Its ongoing. There’s even less stuff there, but some stuff is going to have to be pried from his tight reluctant fingers, maybe?
– “No, that’s hardwood for Gavin. He wants to make knife handles . . ” – – “You must take these, they were Oupa’s . . ” –
– the camera probably a box brownie held at waist level? –
The awl and the hand drill brace were Oupa’s in Boom street in PMB. The screwdriver and needle-nose pliers on the right were issued to Dad by the General Post Office when he started as an apprentice electrician in 1938. He had to climb up telephone poles with those in his pocket. Here’s the GPO vehicle he’d drive around in, fixing the phones! They didn’t bother with parcels and letters, no! That was old-school! They were the high-tech side of the Post Office: The telephones!
By the way, everything has a correct name. The screwdriver is a ‘perfect handle’ screwdriver. That’s a specific kind of screwdriver.
– happy apprentices under jovial Wally Coleman in white coat –
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
Today I learnt Mr Buckle didn’t shoe horses. No, he was the blacksmith, upholsterer and wagon-maker. Charlie Rustov shoed horses. He was a few rungs lower down the totem pole, and the only farrier in town. He had a high-pitched voice and would say‘Nee man, Mnr Swanepoel, daai blerrie hings gaan my skop!’when I took my stallion in to be shod. Dad would buy horses, school them, then sell them for a much higher price. I made more on horses than my post office pay.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
‘Nee man, Mnr Swanepoel, daai blerrie hings gaan my skop!’ – No man, Mr Swanepoel, that blerrie stallion is going to kick me!
blerrie – bladdy
bladdy – bloody; no blood though, just a swearword
The ole man’s first visit to South West Africa was by train in 1939. The trip cost six pounds return. His father being a railway man, he probably got a good family-rate deal. He would have ‘entrained’ here. where Oupa worked:
Pietermaritzburg station – Oupa’s workplace
. . crossed all of South Africa to Upington, then passed through Keetmanshoop, Rehoboth and Windhoek:
Keetmanshoop station Rehoboth stationWindhoek station
.. and arrived at his destination station: Okahandja. The last stretch on a narrow gauge line.
Okahandja station
He remembers a lovely wooden dining car, wooden tables, wooden carriage walls. Maybe like this?
His destination was his uncle and aunt’s farms. His aunt Isabel and her husband Theunis van Solms farmed on Engadien or Engadine. They did a lot of hunting.
‘Skiet hom!’
The farms were clustered east of Okahandja – about fifty miles east, he says.
One farm called Nooi Bremen – Was originally owned by a German Count someone – a scion of the Staedtler pencil family and fortune. Or was it the Faber-Castell pencil family? They had more counts.
Daantjie’s farm Uitkyk – original name Onjombojarapati (meant ‘giraffe fell in a hole’)
Sarel’s farm Hartbeesteich – he left his father (or got kicked off the farm?) when he couldn’t stand the abuse any longer. Was sent away with nothing, but rounded up 600 cattle and drove them off to a widow’s farm near the village of Hochveld, 70 miles ENE of Okahandja, where he farmed for her and with her. When she died he bought the farm. Hartbeesteich. ‘teich’ = German for pan.
Japie’s farm was a dry farm; he drilled eighteen holes but never struck water. Dad can’t remember ithe name of the farm.
Mom was on furlough from the home – Azalea Gardens. Sheila fetched her and Barbara, Linda, Tholo and the two terrors Mary-Kate and Dawie and I joined them at 16 Ivy Road in Lincoln Meade, Pietermaritzburg.
What a lovely day – a great lunch, fun with the kids and ending with a surprise: ancient movies from our youth taken in the sixties with Dad’s 8mm movie camera. Sheila had arranged and paid for hours of old footage to be put on a memory stick! Dad says he had a small Canon movie camera first; I only remember his Eumig camera.
As we were leaving Tholo spotted a birds nest right above the car door with two little chicks begging, and showed Mary-Kate.
Linda lifted Mary-Kate up high and she took the world’s best picture for a five-year-old!
After everyone left I waited till I could spot the mother: a Cape White Eye.
——-ooo000ooo——-
See the top pic: When the old man moved out of earshot – which means six inches away – Linda murmured to me sotto voce, ‘Here’s the man always telling others to get dressed early mornings: still in his jarmies at noon.’
So the old man buys 24 pfeil carving chisels from a fellow woodworker for R500. He already has carving chisels, but this is a bargain he can’t resist. He’s fully aware of the value of pfeils – “the best in the business”. His mate probably wasn’t!?
He makes an innovative carrying case for them, adding value:
– chisels and open & shut carry case – ole man in the background –
They gather dust. Years later, he sees an ad in one of his woodwork magazines:
R7000 for 12 !!
Whoa! So now they’re on the market. R7500 for 24, and the case is free! It’s a bargain, Koos!
I advertise them on gumtree and get an offer: R6300. R6300? No Way! R8000 like I said and not a penny less! Sigh. You paid R500 and you said R7500 Dad. Yes, but they’re worth R14 000! Don’t you agree?! There was one other query by a keen woodworker, but he didn’t follow up with an offer. So that sales effort died out.
Now it’s five months later, and he’s a seller again. I have offered them – 24 plus the case and a woodcarving book – to the same two enthusiasts who replied last time, contacting them directly. Now at R4500 negotiable. Let’s see what happens first, death or taxes.
~~oo0oo~~
My email: Subject: “Woodwork carving tools” – 24 pfeil chisels
Hi Charles – If you’re still looking, the old man has come down drastically on his initial asking price! He’s now hoping someone will give him R4500 – and he’s even negotiable on that! If you – or anyone in your guild – are interested, contact me. – Cheers
PS: He turned 96 last month, so he’s thinking “I better be flexible if I’m ever going to sell!” PLUS: He has another set of carving chisels anyway!
PPS: He now has also thrown in a book on carving! (I haven’t seen the book). The ad below is for 12 new ones; my picture is his 24 in the case he made for them.
~~oo0oo~~
Done deal: I have R4500 in my bank account and the chisels have been whisked off to Somerset West by a courier company! I now await the regrets and the what-ifs. (Charles’ response was: Hi Peter – I will not argue that price. Please send bank details and pick up address and I will arrange for our courier to collect next week. – Thanks very much for contacting me).
Went to the farm for boxing day as ninety-year-old Mom had suffered three or four TIA’s starting early xmas morning. Very distressing. Couldn’t remember if she’d had xmas or not and could not at all remember opening pressies with the great grandkids.
She recovered well and was fine later, but weak – and often worried about what she was thinking or saying. “Ooh”, she said, “I almost asked you ‘How’s Trish?’, but she died, didn’t she?” Dammitall, sad.
Meantime, of the ten people staying there, seven fell prey to the collywobbles and some vomiting. Talk about Jingle Bowels.
.
Also, one poor rooster got shot for xmas due to excessive enthusiasm. Poor bugger was probably just singing a desperate poultry carol, praying that he wouldn’t be the one invited to the festive table!
——-ooo000ooo——-
Taylor chirped rudely: The poor cock must have been full of lead so watch out for heavy metal poisoning. Maybe that’s what is jingling in your bowels?
I don’t do DIY. I was going to say except for our wedding, but on reflection, I also did that the way I do everything: Stand back and watch as others do it all, encouraging and applauding while trying to save money.
So Andre Hawarden did the invites:
What I did do was buy the booze and fill Mike Lello’s Isuzu Trooper and trailer with it and drive it out to Barry and Lyn’s farm Game Valley Estates at the foot of the well-known Hella Hella kop on the Friday. Lots of rain, muddy roads, the four wheel drive was needed. It had been a wet summer following the huge September 1987 flood.
Like most bachelors when they do fall, I headed off cheerfully to meet my fate, all my own advice forgotten, marching singing to the gallows!
I always sing ‘The robots change when I go thru, the clouds dissolve and the skies turn blue, and EVERYBODY loves me baby – – – what’s the matter with you!?‘
And the clouds did dissolve . . It got Sunny. Then Hot. Then Scorching, Humid and Sultry. It felt like all the rain of the big flood was trying to get back up into the clouds as steam.
And when I say ‘BUSH’ – Lyn and Barry’s beautiful game farm Game Valley Estates is truly in the bush that they have preserved, but their home has all the amenities one needs and they laid on even more for the occasion. So don’t think we roughed it; we had everything we needed as, with Aitch, they arranged everything – flowers, cake, tent, table n chairs, accommodation, food, spitbraai, animals to braai – the works!
Barry’s big old 4X4 Ford F150 gave people a tug up slippery Hella Hella Pass so they could get to their lodgings at the nearby Qunu Falls Lodge. The Brauers, the du Plessis, the Reeds, the Schoemans, the Stoutes, the Stewarts. The Hills live nearby. Family stayed in the concrete A-frame lodge on the farm.
The sauna was pitched on the lawn under the Hella Hella mountain.
The Porters were linked up to ESKOM but just because ESKOM has arrived does not mean that when you throw a switch with a flourish that anything will happen. And so it was on our wedding day that ESKOM wasfeeling a bit off that day and we were without krag, power, lights and fridges.
Enter David Hurle Hill !! He roared off to his farm Melrose a hundred km away in his bakkie and fetched a huge diesel generator on a trailer. David is a Drrrillerr and will drill you a borehole. In fact his company motto is ‘On The Hole Our Work Is Boring.’ He linked up and threw a switch with a flourish. And nothing happened.
She was not wekking, as David Hurle Hill would say.
Enter Enea Spaggiari !! All the way from Italy via Kenya and Petit outside Benoni. He climbed up onto and over and under the trailer and fiddled with wires and threw a switch with a flourish and Let There Be Light! Music! and Cold Beers! That’s Italian vernuf for ya! Or competenza, as they would say.
Iona coaches her daughter: Make all the big decisions, but make him think he made them . . . Aitch: Ha Ha I already do that . . .
– plotting –
Then the usual stuff, the ominous music from Jaws: Tun Tun Ta Da!;Tun Tun Ta Da! What? Oh, the wedding march. The father of the bride looks like he’s having having second thoughts; Guys are thinking hm hm hm who’d a thunk this day would arrive?; Ladies are smiling – they seem to enjoy weddings; Aitch saying – ‘Honour? OK; – Obey? Are you mad!?’ and so on. The usual kak.
Then the cake, made by Lyn’s talented friend with two beautiful frogs – probly a strongylopus and an arthtroleptis. In the heat they keeled over. We should have got a pic, but something like this, just green frogs in white dress and black tuxedo – and not from alcohol – from heat fatigue:
– frog cake –
Then The Lies! You just can’t trust some people. Ten years prior to this I had done a very good job being his best man and if he had paid attention he’d have learned something. Like, to stick to the flattering truth and not tell scurrilous alternative truths that nobody wants to hear. At least nobody called the object of your attentions wants to hear them . . .
That speech was followed by The Truth!plain and unvarnished. By me:
At last, we could change into shorts and relax and party. Some in the background (We saw you Jeff!) had cleverly not changed out of their shorts throughout.
Later came The Getaway:
Which took a while, handicapped as we were. We wore getaway kit appropriate for our intrepid honeymoon. We were headed for Deepest Darkest America.
~~~oo0oo~~~
On the Monday friend Allie Peter flew over Hella Hella in a helicopter and took pics of Rapid No.5&6 looking downstream and then back upstream:
– pinnacle rock is hiding –
~~~oo0oo~~~
Twenty Five Years Later – 28 Feb 2013 – I wrote to friends:
Crazy, innit! 25yrs ago today Aitch and I got hitched down in the Hella Hella valley in a fun DIY game farm wedding. She made it to 23yrs of married bliss (OK, she might have had something to say at this point . . ) and one month short of 26yrs together. We celebrated that 25yrs-together milestone in August 2010.
Thinking of all you good peeps that made our wedding so memorable – that’s the bachelor days before, the day itself, and the 25yrs since!
Cheers!
Lotsa love – Pete – and now Jessica & Tommy!
BTW, Lyn and Barry Porter of Hella Hella also died in 2011: Lyn in January – also breast cancer; Barry in April – hospital infection; And then Aitch in July.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Dave Hill: I remember it well – I ‘nipped’ home to fetch my generator when the power went off.
Pete Stoute:Remember the week-end like yesterday! Struggling up the other side of Hella Hella to the Qunu Falls hotel in the mud and rain – Dave Hill saving the day with a BIG generator.Will have an extra glass of vino this evening – great mates and good times.
Sheila Swanepoel:Those pics are great. What a wonderful record of a very special day. I remember the incredible heat and how you, Pierre and Pete sneaked off and changed into shorts straight after the ceremony. And how the phone kept ringing in the middle of the ceremony in the house. Linda was flower girl, Robbie was so proud of his brand new red “tight”
. . and Jeff kept putting off going to change, saying that he was charge of the antelope on the spit – he dithered for so long that there was no time to change and that pleased him no end. Bess & I sneaked down to the pool for a kaalgat swim and found Iona had beaten us to it!
Steve Reed: Will always remember the weekend; a great occasion. I think it was thanks to Mike and Yvonne in the 4×4 that we traveled safely back through the mud to our lodgings. Fond memories – raising a glass tonight to all of you!
I remember Brauer chasing a tight deadline speech writing – wise.
Pete Brauer:Damn. Been holding my breath during this stroll thru memory lane hoping that no-one noticed at the time or that no-one would still remember that poor last-minute effort.
Terry Brauer: Steve nothing has changed! PB has his own website called lastminute.com
Steve Reed:Speech was excellent. Not many can compose a wedding speech while putting on a tie with the other hand. Besides, Swannie probably tasked Brauer with the job as he was getting dressed himself.
Terry Brauer:Yip Brauer remains an orator of note and Swanepoel continues to notify me he is coming to stay usually on the day when he lands in Pretoria – 😀 Those old dogs ain’t gonna learn new tricks but love them both! T
Pete Swanie:I had prepared well in advance.
Brauer procrastinated and ignored my two rules: Keep it short; and NO LIES.
Pete Brauer:If I stuck to the latter rule the first would have fallen into place quite easily.
Tanza Crouch: Thinking of you, Aitch, Tommy and Jessy at this time. My spider days at Hella Hella are very special to me and Aitch, Barry and Lyn were very special people.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The old paper album has been scrapped, but here it is in pixels:
He was with the Eighth Army who landed in Italy in 1943 and worked their way up the East coast, the Adriatic Coast. The more famous battle was up the West Coast, the Mediterranean coast, so the advance up the East coast was called “The Forgotten War”.
Here he is, 94 in the shade, telling soldier adventure tales. They had roared off in a Jeep looking for the Yanks. Then he goes on to talk about breeding pigeons. Like Darwin!
After pigeons he started moaning about his tenants, so I cut him off!
The 8th Army continued fighting along the Adriatic coast; sadly this created the need for cemeteries at Ancona 1029 burials, Castiglione South African, 502 burials; Montecchio 582 burials; Gradara 1191 burials; Coriano Ridge 939 burials; Rimini Gurkha 618 burials; Cesena 775 burials; Medola 145 burials; Forli 1234 burials plus a cremation memorial for nearly 800 Indian servicemen; Ravenna 955 burials; Villanova 955 burials; Villanova Canadian cemetery 212 burials; Faenza 1152 burials; Santerno Valley 287 burials; Bologna 184 burials; Argente Gap 625 burials; Padua 513 burials.
Fighting along the Adriatic section of Italy was quite intensive and continuous from Bari in the south to Milan in the north. The CWGC estimate that the Commonwealth lost nearly 50,000 dead in Italy during World War II most of whom lie buried in 37 war cemeteries, and over 4000 soldiers whose graves are not known but remembered by name on the Cassino memorials. Almost 1500 Indian servicemen, whose remains were cremated, are remembered on three memorials in various cemeteries.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the 8th Army had a difficult time fighting the Germans over very difficult terrain along the Eastern Adriatic coast of Italy.
The Mediterranean side of Italy was extensively reported on. Maybe it was because the American 5th Army proved to be more attractive to the news editors – or they had better PR?! More journalists? They certainly had more money.
=========ooo000ooo=========
The Canadians also fought on the Adriatic coast and have documented it here.
I’m coming down to Durban to buy a parrot. Where’s Overport? asks the ole man. Parrots can live for eighty years, so what better to get as a pet when you’re ninety five in the shade yourself?
Then the ole lady phones, all worried – as ever. Can you tell us how to get to West Road in Overport, Koosie? I say I’ll try, I’ll look it up, I’ll phone you back. I need to hatch a plot. I phone back and say, Come to my place for lunch, I’ll leave work early and I’ll take you, it’s not easy to find. She sounds dubious but she’ll try that.
She phones back, amazed. He saw sense. We’re coming for lunch, she says, relieved. A rare visit to the son’s home! She can’t see, he can’t hear, so she was dreading looking for a small parrot in a strange haystack, driving by feel and touch, with a driver very disinclined to listen to anything she has to say, and quick to blame.
When I get home they’re on my stoep and Jess has given them tea and Tommy is busy cooking lunch for everybody – pasta carbonara. My children! Bless them! I had told them, I’d love it if you’d give them a polite hello, but you needn’t stay, just make your excuses and go. They decided to completely exceed all expectations and charm the old bullets, the granma that loves them and the old goat who denies them. Proud of ’em!
Off we go to meet Sumie who has three baby African Grey Parrots in a box. His grandfather breeds them in Utrecht. The old man had asked Sumie to choose his own from the three. He checks them out on the tailgate of my bakkie in West Road Overport, picks one and now I think, Here comes the bargaining.
R2500, says Sumie. No way, says the ole man and shuffles off to the front seat of my bakkie. He comes back slowly on the uneven pavement with the bird magazine in his hand, stabbing his finger at Sumie’s ad: R2300; He gives a pained moaning, Now I have wasted my time coming all the way from Pietermaritzburg. Sumie says to me, ‘I thought I wrote R2500!‘ To the customer he says, Fine, Uncle Pieter, R2300.
And the food for free, says the ole man. That cost me R100, Uncle Pieter, I’ve just fed them, so give me R80, says Sumie. It’s my birthday on Friday (true), counters the ole man, You should give it to me as a gift. How old you’ll be? asks Sumie. Ninety Five says the ole man. So they settle on R50.
Now they debate whose box is better. Sumie has a shoebox – it’s wider. Ole man has a box some electronics came in – it’s deeper. Ole man realises if he takes Sumie’s box he gets both, so he settles on Sumie’s shoebox.
We go back home to eat chef Tom’s delicious pasta lunch, followed by ice cream and coffee, and off they go back to Maritzburg. The ole man changes into second too soon up the steep hill, has to stop and start over. He would have hated it that I heard that.
~~oo0oo~~
And I didn’t take a single photo! The parrot pic is off the internet. Damn! Well, here they are with great-grandkids:
And I just thought: When last did I post a recent pic of my favourite children? Here they are willingly posing for me:
The ole man is thinking burial sites. He has found out it costs around R11 000 to be cremated and he thinks that’s an awful waste of money. Someone also told him you can bury yourself anywhere. Especially in your own backyard, “There’s nothing to stop you”. As a mad-keen DIY guy, he thinks that’s a helluva good idea.
I said “Maybe, but the hard bit will be reaching up and shovelling the soil on top of yourself”.
“YOU can do that” he says.
I said “I don’t think I’d be allowed to. Maybe your friends meant literally YOU can bury yourself in your backyard, but maybe it would be illegal for ME to do it?”
“Oh” – That’s got his active 94yr-old brain thinking. He’s plotting something, you can be sure.
