago was that?’ she wondered. ‘He died when I was 15.’ Well that was 81 years ago Mom. And your walks were before that, as he died after you’d moved to town.

No! she said. So long?

~~oo0oo~~

That vehicle licencing office: The ole goat had OHS 153, 154 and 155; and for my first car he got OHS 5678. I want an easy number for my son, he said. Are ve Oom not sure you don’t want raver a difficult number for your son? asked the wise fella helping him.