University Travel Lodge

We arrived in Seattle on September the 4th of 1977. It was a beautiful day. Going through Customs as we entered the country, we dealt with an immigration agent who was an old hippie with long grey hair. He went through the forms one by one and when he came to one particular form, the one that said that if there was a draft, I agreed to be drafted.  He took 10,000 pounds off my shoulders. Or at least if felt like that is what he did. Instead what he did was tear up the form saying ” we don’t have a draft in this country”. It turns out that just prior to our arrival, Jimmy Carter had cancelled the draft, which had an amazing impact on me. I had grown up with the idea that I would serve in the military for most of my 20’s and now that was gone as a consideration.

We went through customs and came out of the door to see Nicola, Terry and Jo along with Eric with a big bunch of balloons welcoming us. We got into Eric’s big green station wagon and he drove us to his home in Laurelhurst in the NE section of Seattle. We went on the Express Lane which was largely in a tunnel so I did not really get a glimpse of Seattle until we emerged and I could see lakes and water and green everywhere.

We pulled into their neighborhood and it was very clear that people were milling around, playing with Frisbee’s in the street, washing their cars, and so on…my impression was that the whole city was on vacation. I didn’t know that it actually WAS a public holiday.

Eric and June had a beautiful home in Seattle, with a wonderful view of Lake Washington and Mt. Rainier. They had invited friends, Bob and Marilyn, Beth and Marty, Gene and Rachel, who my mom and dad had met the previous year and we got adopted into the extended Seattle family. Eric and June had a spectacular view of the Lake and the Cascade range, and it felt really good to be here.

We lived in an apartment in the University Travel Lodge across from the University Village shopping center while my parents searched for a house.

I got a job painting the interior of a big old house in the University District with a woman in her 50’s named Virginia. She was wonderful. She had a southern accent and was married to her psychiatrist husband who practiced in the house. I hardly ever saw him. But Virginia and I talked and talked as we prepped and painted. She introduced me to a French Press for a delicious coffee blend she had concocted from this little coffee store in the U Village – Starbucks. At the time, there were two stores. One in the U Village and at the Pike Place Market. Who knew?!

I loved Seattle immediately. It’s a beautiful city, in a beautiful region, and there were no troubles like existed in South Africa. People were seriously chill by comparison. Terry and I hung out, we trained together. Terry was a top ranked cross country skier and was getting ready to head to the East Coast for college. It was really great to have my cousins in town.

Eric told me that I had to “show up for a test on Saturday” at an address he gave me and an appointed time. I didn’t know what it was, and it turned out to be the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or the “SAT”. and I had no idea what that was. I completed the test and scored well enough to secure my entry into the UW. I went to the college to register for classes.

My dad and I had an interesting experience that sort of illustrates what the change in culture was like for us. We went to buy a car and he and I were both amazed that every person we dealt with was a woman. South Africa was as sexist as it was racist….so the bus driver, the car sales person, the insurance sales person, the bank loan officer – all women. My dad and I actually talked about both that that was the experience and also that we were amazed by the experience of seeing women in those vocations.

My first day of school was the next day. The very first person I encountered on campus was a carpenter. She was a woman too and I realized what a different country I was in.

My first class at the UW was The History of the United States since 1940 lectured by Otis Pease. It was a brilliant class that gave me a context for the United States that I had moved to. You have to understand that in South Africa we had no American history at all. All we really knew was what we had seen in Hollywood movies. American history since 1940, the war years, WW2, Korea and Vietnam as well as the shifts in culture here at home with the Civil Rights moment and Title 9 made for an interesting introduction into the then current context.

I will say that I found the Seattle Times and Seattle PI to be very regional newspapers with little international or national news. Growing up in South Africa had made me hungry for news of the larger world.

I also registered for Math 101. This was a lecture delivered in Kane Hall…There were 1000 people in the class. It was really hard to get my head around a class that big – bigger than my entire high school. I made the point of sitting at eye level with the professor so that when I had a question, he would see me.

It was hard trying to get used to dealing with foreign grad students who didnt speak English.  In my Chemistry class, for instance, my first TA was from China and literally spoke no English. My second one was from Italy and barely spoke English. I almost failed Chemistry as a result.

I used the money I made painting Virginia’s home to pay for school and to buy a bicycle and I rode my bike to school every day for 5 years. It wasn’t a long ride, but it finished with a stiff up hill climb both ways. The campus was huge. There were 35,000 students there every day and lot and lots of buildings.

As a Freshman, I had to go see the Freshman Adviser….a meeting that had a profound influence on my life.

I don’t remember the name of the woman I talked to. She asked me what I was interested in? I said “sports medicine and computer science” she said “There are no jobs in computer science”. And that was that.

I mean this was 1977 and at the very moment there probably were not that many jobs in computer science…but she directed me to PT where there were presently 40,000 jobs open in the USA. I figured that because my parents were struggling to get settled. My dad was having a hard time finding work, and my mom didn’t have her license yet, it made sense to go into a career where I could get employment quickly, so I agreed with her assessment and made the decision to pursue the pathway to PT.

I can’t help thinking how differently my life might have gone if I had pursued computer science back then.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My youth was joyful. We were really the last colonialists. I was actually born in an English Colony, The Union of South Africa. I remember when we became an independent country in 1961 – I was in grade 2 of primary school 1966 when we got an oversized coin commemorating 5 years of independence from Great Britain.  It literally made no difference in my life.

We lived in kinda a big house on Lynden Road, well it seemed big to me. There were servants quarters, near the kitchen, 4 almost- bedrooms, well really 3. Although Derrick and I shared the glassed-in porch, in truth, he was mostly gone, but when he came home, he shared the room with me.

Derrick was gone a lot, he was 12 years older than me, and when I was born, he was shipped off to boarding school in Port Elizabeth – Kingswood College I think. As a little kid I sure looked up to him and my sisters – worshiped them really. Derrick was close friends with Howard, and Carol was dating Malcolm for most of my recollection. Sue started dating Rex soon after Carol and Malcolm started dating. The both ended up marrying them. It’s crazy to write this now given that Sue and Rex are long divorced and both Carol and Malcolm died a few years ago (2016) and then Sue passed away suddenly in 2019. Her sudden unexpected death was truly shocking. I now that Sue passed away, it’s just me and Derrick left, and Derrick has recently chosen not to talk to me, which is so bizarre. Life is short. He was always a selfish bully when it came to me.

I was kind of a wild kid I suppose. Well not really wild, but more like curious and fully self-expressed. I have a couple of key memories: for instance I remember climbing, a ladder at age 6 or 7, and then continuing to climb to the high peak of the roof. I felt like the king of the world sitting there astride the peak. I felt pretty accomplished till I realized how high up I was, and then I was suddenly both terrified and stuck. The evening ritual at the time was that my mom would ring a “dinner bell” to get me in from around the neighborhood. I heard the bell. I yelled down

“I can’t come!”

Mom: (sing song) “why not?”

Me: “I just can’t”

Mom: “Where are you?” (still sing-song)

Me: “Up here!”

Mom: “Where?”

Me: “Up here!”

Mom comes out and looks up!

Mom: (panicked and screaming) “Stay put don’t move”

Luckily the painter was still there and he crawled up to the peak of the roof, had me climb on his back, and he climbed down.

Naturally I got thrashed for that. More on my routine thrashings later.

There are memories I have of setting the grass on fire once. I think I was 6 and we had this great vine of granadilla (passion fruit) between our house and the neighbors- Mr. and Mrs. White, and my friends and I used to spend hours climbing around he vine picking granadilla’s and eating the sweet crunchy nectar.

Well one winters day (Johannesburg had dry winters) my cousin Terry and I were playing in the back yard and we tied a rubber duck to the pole of the clothes line. It was a metal pole so I didn’t think much about setting the mound of dry grass and the duck on fire.

What I did not anticipate was that the dry grass would catch fire. That led to the trash cans behind the garage catching fire. That led to the dry granadilla vines that were above the trash cans on the fence catching fire. It all happened so fast that before I knew it, the flames were reaching to the sky.

I did the only thing I could think of. I ran away.

Well, I wasn’t allowed to cross the street at that age, so I “ran away” to the end of the block. I tried to persuade a well dressed African man to hold my hand to help me across the street (I had to hold the hand of an adult to cross the street), but he wasn’t having any of it. I was negotiating with him when my dad called – or whistled – for me to come home. Reluctantly I walked home, my head hung low. I knew I was going to get whipped.

My dad thrashed my behind till I was crying hard. He used to hit me mostly with his belt when he punished me. He was brutal. He sent me to bed .. it was lunchtime.

Corporal punishment was commonplace. My friends dad’s used canes, sjamboks (rhino hyde whips), paddles, and branches to whip them. Anthony’s dad used a sjambok, and Grey’s dad made him go and cut a branch from the willow tree in their yard. I was the lucky one. Throughout my life, I got hit by adults. By my parents, by my siblings, by my teachers, by the maid, and by the school Principle. I don’t think a week went by till I was finished high school where I did not get caned. Not one week. I got beat with a strap my first day of primary school, and with a cane during my senior year of high school. I had beatings at home until I was about 14. When I was 16, and my dad slapped me hard across the face, I stood toe to toe to him, coldly told him menacingly that “that will be the last time you ever hit me”. It was.

Grey lived next door, Anthony across the street more or less. We were famous friends. We built model airplanes together in the Wendy House, we had sand clog fights over the back fence pretending we were on ships of old. In Joberg, the dirt made these big clumps that we called a “sand clog” that, when thrown with enough force, exploded on contact. We used to use the metal trash can lids as shields and the clogs would explode when they hit them. Great fun.

One of my purist pleasures was to climb the Pussy Willow tree in the front yard while it bloomed, and play with those soft flowers. Being up there with the birds and the bees was heaven.

In the fall, we used to make kites and go up to the primary school soccer field and see how high we could get our kites. My record was 6 balls of string. The kite was literally tiny in the azure blue sky. Bringing it down and keeping the string from knotting was always a challenge, but we had a blast.

My brother came home from boarding school and was home for a year when I was about 6. He used to tease me. I had big ears. It seemed that my ears where the only part of my body that was growing! So he would say “Stand on the desk, and flap your ears and see if you can fly to the bed (across the room)”. And of course, because I worshiped my big brother, I tried. He and his friends had a good chuckle.

Living in that house was like living in a castle for me. I was tiny and the house seemed so big. It was the 60’s so there was sparse phone service. In fact, we had a party line, which meant that the phone had a distinct ring if it was for you, and other rings for other people. You could listen in on a neighbors conversation if you wanted. 5 homes were sharing a phone with us at first.

One day when I was about 6 years old, my dad said “let’s go” and we jumped in his car. I had no idea where I was going. We were going to a farm nearby to select a dog.

We needed a dog. We used to have Happy, a big white mutt with brown ears that showed up and stayed. Cheri was a French Pug, and my sister Sue had Cleo, a little black Miniature Poodle. Cleo and Happy died so my dad took me to get my dog.

I knelt at the edge of the wire pen and this little brown and black striped puppy with a short tail came scampering over. I immediately named her Sandy. I loved Sandy. Sandy was wild.

We sent her to Dog Training Camp, and after that, every week I’d take her to dog training class. Being South Africa, dog training class was training your dog to attack (black) people. We would set the dog off after a man running with an arm guard (a big hessian cover) and the dog would sprint 30 or 40 yards after the running man and launch himself at him taking him down. Those brave men used to only get bit on the arm guard. Amazing.

There I was, just a little kid, training my dog to attack black men. Thinking back on it now, it’s so weird. But gradually I got control of Sandy. More or less.

Sandy and I were inseparable. I loved that dog so much. She was my companion. My friend. My playmate. She slept on my bed and to this day I like the feeling of my dog laying on my feet.

I say “almost”, because Sandy would do stupid things. We used to have the whole family, and extended family, over for big Sunday lunches. Every Sunday. Roast beef or roast leg of lamb, roast potatoes, salad and always ice cream. Granny Annie, my moms grandmother would come over. She used to make these great perrogen – little Russian mince meat pies – that went great in soup. Well Grannie Annie was old and she walked slowly with a cane and Sandy insisted on jumping up to greet her and inevitably would knock her over. Occasionally she would get hurt. And both me and the dog would get whipped.

Another time I got into trouble was when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I came home from school and really needed to go number 2. I ran in and ran up stairs to the toilet at the top of the stairs.

I was sitting on the potty looking at the 4″ square white tiles and noticed that the grout was poking out…now I didn’t know what grout was, and there was no malice in my actions. Picking at the grout, a tile fell to the ground. I picked it it up and tried to put it back in place (I was completely ignorant of the process or method of securing a tile to a wall – I was 6). Two tiles came away and fell to the floor.

I finished my business, and flushed the toilet.

I picked up the two tiles and tried again to replace them…but this time 4 tiles fell away leaving a big grey hole in the middle of the wall. I was petrified. I knew I was going to get whipped.

I thought about it a minute and said to myself that “if the whole wall was the same color, nobody would notice”…..(6 year old logic)

I proceeded to remove every single tile…floor to ceiling…from the entire room. It took a while. Then I went and hid under my bed.

Needless to say, I got thrashed by my dad with his belt. Did I say he was brutal? He was.

One time I avoided getting thrashed because my mom and my sister came to my rescue. My dad thrashing me with his belt was something I hated, and he was so brutal that even my mom and sisters would cover for me. I tried to avoid it at all cost. The truth is he didn’t beat me often, but when he did, it was harsh. I was bruised for weeks.

The situation in question was that dad forbid fireworks. In South Africa, being that it was an English Colony, we celebrated Guy Faux Night. This was the main fireworks night that we had. There were always sparklers (which I was allowed to have) and at the end of the night, the organizers would burn a big straw man filled with fireworks on a bonfire. (Maybe the origin of Burning Man? – just a thought).

Well my dad was opposed to fireworks. He would say “its just like burning money”. He had strong objections. Well in spite of that, I always managed to talk my mom into buying me a package of “Tom Thumb” fire crackers.  Small crackers that I could play with.

She would get them for me as long as I would light them at the bottom of the garden. Well one day I took the liberty of lighting one in the living room.

I didn’t notice it but a spark landed in the middle of my dad’s favorite chair. What happened was that it burned a hole in the middle of the cushion about 3 inches around. This was an unmitigated disaster. The reason is that every night, and I mean every single night, my dad would come home from work, go to the living room after dinner, go to his favorite chair, FLIP HIS CUSHION OVER, then sit and read the newspaper.

He did this every single day without fail.

I was in fear. He was going to thrash me for so many reasons (wasting money, lighting fire crackers in the house, and lying) and it was going to hurt bad.

My sister and my mom came to my rescue…for a very long time…..what they did every day for years…was tell my dad that they just flipped over the cushion for him….and he bought it every single day. I kid you not.

When we were packing for the move to America 12 years later, he saw the burn and asked about it and my mom said “Oh, than happened years ago ” and he just shrugged…I feigned ignorance.

I was sporty but small. I played soccer every day. I’m our back yard we would set up goals and play 3-and-in for hours. If my friends could not come over to play, I’d kick the ball 20 yards aiming at the clothes line, and I’d hit it quite often. If we weren’t playing 3 and in, we played one bounce, an elimination game allowing only one bounce between touches. We got pretty good with our feet. Often, after Sunday lunch, all the boys (I was almost always the youngest) would go play One Bounce in the back yard. I was given a yellow, full size, soccer ball for my birthday present one year, and we literally played the cover off of it. Soon enough it was no longer bright yellow, it was a mix between brown and gray.

Derrick was a big cricket fan and when he was home, we would put up a milk crate for wickets and he would bowl to me … when I got my very own new cricket bat it was like a magical day.

The bat was a white willow with a red taped handle, the spring went half way down the bat. I got a brand new kookaburra ball too. That deep red shiny ball with the single yellow stitched seam, and I used that ball to break in the bat by putting it in a sock and hitting the bat a thousand times

In the summer I spent most of my time with my cousins John and Mandy. John and I would play cricket in the back yard, and John and Mandy and I would play tennis or swim in their pool when at their house. Sometimes John and I would go to the Wanderers Club to watch Test Cricket. I recently watch professional cricket on the telly and wow, what a slow game it is. It does seem that the batters are better than they were because they seemed to just score a mad amount of runs, hitting the boundary at will.

I used to love spending time at John and Mandy’s because they lived near the Zoo and the War Museum. We literally spent all day there so often. I really became interested in war machines after studying the equipment there hour after hour for years.

John had a kids chess set and I became interested and taught myself how to play. I was about six years old at the time. I played with Eddie my very smart close friend who was my closest friend all through high school too. Eddie also did gymnastics with me and we also made our high school projects together.

I really grew up in the shadow of the war. Uncle Anthony, John and Mandy and Adrienne’s dad, was a Spitfire pilot who fought in The Battle of Britain. He always seemed larger than life to me. More about him in a bit. My dad and his brother, my uncle Neville,  were in the South African Army infantry serving in East Africa during the war. I understand that my dad was somehow involved in guarding German and Italian prisoners of war in Kenya. It was here in East Africa that my dad developed his deep love of the African Bush, and through him, how I developed that same love. My dad was so proud of his time in the service that he married my mom in his army uniform.

We didn’t have TV growing up, there was no TV is South Africa until about 1976, so we either sat in the living room reading in front of a coal fire, or we listened to radio dramas, and we sometimes used to have movie evenings. Often it was my dad showing his 8 mm home movies, but as I got older, it was rented 16 mm movies, and invariably we saw black and white war movies. Films like The Battle of Britain, The Longest Day, and other black and white films glorifying WWII. I became good at running the projector during those days. It made me feel important to be in charge of the projector, changing reals and fixing skips. Those skills carried over first at high school where I often ran the projector when we had things to watch like the test match between the All Blacks and the Springboks (rugby), and then in college when I was still running the protector on the day I graduated at the graduation ceremony.

I also had an HO  train set and a “Scale Electrix” car racing kit. The Lotus was my favorite car.

I used to set up the train – which took hours – and play with it when I could get the electricity to work, which always seemed difficult, and I also used to spend hours building a great race track for the cars and play with them either by myself or with friends. It often took hours because the I was into car racing from early on. Kyalami Race Track was near our home and my dad used to take me to watch the races. I remember being in the Pit on practice day one year, when I almost got nailed by an F1 Ferrari as it came into the garage. I jumped out of the way of the wing….it probably was not that close but it scared the shit out of me. I think it might have been this car…. I have followed F-1 since those days as a result of being at the track as a young boy. I am still a fan.

During those days I had already started gymnastics. I remember my mom bringing me to the Wanderers Club when she found me doing handstands and cartwheels. I was a little pipsqueak in those days but a little wild and fearless.  I tried all the tricks and learned all the skills I could on all the apparatus but tumbling was my first love. We used to do these huge displays for people (parents and family members I guess) – and I was always a contender in the hand stand competition.

The instructor was a guy named Neville Graham who was a national team gymnast and he was also the son in law of my parents good friend Iris and Laddie who had this amazing yard with a fish pond and big trees where hundreds of exotic birds were resident. (I recall falling in the fish pond fishing for tadpoles when i was 3 or 4.) They used to feed the birds every day around 4:00 and it was like Dr. Doolittle. I remember being there one day when a peacock came to feed. It was amazing to see so many birds – all quite wild, including a peacock – standing patiently waiting for Iris to spread the seed.

On Sundays, my dad and his mates used to work on cars. Laddie had a pit so that they could get under the car to do oil changes and so on. I used to like hanging around and listening to the men talk about the engines. It was this experience that had me take apart my first car as an adult and try to rebuild the engine.

I was 6 years old when I broke my arm the first time. I was on the high bar and I was doing giant circles with the coach – that day a guy named Phillip, spotting me. Well I lost my grip and went flying. I landed more or less on my head between two mats and unconscious fell over onto my left wrist folded awkwardly underneath me cracking my ulna styloid process.

The trip to the hospital is vague, but I remember the anesthesiologist telling me to count to 10 and I remember getting to 3!

I woke up in the dark not sure where I was when I felt the weight of the cast on my arm. I remember feeling like I was a “big shot” because I had a cast.

I was pretty hard on the cast and had softened it up so much that the doc extended my time and wrapped it again with fresh plaster. It was pretty heavy, and when the cast came off, my arm involuntarily floated up… it was weird.  I stood there with my left arm extended out sideways. It stayed there for a few minutes. Totally weirded me out.

In those days, my diet was mostly supplemented by icing sugar. My mom used to bake a lot and I used to lick the dish but my favorite thing to do was to take a little silver egg cup and press it down into the icing sugar and just lick that. Needless to say my teeth suffered. I had so many cavities that needed filling. I spent many an hour at the dentist. t had one of those drills that had a long metal chain that drove it and it made a terrible noise. I hated it. The ritual was that if I was “good”, I got to go into the dried fruit store in the lobby after being at the dentist, and I always selected dried apricots. Still have a fondness for them.