1976-’77

My uncle Eric, who had moved with his family to Seattle after being recruited by Children’s Orthopedic Hospital (now Seattle Children’s Hospital) became a US citizen and applied for Green Card status for us. The riots had been ongoing for a couple of months when we had a family meeting, and there was no end in sight. At that point, mom and dad had been to Seattle the year before and fell in love with the city, my sisters Susan and Carol were both married to Rex and Malcolm respectively, and because both had English passports, they were going to head to England. My brother Derrick lived in Capetown, and was thinking of leaving the country too. I had received, with Eric’s assistance, an invitation to do gymnastics at the University of Washington. So I was committed to leaving the country too. My mom wanted to go be with her brother who she was very close to, and my dad was not having a great go of it in Johannesburg after his business failed, thought “why not?”. We took a vote and unanimously agreed to make our way to the United States.

We had tea with my Aunt Helen Suzman, who was the only Progressive member of Parliament, and she told us that she was privy to the plans that the government had to commit genocide if things got out of hand. Those were dark days. She said “I can’t leave, but if you can, you should.” With her blessing, we set about making application.

You have to get that in addition to being in a revolution, we were on a larger scale, in the middle of the Cold War at the time. There was fear of the domino effect of communism taking over Africa. There were communist insurgent movements in Mozambique and Angola, both former Portuguese colonies, Mugabe was turning Rhodesia into a fascist state and was confiscating farms of white farmers. One of my high school buddies, Mike Cowan, was a Rhodesian ex pat. The ANC was partly managed by and aligned with the Communist party and that was all wrapped up in the fear that the government played on. The South Africans fighting Cubans in Angola was really a proxy war between the CIA and the KGB. So all of this was the backdrop of my final year of high school.

The matric exams were brutal. There was a lot of stress. You went into the hall, where desks and chairs were assigned. You were allowed to have a pen and a pencil and a ruler, and a slide rule for math. Thats it. All the work you did to work out problems before you answered were to be in blank workbooks that they handed out. Then you turned everything in. I wrote pages and pages and pages. Once the exams were over, we were done. No more school.

Before the matric exams at one of our final assemblies, several kids rigged the speaker system to play Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” loud and the entire song played. We were pretty care free.

I remember only one thing about the graduation ceremony. The speaker gave us the best advice. He read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” and he implored us to follow that advice….I have had that poem in mind since then.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

After the exams, I took off and went to Europe to see my friends. I had a Euro-rail pass, a few hundred dollars in my pocket, a couple of places to stay in England and in Austria, so I took off from the South African summer to the bitter cold of the Western European winter. It was shocking….

I arrived in London and stayed in a youth hostel. I saw my cousins Alan and Revely and our friends Colin and his wife Linda who put me up.

I explored London and fell in love with the city. I saw Arsenal play Newcastle at Highbury, and was so happy. I pretty much spent all my money so I buggered off to Europe. In Europe I went first to Paris where I got horribly lost then onto Geneva, then Grunewald and then Zurich. I stayed at a youth hostel in Grunewald that was closed, but since I knocked on the door and had nowhere else to stay, he let me stay there. I wore everything I had and kept the light on and used all the blankets there were …it was still freezing…In Zurich I met Suzi Schmid the cousin of a high school classmate, and I purchased some snow boots. I went off to Austria to meet Barbara and Suzi and Gunther. It was so great to see them. Barbara and Suzie were beautiful and wonderful people and Gunther was an amazing skier. They took me sledding and skiing and I failed at both, but we had a blast and we continued to stay in touch.

When I came back from Europe, I had matriculated and I started at the University of the Witwatersrand or “Wits” (pronounced “Vits”). I was only able to get into the College of Education because of my grades. I mostly hung out with my friends Errol and Eddie and Ruth. We were thick as thieves. We did everything together. Errol and Ruth had an on again off again love affair but we were all good together. We even took a trip to a mountain resrort in the Drakensberg together.

Errol went to the Yeshiva College and played on their soccer team. I was playing for the Arts and Sciences College team at Wits. We were a good side, and several of our guys played for the University side that was promoted into the National First Division of professional soccer a year or two later. Anyway, Errol’s team made it into a cup final and he asked me to come play for them that game because they were short handed. It turns out to be one of my all time favorite games. There was a big crowd, about 5 deep all the way round the field. We were playing in yellow/orange jerseys and the other team was in blue. A late game situation occurred when Errol, who was a good dribbler, took the ball down the right wing. I trailed him as he got into the other half. He was confronted by two defenders and I called for the ball. He back heeled the ball to me and I looked up to see David, a tall blond kid in the penalty area in good space. I hit a curling cross with pin point accuracy and he rose above the defenders to thump a perfectly timed and placed header into the near top corner. The crowd erupted. David and I were mobbed by the players and the fans. It took a minute to clear the field and the game restarted. After two minutes the ref blew the final whistle and we were Champions!

At university I took classes in Economics, Biology, and Human Anthropology mostly for shits and giggles because our Green Cards had come through and we had committed to leaving in September so I could arrive in the USA in time for the start of the school year at the University of Washington.

So while I was at University, I mainly worked with a magazine called “CRISIS!”. The premise was that there were atrocities occurring in South Africa all over, but they were not being reported widely. For instance, there might be a column inch in a local paper that said “Black woman killed by white farmer” and a short paragraph about it. That story would never get widely reported, and it was happening all over the country. The editors pulled all of those kinds of reports together into one 8 page magazine that we distributed around the city. I was involved in distribution. The paper was banned and the editors and publishers were disappeared.

When I went to get fingerprinted by the police for our Visa application, the cop said to me “We know who you are. Get a one way ticket”.

I went to class to hang out with my friends and to get a taste of university life, but it really was a break from reality. Mostly I just goofed off, went to parties, played golf, and fooled around with the girls I was dating, and I also worked on distributing the CRISIS magazine and I got involved with the RAG committee. Rag was a parade that the University Students ran through the streets of Johannesburg to raise money for charity. All the students would get dressed up in crazy costumes and they would parade around on these elaborate floats throwing candy at the kids and collecting small change from the observers. It was fun, and a really good cause.

With months to go before we left, my dad and I worked out a month long vacation in the bush at my Uncle Ernie’s place near the game reserve. My dad and I went with Ernie and Harold, riding range rovers to the farm once we got to the gate.

Gong to the bush meant there were going to be guns.

Guns were ever present in the culture. My friends all had pellet guns and by the time I was 16 many had more powerful rifles. Most of us hunted. I had not had the experience of hunting until I went to the bush with my cousin Harold and my Uncle Ernie and my dad. Ernie was an amazing man. He had suffered polio as a kid and had one gimpy leg. But he never let that interfere in his life. We went boating with him at the Vaal River and he took me and Harold to Mozambique one year to go fishing in Baseruto. We had to dig for a little crustacean called Gafoof to use for bait. One time Harold and I were walking through the forest by the beach and we came across an old man who looked sad and hungry. He rubbed his belly and asked in Portuguese for food. All we had between us of any value at the moment was a coin worth about 25 cents. I offered it to him and he indicated that he could not eat it by biting on it. Shaking his head, he walked off. It was really sad.

Anyway, Ernie had this land he called his “farm” up on the border of the Kruger Park. He had built a house on the top of a hill literally within site of the fence to the park. The fence itself was a 3 strand barbed wire fence about 6′ high. We had to take Landrovers over pretty rough roads to get into the area he called his “farm” where his house stood. What was amazing about his place was that he had built a self filling watering hole, a pond really, down below the house so you could sit on the deck and watch the animals come and drink during the dry season.

The most incredible experience Harold and I had, was a moment that I will never forget.

Harold and I went down in the Landrover to the dry river bed nearby. Ernie had a team of men digging river sand out of the river bed to bring up to the house in order to fill in around the pool he had recently installed.

Harold and I were armed to the teeth. We had buck shot, snake shot and an elephant gun, a 458 rifle.

We parked the vehicle and walked the 30 or so feet to the rivers edge to greet the workers and ask if they needed anything. They were about 10 feet below us digging sand and loading it into a truck and so could not see behind us. We chatted with them a few minutes and then turned to walk back to the Landrover.

We froze.

Under a tree, no more than 30 feet away was a pride of about 12 or so Lion just sitting and laying around under the tree. it looked about like this…

My heart started pounding and I stopped breathing. The lion looked calm and non-threatening, but I said to Harold “don’t make eye contact, walk slowly and confidently to the Landrover…shaking in our boots, we made our way to the car. As we walked away I called down to the men in the river bed “Lion!” (they scrambled for the truck). Harold and I laughed as we drove back….What was incredible about that walk back to the Landrover was that the lion had passed between us and the car. We could tell because their spoor were present…they had literally passed 15 feet away from us and we never had any idea.

Another scary moment at the farm was when we spotted a Black Mamba in the tree by the house….Scary because the Black Mamba is nominated as the most venomous snake on earth.

Ernie shot it with snake shot and the laborers cooked it up and ate it. I never got to taste it though.

Anyway, one day (we were there about a month) Ernie said “Lets go get an Impala!”.

We loaded into the Landrover and the servants came along behind in a flatbed. We drove for a while till we spotted a herd not too far away. We parked and using the hood of the car as a rest, Ernie shot a buck with a single well aimed shot. The workers raced out into the field, cut its throat to kill it for sure and dragged it back. We loaded it into the flatbed behind and headed back to the house.

There we butchered the animal and hung it to age for a week.

We then made the best venison Stew and ate like kings the rest of the time we were there.

I had a moment of authenticity with my dad one evening. We were drinking heavily for me really, (I had only been drunk once before when our high school prefect class had gone to a pub with Mr. Collins on a weekend trip where I got shitfaced) and the national drink Cane, Lime and Lemonade (Cane Spirits are like Vodka, and by “lemonade” they mean “Sprite” which we called lemonade) was brutal. Ernie, who had massive arms since he walked around of forearm crutches, challenged me to an arm wrestling contest…it was an epic battle that I won in the end (I was pretty strong in those days). My dad was drinking and cheering us on along with Harold.

My dad was as drunk as I had seen him…and after the battle he said to me …. “are we doing the right thing?” meaning leaving the country for Seattle.

I had made up my mind I was leaving. I was facing 5-10 years in the military, which meant fighting to defend the White Supremacist government of the time. I had no intention of staying and defending the apartheid government. But for dad, I can see now, at his age, which is about how old I am now, that it would have been a big risk, and very scary.

I told him “yes, definitely!” but I could see that he was doubtful.

The next day, Harold and I were sitting on the deck watching a large Kudu Bull surveying the fence. The three strands of barbed wire topped out at about 6 or 7 feet. This Kudu wanted to get to the water hole (it was the dry season). He stood there for a few minutes looking and then suddenly he leaped from a standing start, cleared the fence and went to the water hole. It was amazing to see an animal that weighed over 1000 pounds clear the fence from a standing start.

After I came back from the Game Reserve, I almost immediately went to Cape Town to spend a month with my twin cousins, Cindy and Shelly, a couple of sexy twins a year older than me, and their big sister Lynne and my Aunt Iris.

It was magical. We stayed on Clifton Beach in a swanky apartment on the cliff and we had a blast. We took a weekend and went to Umhlanga Rocks where the people who’s home we were staying in had beach cabin and a dune buggy.

A month in the bush and then a month at the coast made me love South Africa in a way that I really never had before then. As a result, I left the country with some fresh regret.

We packed our possessions into a container. We gave a lot of our things away. We said our tearful goodbyes and we left on an adventure.

First stop, London, England!

Destination, Seattle, WA in the good ole USA!

Some Thoughts on Living in and Leaving South Africa

Living under apartheid in South Africa as a kid was a little confusing. As a youngster, we had servants Rebecca and Abbiott. Rose used to do the ironing. Rebecca often had her kids staying and I played with her kids till I went to school. I don’t remember their names and I never saw them again.

Everybody had a servant or two. There were lots of African men and woman in the white neighborhoods, and I learned later that in order for them to be there, they had to have their “passbook” – papers – in order.

I also saw police, white and black, arresting, almost exclusively, black men for no apparent reason (usually their papers were not in order).

Whites had red buses, blacks had green buses. Red buses often had a conductor collecting tickets and there was always a seat…the buses were mostly empty. Green buses were crowded. There were fewer of them, none were double decker, and there were fewer stops where they gathered which meant that people had to walk miles to get to and from work.

Amenities throughout the city were segregated. Drinking fountains, toilets, movie theaters, restaurants etc. I remember when I worked as a waiter at Mr. Steak and all the kitchen staff was black…every single person. Not one black person ever ate in that restaurant.

There was a palpable fear of black Africans among white people. I remember one time when my dad was lost on the way to the game reserve. I was in the back of the car about 11 years old. He stopped to ask a respectably dressed African man directions. The man made an effort in broken English to explain. My dad was having a hard time following. The man said “I can show you” and instead of letting him get in the car, my dad simply gunned it and took off. I asked him why he didn’t take him up on his offer…he said nothing.

I got to go to Soweto one time in my life. My uncle, Anthony, was making a movie for a black audience and there was an on-location set where they were filming that John and I were invited to. I got to help hold the microphone boom…which made me a Grip for the day.

The experience was interesting. The part of Soweto that we were in was made up of small seemingly well kept houses. Not middle class by my standards of the time, but certainly not the tin shanty town that Alexander Township was. You could drive by Alexander Township and see it from the highway, and it was really poor.

The Africans were tribal, and there were lots of languages…the most common, Xosa, Zulu. and Bantu – and in addition to speaking several languages, African’s often also spoke English and Afrikaans. We used to go to the mines to watch tribal dances from time to time. It was a nation of so many cultures. There were all those African tribes, and there were the Cape Coloreds, and the Malays, and the Indians, and the Afrikaners and of course, the English…and then there were also Chinese and Japanese immigrants too.

Nelson Mandela was a mythical leader to most white South Africans. he had been in prison for most of my awareness. But Robben Island where he was in prison became known as Mandela University. In fact, the prisoners, many of whom became South Africa’s leaders, used the formation of a football club, Makena FA to formulate the government in exile.

Ghandi was the source of inspiration to Mandela and also Steve Biko, who was one of the founders of the Black Consciousness Movement, which had started holding sit down protests. Peaceful, non- violent activism. Well the weekend I left the country, Steve Biko was arrested, tortured and murdered.

With all the unrest and institutional racism, and the coming civil war where I would have to defend white supremacy, I was relieved to be leaving that place behind. At one level I was glad to leave and at another I wanted to see justice. In the end, I admit that It was a relief to get on that plane and have it take off.

I am from South Africa, but I did not align with Apartheid at all, and I was glad to be leaving.

London, England

We left South Africa on September 1st 1977. We arrived in London and spent the weekend seeing our cousins and touring the city. I made my way to Highbury to watch Arsenal play Southampton with my cousin Mandy, who happened to be in London at the time. We connected with our cousins Alan and Rev, and Ian and Janice before we boarded the Pan Am flight across the North Pole to land in Seattle. It was a spectacular 9 hour flight on a Jumbo Jet.

Soweto 1976

A couple of months before the matric exams, I was at a Highlands Park soccer match one Saturday afternoon in June. After the match I was walking across the field and a black kid grabbed my arm. It was the kid I went to Germany with who I sat with on the train. He said to me “Its time to leave” I asked why and he said “we are going to burn the country now”.

I was taken aback by that but I didnt really understand.

On Monday morning our assembly was interrupted and all the kids were sent home.

Soweto and Alexander Township were on fire.

The tensions were incredibly high. There was a massive police presence. At night you could hear machine gun fire in Alexander Township on the northern boundaries of the city. People were scared. Everybody. Nobody knew what was going to happen.

I talked to Philemon, the worker at the apartment building were I lived. He said it like this…”I wont be killing you Neil, because I know you and you are a good person, but the boy next door, he will kill you, and I will kill his baas (boss)”

Everything had changed.

Where ever you went after that, shit was tense. You looked over your shoulder. You were less likely to walk around alone. It was not good.

And it was in that backdrop that we were getting ready to do our exams. Suddenly, the army seemed like it was seriously some place you didnt want to go. I mean we knew that you could get sent to the border, but that war seemed to be winding down. Nevertheless it was unsettling.

The African’s were angry and more free to express themselves. I got into an argument with a black man at the corner cafe one day. I don’t remember what started the argument, but it was most likely an argument over the pinball machine. All of a sudden he attacked me. He was a street fighter and he came at me kicking and punching. I had never been in an actual fight before so I did what I could to defend myself. I blocked what I could and punched and kicked where I could. I had rudimentary karate skills having been trained by Errol who was a black belt a little, so I hurt him on occasion with well aimed punches and kicks. I was really lucky though. He was kicking my in the nuts using his right foot, which swung up and to his left so he kept kicking me in my upper right thigh in the groin area. It turns out that I was wearing a bathing suit that day, and my nuts were hanging down the left side of the suit while my penis was on the right. He kicked my penis about 20 times hard. Finally I hit him in the throat hard enough that he backed off and two guys grabbed him and pulled him away because someone had called the police. I limped home and put ice on my penis.

The next day or maybe a day or two later, I was on a tour of the nuclear power plant with the school and I was in the bathroom taking a leak when the teacher came in. Mr Dal Bianco. I showed him my blue penis and he laughed his ass off. I really was very lucky…and he was too because I never called the cops or threatened him. I saw him again a few days later and we shook hands and made apologies….crazy.

After the rioting started, the country settled into what felt like a siege. The news from the townships was shocking. We were living in a war zone. You could see smoke and hear gunfire sporadically. It was very stressful.

Gymnastics!

In my Junior year (9th Grade), 1975 I was selected to the South African Gymastrada Team. A team of about 450 gymnasts from around the country of all colors. We went to this massive gymnastics display event in Berlin, West Germany. The reality was that South Africa was banned from international sport at that time. So we could not compete, but we could do a display. They selected 4 kids, two boys and two girls from each region. I was the best age group male in the Southern Transvaal, so I got picked. This picture is my high school pic of the kids who were selected to represent Southern Transvaal at regionals. I had a huge crush on Shanie James.

We did a display of floor activities with about 180 kids on the field. It was great. We flew into Berlin on a 737. At that time, West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany and you flew in on a specific corridor and dived into the city almost straight down. Being in West Germany was amazing. It was a super liberal city. Hash everywhere, porn everywhere, hippies everywhere, pubs serving kids and so on. At the same time, we were staying across from Spandau Prison where Rudolph Hess was still a prisoner of war.

The event occurred in the Olympic Stadium. It was quite dramatic. To march into the stadium knowing that Hitler stood there and Jesse Owens ran his race there…it was surreal. Especially while we were getting ready to march. The statues outside the stadium were definitely fascist in nature. Marching into the stadium was a trip. Our country was announced and there were massive protests to our entry. It was a bit crazy watching police hit people with batons for protesting against South Africa in Germany.

The event was cool, but touring into East Berlin across Checkpoint Charlie was special. The city literally looked like the war had just concluded last week. There were still bombed out buildings, and Russian flags hanging everywhere.

Check point Charlie was interesting too. Barbed wire and very serious guards who looked very very very closely at your passport

The flight home was eventful too. First we stopped in Greece and I had a window seat so I got to see the Acropolis as we came in to land.

We refueled there, and left for Johannesburg. I sat next to a girl I had a crush on and we cuddled the whole way back under a blanket…it was kinda fun. As we approached Johannesburg, the plane seemed to be running out of fuel. I say that because the pilot would gun the engines, then seemingly shut them off and glide, then gun them again and so on. It was like being on a long roller coaster ride. People were tossing their cookies all over the plane, but we eventually landed and the Captain said “sorry about that, the co-pilot was practicing” – a likely story.

At the gymastrada, I met my Austrian friends, Barbara and Gunter and Suzi. I went to Austria to see them when I graduated high school. More on them later.

I had a couple of great experiences in high school by participating in a couple of camps. One was a gym camp that I went to after I came back from Germany. A lot of the kids that went to Germany were there, and I was as good as or better than most so I got a lot of respect as a gymnast. I remember one day the boys having a competition to see who could climb the most flights of stairs on their hands. About 50 boys participated. I managed 4 flights and won the event tied with another fellow who’s name escapes me. the camp was an an army base. At gym camp one night, we were horsing around and this man in full military uniform came and told us to be quite because the men in the barracks had just returned from the border. We didnt understand why that was significant just then. A couple weeks after I got home, I was goofing around on my Short Wave radio searching for a station when I got Radio Moscow broadcasting to South Africa.

The reporter talked about how South African Troops were fighting Cuban Troops on the border of Angola and South West Africa (soon to be Namibia). I called my dad into the room to hear this and he was incredulous. But sure enough, over the next several weeks, we started to see news reports about how bodies were coming home in bags. Not long after that, Malcom and Rex were called up and Mal, being the good guy he is, kept Rex from having to fight by pretending he had cavities and needed dental work. We had all registered to go into the army and I was later called up to the Airforce, but with the country at war, it was an ominous future we were facing.

I continued to participate in gymnastics after Germany, and won the Southern Transvaal competition with 6 gold medals and I also won the trophy for the highest overall score and I was awarded Full Colors in gymnastics for a second year. I was captain of the gym team, a prefect and a high school senior. Even so, I was not in the best mental state for the Nationals where I was a favorite. I had not slept well, and had no mental energy. In many ways I had peaked at the S Transvaal meet. But I went to the Nationals thinking my chances for meddling was very good even though I had recently torn my rotator cuff on the rings (there is more to that story actually. involving being attacked by my big brother one day when he jumped me. That attack damaged my shoulder weakenign the tissue so that the next week, when I worked through my routine on rings, as soon as I pulled up, I felt it tear through). In fact, after that, I remember thinking “I wonder what its like to do this without shoulder pain?” Dealing with daily pain in gymnastics was part of the experience. I had broken my sacrum, had a few hard falls, sprained ankles, fractured my wrist and so on. Being in pain all the time had me develop a little mental trick to manage the pain. I imagined that pain was a red pyramid or triangle, and without pain was a blue circle or sphere. The game was to capture the red triangle, that expanded with increased pain, in the blue circle and then compress it down to a small little circle. It was something I got good at.

I arrived and greeted many of the kids I had seen at various camps, and we launched into the event. I fucked it up. I started the rings competition with the wrong move. I fell off the high bar and the pommel horse, and I stumbled on my landing on the parallel bar. I did manage a silver on the floor and a bronze on the vault. All in all it was a disaster.

The thing about being in top flight gymnastics in South Africa is that the sport was dominated by the Afrikaans.

You have to get that South Africa, as far as the white population was concerned, was really two countries. One a former British Colony, and part of the family of nations. The other, the Promised Land. The Afrikaans came to South Africa as settlers in 1652 or so, sent out of Holland by the Dutch..they were originally French Calvinists and the Dutch disliked them, so they put them on ships to South Africa. As far as they were concerned, South Africa was the Promised Land and they are the Chosen People.

When the Brits ruled, they rebelled. There were two Boer Wars (a Boer is the Afrikaans word for ‘farmer”) They largely kept to themselves. The countryside was mostly Afrikaans, and the cities, other than Bloemfontein and Pretoria, were largely English. The bottom line was that as the nation started to experience the spasms of revolution, the Afrikaans become sort of insular. It was for this reason that being part of their club, as I was naturally because of my gymnastics prowess, I got to be friendly with many Afrikaans boys and girls and was at one time fluent in the language. I remember my friend Errol had an Afrikaans girlfriend that he met somewhere, and he couldn’t speak the language fluently. So like Cyrano de Bergerac, I translated his phone calls in real time, expressing his love for her and hers for him.

When I was in Germany, many of the Afrikaans boys had never been close enough to a black South African as a young man to explore their hopes and dreams. I recall being in a compartment on a train in Germany with two Afrikaans boys and two African boys and being the translator. Although the African boys spoke Afrikaans, there was already a protest movement to stop using the language of the oppressor, so I “translated” for them, but more for the Afrikaans boys. Its fair to say that there was no understanding by the Afrikaans boys of the upset that the African boys had for the status quo. Everything was “as it should be” for the Afrikaans boys. They believed that God ordained them as the Chosen People and that everybody “had their place”. They literally could not see the injustice in the status quo. The two black kids looked at each other, exchanged a knowing glance and got up and left the compartment…I went after them and asked if they were OK. The one kid turned to look at me. He was clearly angry. He said softly “they will learn when the country burns”. With that, he turned and went after his friend. More on this fellow later.

When I came back from Germany, my parents went off to Seattle see Eric and June who had recently emigrated there after living in Johannesburg for several years. While they were there, I stayed with Carol and Malcolm. I had an experience with the Police that I will never forget. I was in the back of their car and we were waiting at a light to turn as oncoming traffic came by. There was a truck behind us, and I paid no attention to who was in the truck. The driver of the truck was being impatient and revving his engine and flashing his lights. Malcolm was not going to go ahead of oncoming traffic. The driver of the truck grew more impatient with his engine revving and light flashing…so I flipped him off….

We turned the corner, and the truck behind us followed but he turned on his blue lights…and we got pulled over. This young Afrikaans cop got out and and went after me saying “get out of the car, I am going to take you to the police station and teach you a lesson!” Mal was calm and he said “never mind officer, I will discipline him, thank you” and this went back and forth for a while…I was shit scared! Finally the cop relented and we went home…Malcolm, in only the way Malcolm could said “Now about that discipline, go get me a coke!” and then he laughed the way he did.

The other experience I had in High School that was formative was that I was named a Prefect. The Prefects more or less were the school cops. We had our own lounge and we got to give kids detention. We strolled the hallways and essentially were given the privilege of power that other kids didn’t have. It was a real insight into how the world actually worked.

As a prefect, there was a Head Boy and a Head Girl. They were invited to a leadership camp where other prefects from other schools were to gather for leadership training. Larry, our Head Boy chose not to go and it was opened up to the rest of us. I jumped at the chance, and volunteered for this week-long leadership training experience. It was probably the most significant High School experience I had if I am honest. For one thing, I got to know myself as a leader. Not only that, but I was a standout leader at the Camp. I was a leader of leaders. The prettiest girl, a girl named Karen, who went to a High School in a nearby town, was infatuated with me and became my girlfriend. I knew myself as potentiality lovable only because of her. Up until then I had lived inside of a story that I was not really lovable, I was more of a clown who made girls laugh. I had not really had a steady girlfriend up till then, although I had dated and kissed a few girls. Karen kissed me in a different way. I remember meeting her at the train station when she came to see me. She threw her arms around me and hugged me and kissed me passionately in a way that completely took my breath away. I was head over heels in love. It was a short romance though. Her parents were very very very conservative Christians and forbid her to see me (a Jewish boy). Nevertheless, I had a glimpse into what it was like to be the true-love of another human being and it was magical.

One thing that happened at that camp was that an Army General came to talk to us. He reminded us that South Africa was fighting communism and that “our enemy isn’t black, its red” as he put it.

Back at school I sought out girls who had shown an interest in me. I briefly dated Shaney James who was a gymnast, and a girl named Jenny from the year behind me who used to come watch me train in the gym every day. I was growing up. Even so, I never got passed first base. I was totally naive even though via my brother and my trip to Germany I had lot of girly magazines. Sex was entirely a fantasy to me.

I lost my virginity with Pam at a party one night when I was looking through the records choosing music to play. The stereo was in this boys room and the party was mostly outside. So I went in to select the next album and Pam walked in behind me and locked the door. She took off her shirt and said “I have been waiting for this moment”… I was shocked, and surprised and happy and scared and worried that I would ejaculate in her hand ….. it was a moment that I will never forget. Pam is still a good friend and is as beautiful as she was then. She actually came through Seattle soon after I had left South Africa and spent the night with me up at my Uncles cabin in the mountains. It was so great to see her and recreate that experience together. My cousin Nicola reminded me that she was awake when Pam came to my cot.

High school was really intense the last three years. The classes were hard. I was constantly taking extra math lessons to master Algebra, Trig and Geometry. My extra lessons teacher was a polish woman who was brutal and assigned the hardest work for me to do. I almost dreaded seeing her, but I appreciated her patient way of teaching me the difficult concepts. You need to understand that there was no such thing as a calculator when I learned Math. We actually learned with a slide rule. I remember the very first calculators that came out and they were simple, but could add, subtract, multiply and divide and they were the size of a good size book. I had gymnastics training almost 3 hours a day, I played soccer in the park seemingly daily. I played pinball at the corner cafe, I built airplanes and managed my fish tank. It was a busy couple years, and inside of that I was trying to figure out who I was as a sexual creature, and how to date girls.

While I had collected soccer cards as a kid, in High School we had Car Cards. We knew everything about cars. We quizzed each other and one upped each other and we knew it all. We were growing up! And soon all of us were driving.

When I was in my first year of High School, my cousins Terry, Joanne and Nicola came back to South Africa from the USA. Eric and June my Aunt and Uncle had earlier moved to the States and Eric, and anesthesiologist, had been recruited to come to South Africa and work on his incubator development. He returned and I got reacquainted with Terry and Jo and Nic. Terry is a year or so younger than me and Jo a couple years, Nic was more or less a toddler when they came back. Terry and I become fast friends and we played and played. Terry had this amazing collection of matchbox cars and Hot-Wheels tracks that we used to play with (that I later inherited for my kids)…my interest in cars started when I was about 12 I guess. Partly because of playing Hot Wheels with Terry, but mostly because my dad always worked on cars when I was a kid.

When I was about 16, I worked at the local movie rental place. My job was to rewind movies. The owner, a big fat gruff guy named Jeff used to give me all kinds of shit. He hated that I was in such good shape. He always tried to get under my skin. One day he called me to his office and said. “Do you have a gun?” I told him I didn’t. He said, pulling out a high-powered pellet gun – a Gecado – 50, and said “50 Rand”…I was surprised, it seemed cheap. (I just looked it up and found one on line for R5000 – about $400).

I said “deal” and went over and took the gun from him. He said, “Take it. You can work it off.” I asked if he was sure and he said he was.

That presented a problem. I had not asked my folks about having a gun. They were sensitive about guns because of my dad almost committing suicide. So rather than ask, I snuck it into my bedroom and hid it under my bed. To get it out to play with, I would put it out of my window, climb up onto the roof and go and get it. And to get it back inside, I would do the reverse.

It was a powerful pellet gun. I could accurately shoot a target within the size of a quarter as much as 60 yards away. Eddie had a pellet gun and the two of us used to go to the park to shoot at targets. I eventually gave the gun to Eddie when I left the country. More on guns a little later.

At about that time I was getting ready for my Matric Finals, These were 3 hour long final exams that covered 3 years work per subject. I had finals in English, Afrikaans, Math including Algebra (pre-calc), Trigonometry and Geometry , Science including Physics and Chemistry, Geography including South African Geography, Meteorology, Geology, and Biology including Physiology, Botany and Zoology. The exams were brutal.

I used to walk home with Heather Mirk. She was an English girl who was beautiful, soft spoken, really funny and super warm. She was the girlfriend of a guy named Barry who I think she married in the end. Heather and I used to talk about this and that related to classes we were taking on our walks. I loved Heather and had a huge crush on her and was insanely jealous of Barry. And even so I enjoyed walking her home and chatting.

Heather and Kathy Kaplan were fast friends. Kathy was the one girl who got caned in class. The teachers used to hit the girls on their hand with a ruler and Kathy refused. She used to sit in front of me and we used to kid around…One day the teacher called her up to punish her and she simply refused to hold her hand out and demanded that the teacher cane her. She was 17 years old, sort of a plane Jane but super bright. She literally bent over in front of the class and took a caning. She didn’t say a word. She walked back to her seat in front of me and sat. The teacher was speechless, as were all of us.

School Colors

I earned Half-Colors in Form 3, the first year I was eligible to earn the equivalent of a high school letter. I remember it being a pretty big deal. The announcement was in front of the school at the school assembly, which happened every morning. We would gather in the quad (the netball courts) and the teachers would all stand up on stage. The entire school would then recite the Lords Prayer and sing the national anthem, and then there were announcements. I got my colors handed to me in front of the school in the morning. Then, I was called out to the front of the class in Biology the first day I wore the blazer (it wasn’t common to get high school colors, you had to be on the regional team Southern Transvaal to make it) and asked to tell the class about my accomplishments that had me earn a letter. I had won the Southern Transvaal championship that year and been on the team the previous two years. I was in effect, a star.

Between my second and third year of high school, for summer holidays (Christmas time), I am not sure how, but I got a job with a toy wholesaler to go into the major department stores and demonstrate a construction toy called “Plastikant”

You literally could build anything. It was only limited by your imagination. But is was during this time, sitting in the department store, near the Santa that I got to see Christmas in a new light. Being a Jew, up until then, I had only interpreted Christmas as a holiday where people put up lights and had cocktail parties. We used to go see the Zoo Lights as a Christmas treat. I never really understood Christmas gifts. I had only received one gift in my life till then. It was a bag of candy packaged in a stocking shaped bag that my grandma Frieda gave to me because she didn’t eat that candy.

We used to visit Grandma Frieda on occasion. She was my dad’s mom. She used a cane and mostly I just played with her colored coasters when I was a kid. I never really knew her.

The other thing that happened during those first couple years of high school was that Derrick, Malcolm, Rex, Howard and I got season tickets to see our favorite local team. Highlands Park

1973 Highlands Park. I LOVED this team. We had seats 5 rows up at the half way line behind the team bench and were quite intimate with the players. In fact, the back up goal keeper, not in this image, Eugene Kleinhans (which ironically means “small hands”) was a student teacher in the gym class, so I got to know him quite well. My favorite player on the team was Martin Cohen, who, besides being Jewish, was a great midfielder. Good on the ball, tireless, great vision and good shot. A great box to box player. The only drawback for Highlands, was that they wore Man United colors. I preferred them in black and white…LOL

This team, little later, with Albert McCaan, Chris Chilton and former England player, Barry Bridges, was a couple years later and just such a good side.

Eddie and I also used to build and fly airplanes. We started with U-line powered planes. We started with the P-51 Mustang Trainer

It had a little gas engine and about a 30 foot line that let you control the elevators. The rudder was set to have it pull away from you and it flow round and round and you could do various tricks with it.

This led us to start building balsa wood airplanes and eventually on to radio control airplanes. It was great fun.

Once I was in Form 3, about 15 years old, I started to get really good at gymnastics. I remember playing rugby for the high school U-16 team, and there was a situation where the play was on their 5 yard line. As the scrum half, I would put the ball in. The ball popped out on the blind side and with only one player to beat, I picked it up and made a dash for the line. I was sure I was in. What I didn’t account for, was that their flanker would spot me, disengage from the scrum and hit me from the side. He more or less crushed me. Naturally, I dropped the ball and then the 16 pairs of legs of the scrum more or less ran over me, kicking me in the head and knocking me out cold.

When I came to, the ball was at the other end of the field, and they were waiting for me to put the ball in. I staggered toward the scrum, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. My gym coach Mr. Bam had walked onto the field and grabbed my by the shoulder…he said, walking me off the pitch…” Rugby is for watching, nobody should play it”…That was the last game I ever played.

That year, we had to do a project in Geography on were we would live in future. I had been looking at pictures of Vancouver, BC over at Frankie and Jan’s homes. They were Canadian girls who’s dad worked for Pepsi Cola in South Africa and they were friends with my sisters. Howard married Jan and Frankie married Barrie and they all lived in the same apartment block as Susan and Carol. Well I loved what Vancouver looked like and I did my project on living in Vancouver BC. I took a ration of shit about that from people who objected to the idea of leaving South Africa.

The other thing that made hanging out with my siblings significant to me was that Sue and Rex had a great record collection and the soundtrack of my youth was born there. I listened to Eric Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard, Cat Stevens Tea For the Tillerman, Gethro Tull Aqualung, Dave Mason Alone Together, Van Morrison Tupelo Honey and other great albums that really sourced my interest in Rock and Roll and the Blues. Malcom’s Dad, Jimmy, was the RCA rep in South Africa, so I used to get his samples and by the time I left the country I had like 200 records. I brought the best of my collection with me to America.

4 Hiawatha 1972-1977

My mom wanted to garden. So when an apartment opened up next door that had a yard, she saw an opportunity. We moved into the apartment building next door, going from being on the second floor of an apartment building to a townhouse with a yard. This was important for many reasons, the most significant being that my mom had a green thumb and loved to garden, and the other reason being that we loved to have people over for Sunday lunch and it had been difficult to do in the apartment. One of the first things I did there was cultivate an avocado seed to get it to root in a jar of water, then I planted the avocado tree at the bottom of the garden. In a few years we had avocados!

You can see in the picture above the apartment building on the corner, that was Marin View. Next door, to the left is Hiawatha. You can see the park to the left with the trees. That park had no trees when I was there and we used to play soccer and fly model airplanes there. The park to the right was a river valley really and not much good for sport, although I hit golf balls there. The building on corner of our block to the left with the white roof, was a bakery where they made the best kooksisters. and the red roof on the opposite corner from Marine View was the corner cafe.

I had the back bedroom with a porch off the back that was glassed in and it overlooked the garage area. My parents said I could make it mine, which was awesome. One day soon after we moved in, my dad said to come with him. I jumped in his car and he took me to a pet shop and be bought me a 2 ft fish tank, the odds and ends that go along with needing fish and a few fish. I quickly became expert at tropical fish. I read all I could and I spent as much time at the fish store talking to the proprietor about how to put a good tank together. I got sort of mental about it and found a 6 foot tank, and also bought another smaller breeder tank. My friend Eddie also got a 6 foot tank and we become super close around our fish

I started breeding purple cichlids

These were Egyptian Mouth Breeders and quite hard to breed. and I sold the fry back to the fish shop for a Rand each. I had about 20 at at time to sell them.

I painted the porch a shocking green to complement the fish. I had a Tropical Fish Factory. I was breeding Black Mollys, and guppies and had this amazing algae eating “shark” that I loved to watch.

I missed my dog, so I also got a budgie. Not a fair comparison, but I loved my budgie. He used to ride around on my shoulder. He was this green and yellow love machine.

I loved this little guy and even though he lived on the porch outside, I played with him every day. He used to crouch on my shoulder while I rode my bike and he chirped little love songs in my ear in a tone that was one of recognition. Later, I got him a mate when we moved into the apartment at Hiawatha. His mate was blue.

And I used to look in their cage every day for an egg. And sure enough, one day she had laid a couple of eggs. I was excited, and watched the incubation period with amazement and anticipation. One day I came home and there was a beautiful little turquoise budgie sitting on the stick next to his parents. I had not disturbed the eggs once I saw the mom incubating them, so I had no idea what the baby looked like. I had heard him, but not peaked. The delayed gratification was worth it.

Gradually, the parents died and I was left with the baby. He was being trained to be out of the cage and being the little one, flew away one day to my great sadness. I looked for him daily for months, but he never returned. I stopped keeping birds after that. One day as I was getting ready to leave the country, I heard budgie song and looked up into the avocado tree I had planted so many years before, and there was a turquoise budgie being a wild bird. Was it him? I don’t know…but it could have been.

I had other hobbies.

One day I went with my dad to a crafts fair. I am not sure why, but I got mesmerized by a woman making water candles. I immediately came home and purchased a bunch of wax, and Eddie and I started making water candles. I showed them around and a gift shop ordered some and also a Chinese restaurant nearby special order bright red ones that they purchased several for their tables.

Temple Emanuel

Two events stand out for me during those first two years. The first was my Barmitzvah. I had taken extra lessons, gone to Hebrew school and prepared for ages. My Torah portion was Deuteronomy Chapter 4 vs 1-24

The barmitzvah itself was remarkable in one respect. I remember getting my tallit from my dad and him hugging me and kissing me on the cheek. It was the only time I remember my dad showing me affection up to that point or since, and it quite surprised me. Temple Emanuel was a reform shul so we read rather than sang the prayers. I completed the experience which was really to run the entire service and felt a great sense of accomplishment for doing so flawlessly. There was the Barmitvah Party where we had a DJ host a dance and I got to kiss a girl… I remember kissing either Gail Lashanski or Belinda Finch that night, but I cant recall which. We called it “getting off” as in “Gail, do you want to “get off”?” Then we would go outside, find a spot on the grass and lay down and kiss….we were so immature and it was very naive, but cute. I still have two gifts I got for my barmitzvah. One is the Guinness Book of World Records that I thumbed the pages ragged, and the other is a book called the Twentieth Century which I read cover to cover many times…its a big coffee table book, and it really informed me. In the Guinness Book, I especially loved reading about the crazy records people were up to in the Human Endurance and Endeavors section. You have to remember that this was LOOOOONG before the internet…so this sort of thing was magical.

The other major experience I had in the first couple years of high school was to go on Soccer Tour. This was organized by Benny Stalson at our temple, and he pulled together a bunch of kids from all over. Mostly kids who were from “the wrong side of the tracks”, and we would get on a train and go to Natal to play in soccer tournaments. I played my natural position as a central midfielder and captained the U-12 and then the U-13 teams the following year. The tour included kids up to U-16, but I only went those first couple years. It was a relatively inexpensive tour, so my parents could afford it. The journey was amazing. About 100 kids, many of whom were the kind of kids who look for and get into trouble, on a train, staying in hotels, free to roam a coastal town….We played in Durban, East London and also Port Elizabeth. It was so much fun. I remember the gambling on the train playing Klaverjas (pronounced “Clubby Ace”), a game that looked like, but was nothing like Bridge.

I had great experiences traveling with and playing on these soccer teams. I met and made friends with kids I would never otherwise encounter. Hardscrabble kids, many of them. They came to my defense once in East London, when I got picked on for being a Jew and some big guys started pushing me around. My soccer buddies stepped in and sent them packing. I came back thinking I was a tough kid. I remember that there was this one kid Alan, who lived in our apartment building, and he was always looking for a fight. So I agreed to meet him outside one day and have that fight he wanted. I remember being nervous standing there feeling like I was going to get hit, but I balled up my fist and hit him in the nose before he moved and he ran away crying. It was a relief. I don’t even think I hit him very hard. I felt bad about it though, and later I sought him out and took him to the cafe around the corner and got him an ice cream.

The cafe around the corner was run by a couple Greek guys who I became friendly with because I literally spent all my free time there playing the pin-ball machine “Doodlebug.” I still look for that machine whenever I see pinball machines.

I became a master of that machine and could ratchet up the games super fast. If someone was playing, you would put your tickie (5 cents) on the table top indicating you were next. I used to laugh because some people would put 20 coins on the table, and I would put one. I literally could play for hours with one coin. I would often sell my games to the next person.

I also used to spend my afternoons when I wasn’t doing gymnastics, playing soccer in the park across the street. There was always a game. Typically, there were about 20 African men, local workers, who would play and I would join in. That’s where I learned a lot of my footy skills.

I have two main recollections of my time in the Marin View building. Neither of them happy. The first was that my dad was depressed. His business had failed and he knew himself as a lesser man. He took a job with the Jewish Board of Deputies, which was essentially a fund raising job that he did at night. He spent most afternoons taking a nap. We were not terribly engaged, except we had dinner each evening and he did come to watch me perform in gymnastics. I remember that he tried to make a go with a multi-level company called Holiday Magic and he gave me Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich” which I read (and applied) much later in life. For most of my teen years, my dad occurred to me as sad and depressed. A shell of his former self.

The other memory was ultimately sad. I took a call on the phone one day from a stranger to hear the caller say that Pixie was dead. Pixie was my dad’s younger brother. He had been a big game hunter and was killed hunting elephant in Zambia. Pixie and Iris had three daughters, Cindy and Shelly who were twins, and Linda who was a couple years older. I told my dad that Pixie was dead and the anguish that caused him made me cry. I learned later that Pixie was killed by an elephant who ran her tusk through him before throwing up down wind. She then stomped a large area of bush looking for him, but he was eventually found up against a deserted ant hill. Very sad.

High School Days

11 Marin View 1970-1972

My experience of the move was that I went to Jewish Summer Camp hosted by our Temple youth group leaders, in Margate, near Durban in among the sugar cane fields. I met my first ever girlfriend at camp. Simone Sylvester, who I used to go to movies with when we got back home. I remember our first date was to see the move “A Man Called Horse” and we sat in the front row because even though it was a matinee, and even though the theater was empty, those were the tickets we had, and there was an usher who literally stood two rows behind us watching us for the whole movie! Only 12 years old, we were so shy and innocent that we took pains to pretend we were siblings so people wouldn’t think badly of us.

Going to camp involved a two day train journey to Natal. There is something magical about train travel during those days. The clack-clack, clack-clack sounds that became a rhythm that persisted. The smell of train coffee, so sweet, in the morning. The passing wilderness that changed constantly given South Africa’s scenery. The puffing of the steam engine. There is nothing quite like falling asleep to the rocking rhythmical sway of the train as it steamed through the darkness. Waking up in Natal, tropical temperatures, palm trees, sugar cane fields….made the arrival special. I remember pulling into the station in Durban, and in the excitement having to wake up the deaf kid in our compartment because he slept through it all and was going to miss the bus ride to camp.

Camp itself was fun too. There was a meal Hall, where meals, and singalongs, and movies were shown. The campers camped in canvas tents, 4 to a tent. There was inspection every morning and the tent had to be spotless, every article of clothing perfectly folded. I hated inspection. The camp counselors always found some small defect to punish us for. Punishment tended to be carrying a big log back and forth across the soccer field for an hour while the other kids had fun. I hated that, and I seemed to be unable to avoid punishment literally every day for the duration.

One night, I woke up literally covered in ants. My cot had sunk one leg into an ant colony and I ran screaming from ant bites to the shower and washed millions of ants it seems, from my body. I was traumatized by that experience. The trip home seemed really long. The train stopped for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere for ages. People, mostly Africans riding in the less than luxurious third class cars, would get off the train and play soccer nearby till the guard blew his whistle, and then everyone would clamber aboard as the train slowly gathered momentum.

Sadly though, when I returned from summer camp, a two week stay, we had moved from our home to this second floor apartment in Glengazel. The biggest impact on me was that my dog, Sandy, had been given away. I was devastated. The apartment, a 3 bedroom two floored apartment, was about three quarters of a mile from the high school, and the bus stop was on our corner of the apartment, so I could roll out of bed, grab a slice of toast with fish paste on it as I walked out the door, and jump on the bus to get to school in minutes. I had a harder and harder time getting out of bed as I grew into my teens, and catching that bus always seemed much harder than it should have been.

Anyhow, that first day, I put on a brave face and went off to school at Northview High school. I was a little scared and a little excited for the new adventure.

High school was actually very scary at first. It was big, much bigger than the primary school. We moved around between classes. There were both lots more kids and most of them were bigger and older kids. It seemed like every older kid was a bully who bullied younger kids. For example, on my first day at school, I went into the bathroom and there were about 10 big kids in there smoking (actually giant kids in my eyes).

“Hey kippie , come here” an ugly giant kid said

I walked over to him shaking in fear

“You gonna tell anyone you saw us smoking?”

Me: “no”

“You better not or I’ll fuck you up, understand?”

Me: “yes”

He looked at me standing there shaking in my brand new school uniform. Spotless with a shine on my shoes. I looked at his scruffy jacket, stained shirt and threadbare tie. Then he reached down and buttoned my jacket, suddenly and forcefully he pulled my jacket down over my shoulders so my arms were pinned. He picked me up (I think I weighed about 80 pounds dripping wet at most) and he hung me on the hook on the back of the bathroom door.

The boys all were guffawing as they snuffed our their cigarettes and left me alone hanging on the back of the door.

The school bell rang and I could hear feet heading down the hall to class. Then it was quiet. I had tears in my eyes as I looked around the empty bathroom thinking about what I should or could do.

I was about to yell for help when the door swung open and the gym coach,Mr. Bam, came into the bathroom. I didn’t know him as the gym coach or even his name yet. I caught his eye and he gently took me down.

“Who did this?” He asked kindly.

Me: “I don’t, I don’t know sir. It’s my first day” I stammered trying not to cry.

“Ok laddie, go to class”

“Yes sir” I brushed away my tears and went off to find my class.

High school scared the shit out of me.

The game the school played was rugby. There was no soccer team. The rugby coach, who was our PE teacher, said “this is a rugby school, don’t even say “soccer”, understand?” It was intimidating but we learned how to play rugby during PE. I liked the contact although I was small, and I took to the position of scrum-half in part because of my size and in part because I got to run the game. The PE teacher was also the rugby coach, and he told me to turn out for rugby.

The school uniforms were different too. At primary school we wore short pants, a short sleeved shirt and a tie. In high school we wore long grey pants, a long sleeved white shirt, a navy stripped club tie and a navy blazer. Being 12 years old in the same school as 18 year olds wearing the same uniform was very intimidating. I literally walked around terrified.

We were placed in a class and we had 2 years to get oriented. Standard 8 was the first year you could get school colors (like a letter for a sport). All the blazers were navy blue, but “half colors” were illustrated by a yellow striped navy blue blazer. Full colors was represented by a white blazer with a ribbing of yellow and navy string. Very few students had either half colors and fewer had full colors.

In addition to a class, we were assigned to a House. In primary school the houses were named after antelope there was Roan (red), Kudu (blue), Eland (green) and Sable (yellow). In primary school the big house rivalries were track and swimming. At the track meet the tug of war was the most fun to cheer for.

In high school, the houses were named for great men of science there was Lister (blue), Edison (green), Newton (red) and Fleming (yellow). In high school the houses competed for everything it seemed. I was assigned to Lister. Blue. I had been in Roan in Primary school. Red.

You got a small colored pin to wear to denote your House. The House used to meet occasionally to learn cheers and establish team spirit .

There were so many things I was interested in. All new for me, I played rugby and cricket and field hockey, I did gymnastics and track. I fenced and I joined the cadet band playing the bugle. I sucked at the bugle, so I switched to the snare drum. Thats where I learned how to do a double diddle. I never really was able to do a real drum roll. When my kid got a drumset later in life, I marvled at his ability to do that. I am still very keely aware of drum solos in rock bands. I listen to them with a mixture of awe and amazement. In any event, we used to form up and learn to march and play every Friday morning. Plus we had to wear a cadet uniform. We were literally being trained to be in the army.

I turned out for fencing. It seemed magical. Those trippy uniforms with that wire mask and we got to fight with swords (foils)! Loved it. I got quite good at it too.

I joined the chess club. Weekly tournaments against other schools and a weekly meeting to learn new strategies.

I turned out for cricket and actually was a reasonable off-spin bowler. I took extra coaching in a batting cage to become a better batter and bowler. Mr. McCorkhill was the cricket coach. He was the groundsman who took great pride in keeping the fields immaculate. Its hard to emphasize this enough. The way the school was organized was that you had the buildings at the top of the hill, then there was an embankment with steps down to the cricket field. The cricket field doubled as the track and also as the hockey fields. At the far end of the field as you sat on the embankment, was the tuck shop to the right. The tuck shop was upstairs and there were change rooms downstairs. To the right of the Tuck Shop was the swimming pool. Below and down the hill of the Tuck Shop were the two rugby fields oriented end to end. On the left side of the cricket pitch were the practice nets and the maintenance shed. It was common to watch the workers, often Mr. McCorkhill himself, mowing the lawn to keep the pitch in perfect shape.

Mr Mac, as we called him, was a Scott with a thick accent, and he could not pronounce my name easily, so he just changed it to “Hole-in-the-ground” or “chasm” variously depending on his whim. He was a good cricket coach who encouraged me to develop my spin bowling. Through the years, I played on the A and B teams variously depending on who was there and who was missing.

I was low in the batting order on the A team and a late game bowler. In cricket, the fast bowlers generally bowl first and the spin bowlers later as the batsmen are less skilled. My best batting outing on the A-team was to score 38 runs to win the game coming in 7th in the order, and my best bowling outing was to get 3 out in 4 overs to win the game. In my senior year I was on and off the A-team and when I was on the B-team I captained it. In one game, we literally got the entire side out for 3 runs. We got lectured for being too gleeful for our celebrations on getting the whole side out for only 3 runs at the next practice. Sportsmanship and all that.

I joined the photography club. The club was organized by Mr. Bowie, the Biology teacher. He was an excellent photographer who was nationally recognized. We used to enter slides into a slide club that was judged by experts each month. I fancied myself as a fashion photographer and my friend Isabel Gariezzo was my model. In the club itself, we met weekly but had monthly black and white competitions with judging of images from the shooting assignment and guidance for composition and contrast. We were also strongly encouraged to submit slides for the judged events. It was out of this participation that my friend Eddie and I put in dark room at my brother Derrick’s house in their servants quarters (they didn’t have servants.)

I turned out for gymnastics. The tryout was in the Hall, there wasn’t a formal gym just then, but one was being constructed. There were lots of kids at the tryout.

They had us trying out doing some basic tumbling tricks. Hand springs and head springs for example. All of this was easy for me. Then he asked those of us who could do do flick flacks (backward handsprings) and only a few kids would even try. Of course I nailed it.

Gymnastics was coached by John Bam on the men’s side and by Lynne Boardman in the women’s side. The tryout was being managed by some of the older kids, and it became pretty obvious right away that I stood out. Pretty soon the coaches and all the senior kids were watching me execute the tumbling passes. After the try out the coach came to me, and he recognized me from being the kid was hanging on the back of the door, and he said “hey Kippie, you going to come do gym?“

I nodded, and that was the start of my gymnastics career really. The gym club met every afternoon after school for a couple of hours, and the practices were with boys and girls. Once the new gymnasium opened, we used to go at recess and either do some practice, if an event was coming up, or are we used to play one-bounce over a volleyball net with a soccer ball. My friends Errol and Eddie and Jeremy and I used to play soccer or do gymnastics pretty much every recess. By the end of my high school career when I was a top-notch gymnast representing Southern Transvaal and South Africa, I would often have several girls come to watch me practice, which I found kind of enjoyable. I was as bit of a show off. I’ll have more to say about gymnastics later but suffice it to say that gymnastics was an important part of my life in high school.

There was built in fear turning out for rugby. We felt tough pulling on the jersey but there was definite nervousness too. I remember the coach who called rookies “Kippie” saying “when that ball comes out, hit him kippie, wrap him up” – I was trying out for scrum half – number 9 – the link between the forwards and the speedy backs. Kind of like a quarter back to the fly half – the central back who ran the team.

I enjoyed youth rugby. I liked the contact and enjoyed the strategy, and I was smart enough to run the game. I remember one game, our first match with another school, and I was the scrum half on the A team.

In rugby, one weird thing is that when the other team scores on you, the restart is to give them back the ball in good field position.

We got our asses handed to us by the other team. It was like 60 to 0. We got humble very quickly, and our fly-half, Clive, broke his collar bone. He was a tough guy too and it spooked all of us!

The first two years of high school were uneventful. I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t like French or Latin and so I went into the sciences. The track I chose was the Math/Science track. This meant that over the final three years of high school, I took a year or algebra, a year of trig and a year of geometry. I also took a year of botany, a year of physiology and a year of zoology. I also took a year of geology, a year of meteorology and a year of physical geography. In addition we had to do English and Afrikaans which included literature. composition and vocabulary. Additionally we had to do both South African and also world history as well as physical education.

Some Parenting Memories

At that time, we had two servants who were resident, Abbiotte, the Gardner, handyman and server, and Rebecca, who cooked and cleaned and did laundry. We had another servant named Rose, who came weekly to do the ironing. When we moved into an apartment, Rose continued to work for my parents.

To be fair, I had a very rudimentary appreciation of Apartheid’s impact on everyone. I knew then that black Africans needed to have a “pass” book to be in “white areas”. I was aware of the “whites only” signs everywhere, on busses, in movie theaters and so on. I had it that blacks were not so much inferior, but rather, they were the “servant” class. To be sure, I had many interesting conversations with the servants, and got their wisdom in those talks. In many ways, Rebecca was my surrogate mother. She made me breakfast, made my lunches, made my bed, and cooked for our family. I spent many hours in the kitchen watching her cook and chatting with her.

Our yard was my playground and Abbiotte kept it up beautifully. I remember him mowing the lawn with that green electric power mower, watering the flowers, pruning the trees and the rose bushes. I learned a lot about gardening by watching him work.

The other adults in my daily life were my sisters Sue and Carol. Derrick was off at boarding school till I was 5 and then he went off to England to go to college after spending a year at home, but Susan and Carol were in high school. They both went to Waverley Girls HS, and wore their blue school uniforms to show it.

Sue had a yellow room just off my room, and Carol’s room was pink just beyond Susan’s room. Susan and Carol used to fight like crazy. I remember hair pulling, shoe throwing, screaming, biting and scratching fights between those two.

My mom and dad used to argue a lot in those days. And if my mom was mad, she would say “don’t call me mom, I’m not your mother! Call me Matilda”… my dad would go silent for days or even weeks. It seemed like someone was fighting with someone most of the time.

As I reflect on what it was like to be a small child who is so confused by the mixed messages of being told you are loved, then the fear experienced during the many violent beatings, then the feelings of abandonment as love is withheld, in sort of a circular pattern that occurred more or less randomly, I can see now, how that ongoing experience impacted my life in predictable and sad ways. As an adult I came to realize that I maintained a deeply and strongly held belief that I was simply not lovable.

When the girls were a little older, and started dating Malcom and Rex the fighting between them died down a lot. I loved Malcom and Rex. They were like big brothers to me. Malcom was cool. He had a cool car he used to drive too fast. He was a big Arsenal fan and obviously a big influence on my allegiance to Arsenal Football Club. Rex was cool because he was super chill, and he had a great sense of humor. He and Malcom got along great and made us all laugh so hard. Rex was a Liverpool fan. Derrick supported Leeds United and Howard supported Manchester United. So, the English First Division, (now the Premier League) was always a hot topic in my house.

When Derrick came home from boarding school to finish his last year of high school at Damlin College (kinda like a community college), he slept in my room, and his friends Peter Stayne, Howard Petrook and Isaac Misrache were always around. Howard was like another member of the family. So between Derrick and Carol and Sue and Rex and Malcom and Howard and others, there were always lots of people at our house, and I was the kid hanging around and watching and listening and participating where I could.

I was much younger than everyone so I had to grow up fast, which was possible with everyone around being much older. I got exposed to what they were talking about, what they were listening to, and what they aspired to. And because everyone was concerned with themselves, I sort of skated along under the radar.

My parents often had cocktail parties and there I was mixing drinks for all the guests. What’s weird now is that nobody seemed surprised that a 9-year-old kid could run a bar, make a scotch and soda, or a gin and tonic. It was, I suppose, where I first developed my current interest in mixology. The first drink I was allowed to have as a little kid was a beer shandy. Basically half beer and half 7 Up. I think I was 10 when I tried my first one. It’s what all the kids drank at social events all the way until I graduated high school (the drinking age in South Africa was 18 years old.

Life was pretty idilic during my primary school days. We weren’t wealthy, but we had a nice house in a nice neighborhood, we had servants. We belonged to the Country Club, and my dad was a popular figure both there and among their friends. As far as I was concerned, we went on great vacations, we ate well, and we lived a life of privilege. Not wealthy, but well off. As a child I had no worries other than when I’d see my friends, we would see what sort of mischief we would get into. we had very active imaginations.

Then everything changed.

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I came home from school one day, age 11, and heard the unusual sound of someone crying coming from upstairs. Curious, I went upstairs, and followed the sound to my parents room. I opened the door to find my dad sitting there alone, on the edge of his bed, tears streaming down his face.

It took me a minute to take in what I was seeing. He sat there not seeing me, crying hard, with a gun to his head. He kept a small pistol next to his bed. I knew about it and had taken it out to look at in the past, but there he was, gun to his temple, and his finger on the trigger. His eyes were closed and he had tears running down his cheeks as he sobbed.

I dived at him and wrestled the gun from his grasp, and because I surpised him, I was easily successful in doing so luckily. I set the gun down and held my dad tight. Then a broken man, although I didn’t know it just then, he sobbed uncontrollably on my shoulder for a long time.

We didn’t discuss the situation ever again.

He was deeply ashamed, I’m sure.

After that I learned that my dads business had failed and his partners had left him holding the debt. The story is that his brother and a friend had walked away Scott-free but we lost everything. Including our house.

I am struck by the similarity to my own experience right now. Losing everything in middle age and having to start over. My dad never really recovered. He spent most of the rest of his life depressed. He never really achieved the stature he had earlier attained after that. When he died at age 79, he was a shell of himself.

Right around the time things went bad for our family, I had started Hebrew school and began studying for my bar mitzvah and the Temple had a Big Walk to raise money for their building. First prize offered was a brand new bicycle of my choice. Well the bike I had at the time was a crappy 3 speed red bike with straight handle bars. I wanted a green banana seat bike with chopper handle bars. I set my sites on winning that bike and I raised the most money of all the kids by getting sponsored for about $20 per mile and I walked 10 miles.

One of the highlights of my young life up to that point was going to the factory and choosing the exact bike I wanted and then riding the 15 miles or so home following my dads car. I remember that ride. There was a long hill and I fell far behind, which was a problem because I didn’t know the way home, and it was getting dark. But at the top of the hill I saw my dad had pulled over and waited for me. I was relieved. I was so proud of that bike, and rode it to school every day till we moved to a small apartment across town.

During my last year of primary school there were two situations that happened while on the soccer team that had an impact on me.

The first situation occurred after a game where a kid had scored an own goal. I was the goalkeeper and I had an emotional reaction to being scored on by my teammate. It wasn’t anything that I took off the field as I recall, but the coach, a Mr. Muller, was exorcised that I had excoriated my teammate on the field. He pulled me aside at the next practice and told me that I needed to apologize to the team publicly or he would drop me off the A team onto the B team. Well at the team meeting, which took place in a classroom, Mr. Muller was speaking about something related to the tactics of the team when he suddenly asked me if I had “anything to say”. A little confused, I thought he was referring to the conversation he was just having, and I said “no sir”. He said “Fine. You are dropped”. I was stunned, I had written a speech to give to the team about sportsmanship and teamwork and an apology for being out of order during the game the past week. But there it was. I got dropped to the B-team. I resolved to be the best player I could be even as I was dropped. The lesson in that experience, which was really to be appreciated later. was that I had as much fun on the B-team as I did on the A-team, if not more.

The other experience actually occurred when I was on the team bus heading to an away game. Mrs. Muller (not related to the coach) was driving the van and my neighbor Grey and my friend Gary were in the front seats of the van. I was at the back of the bus. We were getting close to the field, the van slowed as we came to an intersection. I leaned over the back seat to put my watch into my kit bag. Then the world started spinning. We had been hit by a truck. When the vehicle stopped moving, I was on my back with a small cut in my head. I jumped out the now broken window and ran to the front of the vehicle. Mrs. Muller was in the street up against the curb. She had been thrown out of her door. Gary and Grey were in the front but seriously banged up. Both kids had broken bones. I stayed with Mrs. Muller till the ambulance arrived. Looking around, I surveyed the scene and the weirdest scene was that the truck had gone though a fence and spun around and fallen on its side, but the contents of the truck, a single cow, was actually standing in the swimming pool of the house whose fence was breached. I got real lucky.

The school year, which in South Africa was January to December, came to an end and I went off to summer camp. When I came back two weeks later, we had moved. I went with my mom to shop for my new school uniform. It felt like I was growing up because instead of shorts, we wore long pants, and instead of a shirt with short sleeves, we had long sleeves. It was kind of exciting.

The Bramley Days: Travel

During my primary school days, my dad seemed larger than life. He took us on trips, like to Durban where I caught my first fish on the pier, got exposed to the wonders and creatures of the ocean at the Durban, especialy the massive Groupers that were in the salt water aquarium. I ate ice cream on the beach, and played in the surf always wary of the Bluebottles, jelly fish and shark nets.

One of my favorite trips was the time we went to Paradise Island off the coast of Mozambique where we snorkeled, water skied and went deep sea fishing. To get there we first had to across the border into Mozambique on our drive to the coast. The border crossing was always the same. A long line of cars that you pushed to the front so you could save gas, then a little hut and a pole across the road that the border guard lifted so you could pass after they checked your passports. Then the drive through the bush to Lorenzo Marques, now called Maputo, where, as I recall, we are Prawns Peri Peri in a restaurant in a tent. As I recall, the prawns were Tiger Prawns, so big I could only eat 6! Then, on to the coast where we met and then flew with Iris and Laddie on his small plane to the island. That holiday was the best adventure. I loved the island. Everything about it. I remember climbing a palm tree to pick a green coconut. A local yelled at me but I plead innocence because I had permission. He took his machete and cut the green coconut open and we shared the water.

Paradise island was magical. Azure blue water. Crystal clear. Abundant fish and cowrie shells. In the evening the local fisherman would lay their catch out on the beach and we would barter for fish. The hotel chef would then prepare the fish for our family dinner. I just loved it all.

I went out on the deep sea boat with my dad one day. It was mostly boring (I was 6) but I have one great memory. My dad was fighting a fish. I looked over the side as the fish neared, and the deck hand reached over to gaff the fish with a long hook. I watched as the red fish on the end of the line was gaffed. But instead of impaling his hook into a red rock fish looking creature, he gaffed 150 pound Hammer Head Shark that took the fish! All of a sudden it was mayhem as he held on to his hook with all his might and the skipper pulled out a shotgun and shot the shark allowing them to muscle it onto the deck.

The next year we went to Barazuto on the Mozambique coast. It wasn’t the same as the island but it was still fun.

We went to Durban and stayed at the Surf Crest Hotel on the beach. I almost broke my neck on the trampoline there. But i loved swimming in the salt water pool, eating Red Toffee Apples, and playing in the surf. I remember getting stung by blue bottles though. Painful. The aquarium was astonishing. The Grouper are really massive fish, and I remember those and the tiger shark in the tank and as I noted, I caught my very first fish at the pier in Durban.

Durban was cool. Natal, the province where Durban is located, is the home to the Zulu Nation. The Zulu are a proud people who are decedent of Shaka, King of the Zulu. They are very colorful people and one of my enduring memories is of the Rickshaw Rides on the beach front in Durban. The bead-work on those Rickshaws and headdresses are amazing.

I LOVED going to the game reserves to see the big game. We always used to count the big game we saw. The best was to see a kill, or at least a chase. You get really good at looking for animals. Its hard to see them sometimes since they are so camouflaged. You learn little tricks, like if a leopard is in a tree, it forgets its tail and its tail hangs down, so you look for the swinging tail.

I remember being chased by elephant while my dad filmed his 8mm film of the elephant crossing the road getting as close as he dare. Imagine my mom backing up while my dad hung out the open passenger door with his camera mounted on the door yelling “Faster! Faster!”

My dad was vibrant in those days. He raised money for the school to build a swimming pool that they named after him. He ran, as I recall, to try to win the Mayor of Johannesburg seat. He lost. He was the President of Allenby Country Club where I swam and he played Lawn Bowls. In short, he was larger than life to me then.

I have this memory of a big crate of oysters arriving and us all sitting and shucking oysters and eating them at a big table in the yard. I remember that day because my brother Derrick was home from the army camp, which I thought was cool. I wore his helmet all day, and he had brought his rifle home which was very impressive. My dad shot it aiming at some eucalyptus trees off in the distance. It was very loud!

We went on a trip with our standard 5 class (6th grade more or less). We went to the caves at Umshangla rocks and to the Kruger Park. What I remember is that my parents gave me 3R for a weeklong trip. I spent it at the first store we stopped at about 3 hours into the trip. So, I was….. deprived… my friends all had pocket money but I didn’t. It was my first awareness of being poor. Well I say poor, but I mean in comparison to my friends. We had so much more than the native Africans, that it was hard to feel poor. It really was colonial living. I am somewhere in this picture…

My progress in gymnastics had my parents bring me to a diving club that met at Ellis Park on the other side of town. I more or less hated it. We had to get up super early and the water was really cold. I wasn’t fond of diving. The pool was impressive. There were 2 one meter boards one on either side of a 3 meter board, and on the deep end side of the dive pool there was a 5 meter and a 10 meter concrete tower.

One of my worst experiences as a child occurred when I was standing at the edge of the 10 meter platform trying to get my courage up to jump when I was pushed off the board … I fell a little awkwardly trying to get my feet underneath me and luckily wasn’t badly hurt. My ego was mostly bruised. I’ve struggled with height since then. I’ll say more about my gymnastics later.

Bramley Primary School

In between 1964 and1972 I went to Bramley Primary School. I played soccer, cricket, ran track, swam and dived, and of course I did gymnastics at the Wanderers Club. In high school I added squash, tennis, fencing, gymnastics, cricket, rugby and field hockey. My life was one sports season to the next. My best friends at that time at school were Martin Hurwitz and Graham Rodin and Eddie Sender, in addition to my neighbor friends Grey Stead and Anthony Glass, and the son of one of my parents friends, Michael Egdis.

On Sports Day at Bramley, we assembled in our House (think of Harry Potter) and the House I was assigned to was Roan – we were the red house. My dad was always present at the school. Here he is dealing with the trophy’s on sports day. A friend recently told me that he still remembers my dad at the school. You can see me as a 6 or 7 year old in these two pic, I am leaning forward in the first one, And walking with a Housemate on the field.

I loved sports day. It was so much fun

We used to fly kites in the afternoons at the school, go swimming and diving at the Kingfisher Pool around the corner, play soccer on the play field and play Gaining Grounds (a rugby ball kicking game), and ride races on our bikes when we weren’t playing organized sport. We also played tons of board games, monopoly especially, and we had a Spirograph that I loved playing with. We did puzzles and played cards. The main card game we played was Clubby Ace (more on that later). It was a complicated game that emulated the Bridge that my parents played. We also read books and magazines and listened to the radio. There was no TV to distract us. We had to use our imaginations.

My dad had a Dry Cleaning Facory called Swift Dry Cleaning downtown, and it was always a treat to go to the factory. Mom worked in her rooms (what clinics were called in South Africa). What I remember about visiting her practice “Hosey and Chasan” that was her partner, Francis Hosey. She was always very nice to me and although I never knew her well, she did have the most amazing collection of matchbooks in her house. They had a bar that they had stapled literally hundreds of match books floor to ceiling on every vertical surface. Anyhow, the elevators in my moms building had mirrored walls and they were just out of alignment enough so that you could see thousands of iterations of yourself. I used to ride up and down in the elevator to stare at that. The dentist I used to see was also in that building…as well as the dried fruit place.

One time when Derrick was home from high school before he went off to college, I took a one Rand note (a dollar) I found on the desk in our room (he was asleep) and went after school to the corner cafe, where I became the yo-yo champion, to buy soccer cards.

I used to collect soccer player cards. They came 3 to a lucky packet which cost 3 cents each. I spent about 66 cents and purchased all the lucky packets they had. My little suitcase was filled with cards and gum!

I had a stack of cards and came home feeling a little guilty. I “hid” the change around the back of the house and hid the cards in the Wendy House. Rebecca, the maid found me out back and took me by the hand dragging me inside. She spanked me with my mom on the phone yelling “hit him again” over and over.

By the end of the night, Rebecca, Derrick, my mom and dad had all spanked and beat and whipped me. It was the most severe beating I recall receiving as a kid. Literally hours of getting beat by multiple people. I spent a lot of time under my bed the next few days. My safe place.

At school we played this game where we would stand 20 feet or so away from a wall and have to flick the card to the wall. Whoever was closer, would keep both cards. I got really good at flicking cards so eventually nobody would play me. And I had a fat pile of soccer cards. I was a big fan of Powerlines at that time. They were a great side with a Brazilian midfielder named Santoro who was tricky as hell. My love affair with Powerlines lasted till high school when we got season tickets to Highlands Park.

Coke, Fanta and Sprite made branded yo-yo’s and the store would have these Brazilian guys, who were ridiculously good, run yo-yo competitions outside the café. I was often the winner, I could do all the basic tricks and do loop-the-loop over 200x. The prizes varied. Usually it was yo-yo strings, or vouchers for a soda, or even a new yo-yo, which I wanted badly because my yo-yo was always so beaten up.

I spent hours and hours playing with the yo-yo. I picked one up recently and could still do many tricks! I’ve still got it! LOL

(This guy is who I always imagined I was…I could do some of what he does but he is insane

But in reality, this guy is demonstrating the tricks I did.

One of my pure joys from that era of my life was to go to the professional soccer matches. My uncle Anthony was the radio commentator of Highlands Park, and I used to go to the games with John, and we would get to sit in the commentary box. Often at half time, John and I would go down to the dressing room and ask the players to sign our cards, and we often got lucky. My strongest memory for some reason, is the side Addington FC, a team from Durban that wore white like Leeds.

My auntie Stephanie was involved in show jumping, and I spent many an afternoon with John and Mandy at the show jumping events. We used to search for horseshoes and play throwing games with those. I loved going to those events…the horses were magnificent and I still enjoy watching show jumping having been so close to it as a kid. Sadly I discovered I was allergic to horses and so I was never able to ride much.

I did have a tendency to get “up to no good” as my mom would say. For example, When I was 9, I was playing a game with a friend in my room pretending something or other and I had climbed on top of the cupboard – about 6 or 10 feet tall – Sandy, my dog, got excited about me being up there and put her paws up against the cupboard with all her force causing the cupboard to rock back and forth. Well I lost my balance and fell to the stone floor breaking my left wrist one more time.

My mom, bless her, heart, heard the screaming, came running and assessed the situation the conversation went

Mom: (screaming) “What are you doing?”

Me: (bawling my eyes out) “I fell off the cupboard”

Mom (spanking me) “What were you doing on the cupboard?” (Spank)

Me: (sobbing) “I think I broke my arm” (holds arm up)

Mom: (spank) “serves you right, get in the car” (to my friend next) “Go home!”

Another 6 weeks in a cast.