Casa Blanca Roadhouse, Joburg

As students 1974-1977 we would frequent the Casa Blanca roadhouse at the foot of Nugget Hill below Hillbrow when the pocket money arrived from home. Squeezed into Joz’s green VW Beetle or Steve’s beige Apache or Bobby’s white Mini Cooper S or Glen’s green Toyota, we’d ask the old Elvis-looking guy with a cap, flip-up sunglasses and whispy whiskers for a burger n chips plus a coke; Or a cheeseburger chips n coke 70c, or – as Steve Reed reminded me – “if we were flush, the Dagwood with everything including the runny fried egg. Sheer luxury. Messy, but worth it!”

I don’t have a pic of the Casa Blanca, but here’s the Doll House in Highlands North and the Casbah in Alberton so long:

Every so often you’d be asked “Move forward” and you’d inch forward to make room for new arrivals behind you, till you reached the “finishing line” where you handed back the tray the Elvis look-alike waitron had clipped to your half-rolled-up window and drove off under the big sign on the wall: QUIET. HOSPITAL.

Many years later (OK, twenty six years later!) work took me back to Jozi and I had time to kill in my hired car so I drove around Doories and Yeoville and Hillbrow. Around lunchtime I pulled in to the Casa Blanca and I SWEAR there was the exact same oke who had served us twenty six years earlier, with his SAME cap, his SAME flip-up shades and his SAME whispy whiskers! Astonishing!

I told him, Cheeseburger chips n coke and how long have you been here?

“Thirty six years,” he said “but I’m just filling in now.”

Charged me 70c. Plus twenty six years-worth of inflation.

~~oo0oo~~

Money’s Worth

Hey, I went haring round on my bike on Sunday – first time in a long time! A friend took the kids on the 10km fun ride, so I had no-one to shepherd and could indulge meself.

This was just like the old days. Single track, through pine forests, up and down rocky paths, across streams and along game trails. Flat-out downhill, bones shaking apart and quite often thinking Oh, sh*t, now I’ve gone a bridge too far and I’m going to see my arse!” But I only fell once and then in slow motion down a very steep rocky path when my front wheel jammed against a rock and I slowly went over the handle-bars to land safely in the grass.

On some of the tight turns they had banked the corners, so you could hit them leaning right down and squeeze your back brake and skid round and jerk upright just in time for the next corner. Lekk-aah!

The trail started near the Umtamvuna river and the high point was on the cliff-edge overlooking the gorge in the wildlife reserve with the white-water rapids far below – stunning! (see feature pic – not mine).

Uphills, though “r not us.” I get off and push and enjoy the scenery. Everyone granny-gears their way past me, then I whizz past many of them on the downhills.

Gravity likes me.
~~oo0oo~~

Gayle, who had accompanied the kids gave this report: At the top of the first long climb, not 2km into their 10km ride Tom turned to her and asked:

Gayle, how much did it cost to enter this?
Twenty Rand Tom, she replied.

Well, I think I’ve had my Twenty Rands’ worth, he puffed.

Gayle managed to get him to the finish.

They huffed . .
– Tom of the NY Yankees into his stride through the bananas – aged six, 2008 –

The next year we did it again, the kids old hands by now:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Tom puffed to Gayle after the first hill: How much did this cost? “R20” Well, I think I’ve had my R20 worth!

Faithful Apprentice

I am not known for braai’ing. Anything but. I avoid it if I can.

If God had wanted men to ‘barbecue’ he would not have invented ovens. Or some such excuse.

I am quite good at watching okes braai.

But living in primitive country it’s inevitable that I have to set fire to something every now and then and cook something on it. Tom does it for me now, and does it well, but I remember the first time he assisted me. When it came time to present the offerings he stood up for me:

He said: “The meat’s not burnt, it’s just the way we cooked it”

Slack Mountaineering

Aitch and I took Jess & Tom up Table Mountain in Cape Town. We took the cable car up, and Aitch took it down as well.

Table MTN walk (24)

Here the kids are – about to walk down Platteklip Gorge.

Platteklip Gorge

They bounded down like rock rabbits. I felt my knees wobbling about halfway down, so I sat down ‘to examine some interesting little flowers’. Was stiff for three days after!

Anthropomorphic Tom

TomTom keeps a beautiful American corn snake in captivity in a vivarium in his room. He loves her. I say if you love her, set her free. He doesn’t like that. Thinks his Dad is weird. I’m strict with him on cleanliness, feeding and water, temperature, etc, as he would easily forget. She gets a rat a week to swallow, carefully thawed and presented hygienically for consumption. The tank has an air temperature and moisture gauge to monitor that things stay right for Flaky.

Yep, Flaky the snaky.
Image

As she grew we increased her accommodation to this double-story setup:

 

Once after moving her cage nearer the window so she could catch more sun as the days got colder, Tom came running into my room:

“Dad, Flaky’s humanity is up to 99%” he shouts.

My Cousin

Cousin Robbie gets married to Sarah, and after the wedding – maybe it was all that “giving away” talk in church? – TomTom has a sudden thought:
Dad, will Robbie still be our cousin now?
Yes, boy, and in fact you now have another cousin: Sarah.
YAY!!

*(to add Rob Sarah wedding pic)*

A New Currency

Aitch’s work entailed a fair bit of travel. Daily, overnight, local flights, even some overseas conferences. One night before she left to the Midlands on conference she told the kids she’d be away and the subject of bribery came up. She was told politely but firmly that “a hug and a kiss are NOT OK as a ‘suh-prize'” homecoming prezzi anymore. Those were still welcome, but some hard assets such as cash, toys or sweets seemed to be preferred.

Truth be told, Aitch liked that! She was into gifts – giving and receiving.

Speaking of deposits . .

I was mentioning dog deposits here.

Way back in 1973 I was staying in Oklahoma. My host Dad Jim was vice-president of the local bank.

One morning he and his friend Tom the president were chatting, OK coffee-strategising, in Tom’s office when one of the ladies popped her head in: “It’s opening time and a dog has left a great big “do” right in the entrance. It needs to be cleaned up, gentleman”.

Tom looks at Jim: “Well Jim, you’re in charge of deposits!”

On being outnumbered

We now have two more females in the household! And the one is making deposits bedonnered.

Never one to do things by halves, Aitch has reacted to my firm “NO WAYS” for a new dog by getting TWO puppies: One is here already. Jess calls her “Shadow”. The other has been born and arrives in a few weeks’ time. Both black bitches.

I said to Tommy: It’s you ‘n me, boy!

tomonline

TomTom phones his Mom on her mobile. He’s a bit upset.
“What’s Dad’s number, Mom?” he asks (he knows hers off-by-heart).
So Aitch gives it to him, thinking “How’s he going to remember it?”
“I’m putting it in now” he says, beeping away as she says it.
“But Tom, you can’t on a landline, it doesn’t work that way”
“Waaaah!”

Background:
He was hurrying to present his case to the more pliable parent before Tobias the gardener could report his misbehaviour!
Thought he could sway Dad if he got in early.
Bad luck: He got grounded.

Regrets? I’ve had a few . . .

One just this morning.
What should a great Dad do when his 5yr-old child comes running into the bedroom early in the morning grinning from ear to ear and squeaking breathlessly “Dad, Dad, come and look what I found! I found something new!”
Where, TomTom?, I grunted. And why is your head wet?
“In the bathroom, come look! It’s a fountain, Dad!”

I should have jumped up and gone and danced under the fountain with him.
Instead I said It’s the bidet, Tom, don’t make a mess.
“No, Dad, it’s not a bee day, it’s a fountain!” said TomTom.

He was right, of course.
Later, when I went through, the bathroom was flooded, the magazines next to the loo were soaked, and the washing in the wicker basket was soggy.
But he was ecstatic, and I shoulda got soaked with him. And I only thought of it once he’d beetled off to school.

Dammit.

Tugela or Umgeni?

Nicole,Jessie,Carla And Jessica,Grace,Nicole,Jessie And Lackin

As the school principal left the Grade Naughty and Grade One gala, a group of bigger kids (boys, all) flocked around her:

“Who won!? Tugela or Umgeni??”

“Well, children, actually, in this gala we didn’t focus on winning or losing, but on participating. The little children swam to take part and have fun, and where there was competition it was the classes against each other, not Tugela against Umgeni.”

“What did it say on the blackboard?”

“Well, the points of the red and blue houses were not tallied.”

Here one little blond-haired fella piped up politely but determinedly:

“Yes, but who won anyway?”

~~oo0oo~~

The Prison Lady

I went to hand over the cash we had raised after the first school swimming gala to the bursar. Livingstone school, around 2011.

TomTom accompanied me.

Livingstone Walkathon (8)
Much counting and signing and Tom showing off his swimming “medals” with Rick making all the right noises from behind the hatch at the bursar’s office.
As we left, Tom says to me: “We call her the Prison Lady. You see all the bars she’s behind? Look, even her door has burglar bars!”
Oh, I said, I wonder if she has to sleep in there all night?
“No”, he says airily, “she has her own keys”.

———————————————————–

When I told Rick about this, she told me how one little kid had peered at her through the bars and asked:
“Do you have food?”

Some lunch: The Sky Moved!

Aitch’s Dad made interesting school lunches for her way back in the days that she attended some sandstone school in Muizenberg or somewhere. So she feels moved to enhance the kids’ lunches. I would give them peanut butter sarmies 5/7, but Aitch makes “tortoises” in a jaffle iron, meat sarmies, hot dogs, eg.
This week she made the resident grade one pastafarian his favourite best: Two minute noodles AND macaroni n cheese. In separate compartments of his high-tech lunchbox.

That afternoon she couldn’t wait (cool is not one of Aitch’s traits): “What did you think of your lunch today, Tommy?” she urged, expectantly.
And bless him, he rose to the occasion.
“Mom!” he said. “When I opened my lunch Mrs Button was ‘ghast!”

Um, really, TomTom?

“Yes. She was astonished and asked Where are your sandwiches?”
“And I laughed so hard that the sky moved”.

The Considerate Crocodile

a posse of blondes invades Tom’s nest!
up you get, lazybones!

Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?

No, TomTom, where did you see that?

On TV.

Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!

~~oo0oo~~