My youth was joyful. We were really the last colonialists. I was actually born in an English Colony, The Union of South Africa. I remember when we became an independent country in 1961 – I was in grade 2 of primary school 1966 when we got an oversized coin commemorating 5 years of independence from Great Britain. It literally made no difference in my life.
We lived in kinda a big house on Lynden Road, well it seemed big to me. There were servants quarters, near the kitchen, 4 almost- bedrooms, well really 3. Although Derrick and I shared the glassed-in porch, in truth, he was mostly gone, but when he came home, he shared the room with me.
Derrick was gone a lot, he was 12 years older than me, and when I was born, he was shipped off to boarding school in Port Elizabeth – Kingswood College I think. As a little kid I sure looked up to him and my sisters – worshiped them really. Derrick was close friends with Howard, and Carol was dating Malcolm for most of my recollection. Sue started dating Rex soon after Carol and Malcolm started dating. The both ended up marrying them. It’s crazy to write this now given that Sue and Rex are long divorced and both Carol and Malcolm died a few years ago (2016) and then Sue passed away suddenly in 2019. Her sudden unexpected death was truly shocking. I now that Sue passed away, it’s just me and Derrick left, and Derrick has recently chosen not to talk to me, which is so bizarre. Life is short. He was always a selfish bully when it came to me.
I was kind of a wild kid I suppose. Well not really wild, but more like curious and fully self-expressed. I have a couple of key memories: for instance I remember climbing, a ladder at age 6 or 7, and then continuing to climb to the high peak of the roof. I felt like the king of the world sitting there astride the peak. I felt pretty accomplished till I realized how high up I was, and then I was suddenly both terrified and stuck. The evening ritual at the time was that my mom would ring a “dinner bell” to get me in from around the neighborhood. I heard the bell. I yelled down
“I can’t come!”
Mom: (sing song) “why not?”
Me: “I just can’t”
Mom: “Where are you?” (still sing-song)
Me: “Up here!”
Mom: “Where?”
Me: “Up here!”
Mom comes out and looks up!
Mom: (panicked and screaming) “Stay put don’t move”
Luckily the painter was still there and he crawled up to the peak of the roof, had me climb on his back, and he climbed down.
Naturally I got thrashed for that. More on my routine thrashings later.
There are memories I have of setting the grass on fire once. I think I was 6 and we had this great vine of granadilla (passion fruit) between our house and the neighbors- Mr. and Mrs. White, and my friends and I used to spend hours climbing around he vine picking granadilla’s and eating the sweet crunchy nectar.
Well one winters day (Johannesburg had dry winters) my cousin Terry and I were playing in the back yard and we tied a rubber duck to the pole of the clothes line. It was a metal pole so I didn’t think much about setting the mound of dry grass and the duck on fire.
What I did not anticipate was that the dry grass would catch fire. That led to the trash cans behind the garage catching fire. That led to the dry granadilla vines that were above the trash cans on the fence catching fire. It all happened so fast that before I knew it, the flames were reaching to the sky.
I did the only thing I could think of. I ran away.
Well, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street at that age, so I “ran away” to the end of the block. I tried to persuade a well dressed African man to hold my hand to help me across the street (I had to hold the hand of an adult to cross the street), but he wasn’t having any of it. I was negotiating with him when my dad called – or whistled – for me to come home. Reluctantly I walked home, my head hung low. I knew I was going to get whipped.
My dad thrashed my behind till I was crying hard. He used to hit me mostly with his belt when he punished me. He was brutal. He sent me to bed .. it was lunchtime.
Corporal punishment was commonplace. My friends dad’s used canes, sjamboks (rhino hyde whips), paddles, and branches to whip them. Anthony’s dad used a sjambok, and Grey’s dad made him go and cut a branch from the willow tree in their yard. I was the lucky one. Throughout my life, I got hit by adults. By my parents, by my siblings, by my teachers, by the maid, and by the school Principle. I don’t think a week went by till I was finished high school where I did not get caned. Not one week. I got beat with a strap my first day of primary school, and with a cane during my senior year of high school. I had beatings at home until I was about 14. When I was 16, and my dad slapped me hard across the face, I stood toe to toe to him, coldly told him menacingly that “that will be the last time you ever hit me”. It was.
Grey lived next door, Anthony across the street more or less. We were famous friends. We built model airplanes together in the Wendy House, we had sand clog fights over the back fence pretending we were on ships of old. In Joberg, the dirt made these big clumps that we called a “sand clog” that, when thrown with enough force, exploded on contact. We used to use the metal trash can lids as shields and the clogs would explode when they hit them. Great fun.
One of my purist pleasures was to climb the Pussy Willow tree in the front yard while it bloomed, and play with those soft flowers. Being up there with the birds and the bees was heaven.
In the fall, we used to make kites and go up to the primary school soccer field and see how high we could get our kites. My record was 6 balls of string. The kite was literally tiny in the azure blue sky. Bringing it down and keeping the string from knotting was always a challenge, but we had a blast.
My brother came home from boarding school and was home for a year when I was about 6. He used to tease me. I had big ears. It seemed that my ears where the only part of my body that was growing! So he would say “Stand on the desk, and flap your ears and see if you can fly to the bed (across the room)”. And of course, because I worshiped my big brother, I tried. He and his friends had a good chuckle.
Living in that house was like living in a castle for me. I was tiny and the house seemed so big. It was the 60’s so there was sparse phone service. In fact, we had a party line, which meant that the phone had a distinct ring if it was for you, and other rings for other people. You could listen in on a neighbors conversation if you wanted. 5 homes were sharing a phone with us at first.
One day when I was about 6 years old, my dad said “let’s go” and we jumped in his car. I had no idea where I was going. We were going to a farm nearby to select a dog.
We needed a dog. We used to have Happy, a big white mutt with brown ears that showed up and stayed. Cheri was a French Pug, and my sister Sue had Cleo, a little black Miniature Poodle. Cleo and Happy died so my dad took me to get my dog.
I knelt at the edge of the wire pen and this little brown and black striped puppy with a short tail came scampering over. I immediately named her Sandy. I loved Sandy. Sandy was wild.
We sent her to Dog Training Camp, and after that, every week I’d take her to dog training class. Being South Africa, dog training class was training your dog to attack (black) people. We would set the dog off after a man running with an arm guard (a big hessian cover) and the dog would sprint 30 or 40 yards after the running man and launch himself at him taking him down. Those brave men used to only get bit on the arm guard. Amazing.
There I was, just a little kid, training my dog to attack black men. Thinking back on it now, it’s so weird. But gradually I got control of Sandy. More or less.
Sandy and I were inseparable. I loved that dog so much. She was my companion. My friend. My playmate. She slept on my bed and to this day I like the feeling of my dog laying on my feet.
I say “almost”, because Sandy would do stupid things. We used to have the whole family, and extended family, over for big Sunday lunches. Every Sunday. Roast beef or roast leg of lamb, roast potatoes, salad and always ice cream. Granny Annie, my moms grandmother would come over. She used to make these great perrogen – little Russian mince meat pies – that went great in soup. Well Grannie Annie was old and she walked slowly with a cane and Sandy insisted on jumping up to greet her and inevitably would knock her over. Occasionally she would get hurt. And both me and the dog would get whipped.
Another time I got into trouble was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I came home from school and really needed to go number 2. I ran in and ran up stairs to the toilet at the top of the stairs.
I was sitting on the potty looking at the 4″ square white tiles and noticed that the grout was poking out…now I didn’t know what grout was, and there was no malice in my actions. Picking at the grout, a tile fell to the ground. I picked it it up and tried to put it back in place (I was completely ignorant of the process or method of securing a tile to a wall – I was 6). Two tiles came away and fell to the floor.
I finished my business, and flushed the toilet.
I picked up the two tiles and tried again to replace them…but this time 4 tiles fell away leaving a big grey hole in the middle of the wall. I was petrified. I knew I was going to get whipped.
I thought about it a minute and said to myself that “if the whole wall was the same color, nobody would notice”…..(6 year old logic)
I proceeded to remove every single tile…floor to ceiling…from the entire room. It took a while. Then I went and hid under my bed.
Needless to say, I got thrashed by my dad with his belt. Did I say he was brutal? He was.
One time I avoided getting thrashed because my mom and my sister came to my rescue. My dad thrashing me with his belt was something I hated, and he was so brutal that even my mom and sisters would cover for me. I tried to avoid it at all cost. The truth is he didn’t beat me often, but when he did, it was harsh. I was bruised for weeks.
The situation in question was that dad forbid fireworks. In South Africa, being that it was an English Colony, we celebrated Guy Faux Night. This was the main fireworks night that we had. There were always sparklers (which I was allowed to have) and at the end of the night, the organizers would burn a big straw man filled with fireworks on a bonfire. (Maybe the origin of Burning Man? – just a thought).
Well my dad was opposed to fireworks. He would say “its just like burning money”. He had strong objections. Well in spite of that, I always managed to talk my mom into buying me a package of “Tom Thumb” fire crackers. Small crackers that I could play with.
She would get them for me as long as I would light them at the bottom of the garden. Well one day I took the liberty of lighting one in the living room.
I didn’t notice it but a spark landed in the middle of my dad’s favorite chair. What happened was that it burned a hole in the middle of the cushion about 3 inches around. This was an unmitigated disaster. The reason is that every night, and I mean every single night, my dad would come home from work, go to the living room after dinner, go to his favorite chair, FLIP HIS CUSHION OVER, then sit and read the newspaper.
He did this every single day without fail.
I was in fear. He was going to thrash me for so many reasons (wasting money, lighting fire crackers in the house, and lying) and it was going to hurt bad.
My sister and my mom came to my rescue…for a very long time…..what they did every day for years…was tell my dad that they just flipped over the cushion for him….and he bought it every single day. I kid you not.
When we were packing for the move to America 12 years later, he saw the burn and asked about it and my mom said “Oh, than happened years ago ” and he just shrugged…I feigned ignorance.
I was sporty but small. I played soccer every day. I’m our back yard we would set up goals and play 3-and-in for hours. If my friends could not come over to play, I’d kick the ball 20 yards aiming at the clothes line, and I’d hit it quite often. If we weren’t playing 3 and in, we played one bounce, an elimination game allowing only one bounce between touches. We got pretty good with our feet. Often, after Sunday lunch, all the boys (I was almost always the youngest) would go play One Bounce in the back yard. I was given a yellow, full size, soccer ball for my birthday present one year, and we literally played the cover off of it. Soon enough it was no longer bright yellow, it was a mix between brown and gray.
Derrick was a big cricket fan and when he was home, we would put up a milk crate for wickets and he would bowl to me … when I got my very own new cricket bat it was like a magical day.
The bat was a white willow with a red taped handle, the spring went half way down the bat. I got a brand new kookaburra ball too. That deep red shiny ball with the single yellow stitched seam, and I used that ball to break in the bat by putting it in a sock and hitting the bat a thousand times
In the summer I spent most of my time with my cousins John and Mandy. John and I would play cricket in the back yard, and John and Mandy and I would play tennis or swim in their pool when at their house. Sometimes John and I would go to the Wanderers Club to watch Test Cricket. I recently watch professional cricket on the telly and wow, what a slow game it is. It does seem that the batters are better than they were because they seemed to just score a mad amount of runs, hitting the boundary at will.
I used to love spending time at John and Mandy’s because they lived near the Zoo and the War Museum. We literally spent all day there so often. I really became interested in war machines after studying the equipment there hour after hour for years.
John had a kids chess set and I became interested and taught myself how to play. I was about six years old at the time. I played with Eddie my very smart close friend who was my closest friend all through high school too. Eddie also did gymnastics with me and we also made our high school projects together.
I really grew up in the shadow of the war. Uncle Anthony, John and Mandy and Adrienne’s dad, was a Spitfire pilot who fought in The Battle of Britain. He always seemed larger than life to me. More about him in a bit. My dad and his brother, my uncle Neville, were in the South African Army infantry serving in East Africa during the war. I understand that my dad was somehow involved in guarding German and Italian prisoners of war in Kenya. It was here in East Africa that my dad developed his deep love of the African Bush, and through him, how I developed that same love. My dad was so proud of his time in the service that he married my mom in his army uniform.
We didn’t have TV growing up, there was no TV is South Africa until about 1976, so we either sat in the living room reading in front of a coal fire, or we listened to radio dramas, and we sometimes used to have movie evenings. Often it was my dad showing his 8 mm home movies, but as I got older, it was rented 16 mm movies, and invariably we saw black and white war movies. Films like The Battle of Britain, The Longest Day, and other black and white films glorifying WWII. I became good at running the projector during those days. It made me feel important to be in charge of the projector, changing reals and fixing skips. Those skills carried over first at high school where I often ran the projector when we had things to watch like the test match between the All Blacks and the Springboks (rugby), and then in college when I was still running the protector on the day I graduated at the graduation ceremony.
I also had an HO train set and a “Scale Electrix” car racing kit. The Lotus was my favorite car.
I used to set up the train – which took hours – and play with it when I could get the electricity to work, which always seemed difficult, and I also used to spend hours building a great race track for the cars and play with them either by myself or with friends. It often took hours because the I was into car racing from early on. Kyalami Race Track was near our home and my dad used to take me to watch the races. I remember being in the Pit on practice day one year, when I almost got nailed by an F1 Ferrari as it came into the garage. I jumped out of the way of the wing….it probably was not that close but it scared the shit out of me. I think it might have been this car…. I have followed F-1 since those days as a result of being at the track as a young boy. I am still a fan.
During those days I had already started gymnastics. I remember my mom bringing me to the Wanderers Club when she found me doing handstands and cartwheels. I was a little pipsqueak in those days but a little wild and fearless. I tried all the tricks and learned all the skills I could on all the apparatus but tumbling was my first love. We used to do these huge displays for people (parents and family members I guess) – and I was always a contender in the hand stand competition.
The instructor was a guy named Neville Graham who was a national team gymnast and he was also the son in law of my parents good friend Iris and Laddie who had this amazing yard with a fish pond and big trees where hundreds of exotic birds were resident. (I recall falling in the fish pond fishing for tadpoles when i was 3 or 4.) They used to feed the birds every day around 4:00 and it was like Dr. Doolittle. I remember being there one day when a peacock came to feed. It was amazing to see so many birds – all quite wild, including a peacock – standing patiently waiting for Iris to spread the seed.
On Sundays, my dad and his mates used to work on cars. Laddie had a pit so that they could get under the car to do oil changes and so on. I used to like hanging around and listening to the men talk about the engines. It was this experience that had me take apart my first car as an adult and try to rebuild the engine.
I was 6 years old when I broke my arm the first time. I was on the high bar and I was doing giant circles with the coach – that day a guy named Phillip, spotting me. Well I lost my grip and went flying. I landed more or less on my head between two mats and unconscious fell over onto my left wrist folded awkwardly underneath me cracking my ulna styloid process.
The trip to the hospital is vague, but I remember the anesthesiologist telling me to count to 10 and I remember getting to 3!
I woke up in the dark not sure where I was when I felt the weight of the cast on my arm. I remember feeling like I was a “big shot” because I had a cast.
I was pretty hard on the cast and had softened it up so much that the doc extended my time and wrapped it again with fresh plaster. It was pretty heavy, and when the cast came off, my arm involuntarily floated up… it was weird. I stood there with my left arm extended out sideways. It stayed there for a few minutes. Totally weirded me out.
In those days, my diet was mostly supplemented by icing sugar. My mom used to bake a lot and I used to lick the dish but my favorite thing to do was to take a little silver egg cup and press it down into the icing sugar and just lick that. Needless to say my teeth suffered. I had so many cavities that needed filling. I spent many an hour at the dentist. t had one of those drills that had a long metal chain that drove it and it made a terrible noise. I hated it. The ritual was that if I was “good”, I got to go into the dried fruit store in the lobby after being at the dentist, and I always selected dried apricots. Still have a fondness for them.
My Life: A Memoir 