O1B1F3E. A KAROO MEMOIR 1955–1961

MOMENTS IN OUR LIFE-1         2026-02-12

O1B1F3E. A KAROO MEMOIR 1955–1961

THE ANCHOR AT CRADOCK (1955–1956)

The year 1955 brought not just a new term, but an anchor. At the end of the second term, Dad got his first permanent post with Cradock as his centre in the North Eastern Cape. There he bought the first house of our own, in Cradock East, near the Dutch Reformed Church and about a kilometre from Cradock High Boys' School, where I would go to Standard 5.

It was a large house with character. In the middle was the dining room, lounge and kitchen, flanked by two wings with four bedrooms and Dad's study. Mum and Dad slept in the left wing, while Louis and I occupied the right wing; Joanie slept in a small bedroom next to us. The yard was spacious, with a single garage and servants' quarters at the back where our full-time housekeeper lived.

It was here that my first "architectural impulses" took hold. Over time, Dad extended the garage and had two large cement water tanks built - Cradock is in the Karoo, after all, where drought is a constant threat. I can still remember Louis and myself helping to lay a cement path from the back door. We had to flodder the cement flat with a board so that the gravel wouldn't stand out. Every meter there was a strip of cardboard to prevent cracks from expansion—my first lesson in the physics of construction.

In the front garden, the battle against nature was even harder. Dad wanted peach trees, but the soil was rock-hard shale. With a pick and shovel we dug 60cm square holes. We filled the holes with water overnight to soften the soil, but I don't remember it making any difference. The digging continued for a few days. Then we planted the trees and mixed the soil with plant material before shoveling it back in. While the ground was still soft, I didn't just play with cars; I built roads, a harbinger of the architect who was waiting in me. The building was always more fun for me than the playing itself.

THE RHYTHM OF THE KAROO AND THE INSPECTOR (1957)

The Karoo was a place of extremes. At one point, Mum planned a succulent garden at the front gate of the ornamental stone fence. She probably got the plants from her brothers in Colesberg; succulents were the only things hardy enough for that world.

I remember the drought on a farm in the Cradock district where the farmer threw scorched prickly pear leaves that had been chopped up for the sheep from a trailer. He said you just cut off a leaf and put it flat on the ground with a stone on top, and it grows by itself. It was a lesson in survival.

There was little lawn around the house, just one, smallish with a small willow tree in the middle. Between the garage and the driveway, Dad planted a grape arbor, on sturdy wooden posts. I had to wash Dad's car there every week, I think for a half-crown. This was necessary, because most of the roads he had to drive were dirt roads.

Dad was, as always, very conscientious. His school district was about 150 miles in diameter and on Sunday afternoons, after teatime, he would already drive to the school he was going to inspect on Monday. I don't know if he showed up at schools unannounced, but he walked into the school with the principal on Monday morning when they opened.

The Karoo is very wide and the towns far apart. He usually did not return home until Friday afternoons. He was a master of Math and Science and his reports were legendary. On Saturdays he processed his handwritten notes on a small Remington typewriter, typed with two index fingers, and then posted them to Cape Town. He was a man of precision and science.

He preferred to drive his own cars - cars that ranged from an Opel Rekord and Vauxhall Velox to the glorious 1961 Chevrolet Corvair with its six-cylinder boxer engine in the back. Then he had a Holden, followed by a Chrysler Valiant. I remember later as a student "drifting" that Corvair through the twists and turns on the gravel roads at Gansgat—a wonderful feeling of power for a young man.

Behind the house I had a small vegetable garden, where I experimented with various seeds, but mainly had success with carrots and radishes, which were deliciously fresh on the table.

The smell of roast chicken and sheep's head on a Sunday afternoon was the texture of our existence, and probably something special for many households. Mum would alternate our main course between leg of lamb, beef tongue, whole chicken, and sometimes sheep's head. Chicken was not as common back then as today's battery chickens. Large free-range farm chickens were a delicacy, browned and roasted in the oven. A beef tongue is a large piece of pink tender meat after the scaly skin has been removed. It has a taste of its own and Dad would cut it into thick slices for us. Few people eat sheep's head today, probably because it doesn't look pretty on a plate with its bared-teeth grin, but they don't know what they're missing. When cooked properly, nice and soft from the oven, there are so many different tastes: the cheek, the tongue, the brain which tastes different from anything else and even the eyes.

Then there were usually fried potatoes, cauliflower with a cheese sauce and other vegetables such as fresh peas and/or sliced ​​green beans. After we had eaten ourselves to the bone, there was some kind of pudding - often baked, or sometimes a cold pudding with jelly or a sponge dish. A dish we rarely got was brawn, boiled down from mainly beef bones, which then formed a kind of brown jelly that solidified in the fridge. Sliced ​​it is very tasty.

I am not a social person - remember what my Sub A teacher wrote. I usually walked to school so late that I walked in the gate just as the school bell rang. Some of the other children sat with their friends against the walls long before that time, in the sun like dassies, especially in the winter cold, which can be sharp in the Karoo. It has been my habit all my life and still is, to arrive just in time for an event - when something interferes I am late. This was often a problem for Rinie, because she never wants to be late for anything, and she is right. As usual.

FRIENDSHIP (1957–1958)

In Standard 7 I made friends with Tommy Coupe. His brother was a blacksmith. He was a "late lamb" with an English freedom that was strange but attractive to me. Together we took to the streets on bicycles. His father gave him much more pocket money than we received. Tommy often bought us Peppermint Crisps, which was a luxury for me. By comparison my Dad gave the three of us a shilling (10 cents) a week for sweets (4 pence each for myself, Louis and Joanie). I remember walking to Limburghia on Saturdays, a small shop near our house. They had a glass case behind which were the sweets, most of which we never bought because they were too expensive. Our choice was limited to liquorice, such long strings for a penny; black nigger balls, which change colour the further you suck, 4 for a penny; 4 Wilson toffees for a penny, or 4 Hills toffees which were so hard that I broke a tooth on them a few times.

The owners of Limburghia made their living by supplying daily products such as sugar, butter or white margarine, milk, bread and meat to the surrounding houses on credit. They sent a colored man around daily (except Sundays) with a simple notebook in which each housewife wrote down what she needed. Each house's order was then made up and delivered the same day. At the end of the month, a handwritten bill was delivered, which was paid immediately in cash.

Tommy was also the one who taught me a fundamental life lesson. One day he asked me to cycle with him to Lake Arthur, 17 miles from Cradock on a gravel road. When he asked again on Friday I said but I told you I am going along. He explained that his other friends often came up with weak excuses. Right then and there I decided my word was my honor. Nothing short of a broken leg would stop me.

Tommy never participated in school sports, but if he had, he would have done very well, because his reactions were razor-sharp. Later when we met in Pretoria, he told me that he had come second in the Northern Transvaal cross-country race while doing his army service.

Our paths crossed again in Port Elizabeth. There he told me that he had once in Lyttleton, Pretoria been involved in a collision with a car that had run a red light. He was on his BMW motorcycle and was doing almost 100 miles per hour. Tommy was thrown high into the air by the force of the collision. As he spun in the air, he saw the accident happen below him. Like a cat, he landed on his feet with only superficial scratches.

MY MODEL AIRPLANE WENDY (1958)

By Standard 7, model airplanes had become my world. I had based my own design on the Hurricane, the British fighter plane of World War II, and named her Wendy. It was a control line model, I think with a .5cc diesel engine. The fuel was a mixture of ether and castor oil.

I spent hours and hours on it, first the design, then constructing it mainly from balsa wood, except for the hardwood beams to which the machine was screwed. Next everything was sandpapered smooth. The wings were covered with silk, which was tightened with dope. Everything was painted with dope again. Finally it was painted with color dopes, a beautiful metallic blue, I think with red stripes.

Tommy was by then a master with his “Stunt Queen”, which was basically a flying wing control line model with I think a 1.5cc glow plug engine, much more powerful than my diesel, and his fuel was a more explosive mixture. His control lines were also longer than mine.

Some weekends we went flying on the Rovers Rugby Club field, which had an athletics track. Tommy filled the tank with fuel. He parked the Stunt Queen in the middle of the athletics track at about the 50 metre mark. I had to hold the tail fin. Tommy swung the wooden screw (propeller) a few times anticlockwise to suck fuel into the combustion chamber. Then he connected two wires from the large battery to the glow plug and the exhaust port with crocodile clips. This made the glow plug glow. Then he swung the propeller clockwise. Usually the engine fired immediately and he adjusted the fuel supply so that the engine reached its highest revs.

He then walks to the centre of the rugby field with his hand control. He tightens the wires and test that the ailerons are working correctly - top is up, bottom is down. If he is ready, he shows me that I can release the tail fin, which is now vibrating from the power. The Stunt Queen shoots forward. Tommy lifts the tail but keeps the front wheels on the ground until the plane gets close to the edge of the athletics track. Then he pulls up the hand control and the Queen shoots vertically into the air. The tail fin is set in such a way that the plane pulls away from the hand control in order to keep the control lines tight so that the plane responds to the slightest movement of the hand control.

Tommy is a master and makes the Queen do all sorts of tricks. What he likes to do is fly the Queen upside down, and this only about a foot above the rugby field. It is very daring stunt, because if you turn the plane like this it means that the top of your hand control is now down and vice versa. If you forget that for a moment, you'll fly your plane into the ground. "No room for errors".

I never had the courage to loop with Wendy, let alone fly upside down. I can remember many a Sunday sitting in the church pew with the family and during the sermon being far away in my mind's eye, busy giving Wendy another coat of paint.

In later years Tommy told me how his Stunt Queen met her end. On that same track he was flying one day, holding the hand control only lightly. Perhaps there was a breeze, then the control slipped from his hand and there the Queen flew away, until the control, which was then dragging along the ground, got caught somewhere. There the Queen flew into the pavilion benches, completely destroyed. I can still smell the ether and castor oil, and the diesel and glow-plug engines roaring.

RUGBY, ROUGH WRESTLING AND CONFRONTATION (1958–1959)

Karoo life was full of drama. In 1958 there was a wrestling match on a Saturday night between the Wildeman of the Kalahari and Ski Hi Lee, a giant American. Ski Hi Lee had been paraded through the streets of Cradock the previous Friday in a Fiat 500. He had been standing through the sunroof, from his thighs up, and looked truly gigantic, while shouting challenges about how he was going to tear the Wildeman apart. All of this was of course advertising to attract more people to the match.

The pitch was set up in the middle of Rovers' rugby field and hundreds of chairs were packed around the pitch. On Saturday night, men and women from Cradock and surrounding towns were there to see the match of the century. It was rough wrestling at its best. The Wildeman was dressed in pitch black as usual with a tight-fitting black skullcap (balaklawa) so that only his eyes and nose showed. He looked small compared to the American, who was dressed only in tight-fitting red shorts, his entire body tanned.

Ski Hi Lee bragged to the crowd before the fight how he was going to destroy the little Wildeman. When the fight started he grabbed at the Wildeman, but he only grabbed air, that’s how agile the Wildeman was. Wildeman’s best weapon was his ostrich kicks, with which he repeatedly staggered the American. As is the case with rough wrestling, everyone got their chance to throw a punch or apply a hold. The people shouted their encouragement to Wildeman and eventually it got heated there in the ring.

Until Wildeman kicked the American out of the ring with a well-aimed ostrich kick. Then the American was angry. As he climbed back into the ring one of the farmers threw a chair at him (at that time wooden folding chairs). Ski Hi Lee jumped out of the ring and shouted “Who done it!”. The people rushed towards him, then he charged at them and they moved away like a retreating wave. It was fascinating to watch. He finally left the crowd and climbed back into the ring, where Wildeman peppered him with ostrich kicks again.

You often hear that rough wrestling is very showy, but one thing is for sure: those men are truly supernaturally strong and they can take a lot of punishment. The end of the story was that Wildeman won the fight. Everyone had a wonderful exciting evening and many people's hearts were pounding in their throats at times, so good was the entertainment.

Periodically in those days Boswell circus came to Cradock. A giant tent was pitched, with all the wagons and all the animals around it. Especially our young group tried to go and see the animals, mostly in their cages, before the show. Especially the predators, the lions, tigers and leopards. You could sometimes see the artists, still pale without their make-up. The elephants were also a big favorite, each tied to a pole with just a rope around the trunk. Apparently they are conditioned to just stand there and not run away.

During the show everyone sits on scaffolding around a circle within which all the shows take place. Some children who don't have money to buy a ticket slip under the tent's canvas and then climb the scaffolding for a spot.

The show is well varied, with artists swinging breathtakingly high on ropes. Predators are driven by their tamer armed with only a whip. Elephants walking in a circle with their trunks attached to the funny little tail of the one just in front, and standing on a stool, or on their hind legs. Monkeys have also been taught to perform many tricks. In between, the clowns entertain everyone with their jokes - they are great favorites with children. Especially the dwarfs, all made up with thick layers of bright paint and funny clothes. Nowadays, circuses have greatly decreased in popularity, partly because everyone now has TVs, and also because many people feel sorry for the animals who have to live like this in captivity.

I myself played rugby for the "Fish & Chips" 3rd team. One match against Volkskool in Graaff-Reinet stands out because Dad was among the spectators. I gave it my all and took many balls in the lineout, until my opposition once took my legs out from under me and I hit the grass with a thud so that my breath was almost knocked out. This only made me more determined and a few lineouts later I caught the ball cleanly, burst through the line and ran for the goal line - the lineout was about on Volkskool's quarter line. I was not aware of what was happening around me, but I just heard someone shouting to me "Hennie", then I threw the ball to our left wing, who went and scored under the posts. It was a wonderful feeling, and I knew my Dad saw me make that try. We lost the match, because the opponents were a stronger team than us, but it didn't matter - I gave it my best.

That evening I was with Dad when he was driving home in his Opel Rekord. Somewhere along the road in the dark we only saw two dots of light on the road and the next moment we were over a steenbok that was blinded by the lights. Dad stopped and we picked up the little body, beaten to death, and loaded it into the trunk. Mom cooked the meat for a few nice meals. I felt very sorry for the poor kid.

In Standard 9, Louis and I passed under Dad’s hand. It was a Sunday afternoon and Dad and Mom were sleeping in their bedroom in the left wing as usual after dinner. Louis and I were in our room in the right wing.

We thought we were speaking softly, but Dad’s hearing was always very acute. He came into our room and walked to Louis where he was sitting at his table. He turned his ear and said “You don’t have ears”. Louis screamed in pain, probably to make Dad stop. I was furious about it. Then Dad came to me where I was sitting at my desk with my face to the wall. When he turned my ear and said again “You don’t have ears”, I said equally loudly “Yes, we do!”.

The next moment he jerked me out of my chair, spun me around and slapped my face so that I sat on my haunches. My eyes flashed with anger. At that moment I hated him. Fortunately my feeling didn’t last long, I think because I knew I had challenged his authority, and that was not my intention. I don’t know what my Dad thought of that whole episode, but my defiant behavior was certainly not acceptable to him, because it did not align with his own philosophy of life.

COLESBERG: THE SILENCE OF THE VELD

A farm holiday is like no other holiday, the incomparable space and silence. The holidays at Gansgat and Twyfelpoort were sacred to me. As the eldest grandchild, I explored the veld alone.

My first task when we arrived at Gansgat was to make myself a sling. First I look for a nice branch, especially from peach trees. This is cut to the right length, with the bark removed where the elastic bands should fit. Then I look for elastic in the tractor shed, where broken inner tubes are stored. Finally I look for a piece of leather, in which two holes are cut where the elastic is tied. The elastic is cut to the right length and width and tied with rope. Armed with my sling, I now go and find a trouser pocket full of round stones of the right size, then I am ready to look for birds.

My father knows how to motivate people. The birds eat the fruit, so he pays me a penny for a sparrow, a sixpence for a buzzard, and a shilling for a starling. In all the years I hunted like this, I only shot a buzzard once and it stayed clinging to the top of the tree, so I couldn't show it to my father. I could never even get close to a starling. So my prey was always the innocent sparrows. Later years I read a book about a sparrow family, and I was very sorry that I had hunted them like that.

In high school, Uncle Pieter lent me his .22 rifle, which I really enjoyed, to go to the field and hunt dassies that were eating up his field. I remember once of several times that I climbed the high mountain behind the homestead. Up against the cliffs where the dassies live, I chose a place to lie down, with the .22 aimed at where the dassies are sitting in the sun - they naturally run away like lightning when I get close.

Because their hearing is so sharp, I load a cartridge in the chamber and press the lock so that it is almost ready to fire. Now I lie dead still and wait, the sight aimed at the place where they are lying in the sun, indicated by the urine streaks down the rocks.

It is a high mountain where I lie and wait and it is dead still, only the sighing of the mountain wind coming up the slopes. I hear Aunt Salome call: “An-ge-lii-naaa”. The workers houses is a long way from the farmhouse. Angelina answers: “Jaaa Noo-oi”. The sound is carried and distorted by the wind. As the crow flies it is probably between one and two miles from the house to the cliff where I am lying.

After a long time the dassie leader sends out a small dassie to come and see if everything is safe. I lie dead still. After a while the big dassie, probably the leader, comes out and lies down. I carefully and silently take aim. Then I push the lock down the last few millimeters. The lock makes a soft clicking sound as it comes ready to fire. Instantly all the dassie heads swing towards me. I lie frozen. After a long time the dassies relax and no longer look in my direction. I aim exactly on the leader and pull the trigger slowly. When the shot goes off, the dassie rolls off the cliff and the others disappear like lightning inside the cliff.

Angelina was married to Jerry and together with their children they have been living with Uncle Pieter for many years, even as far back as when Uncle Pieter and his family were still living in the visitors’ house at Gansgat, and then at Villeria in the Hanover district. I ate the most delicious peaches there. Uncle Pieter always had a penchant for fast cars, all American at the time. He had a beautiful, sleek and low Studebaker Commander, whose V8 filled the entire engine compartment. Uncle Piet later sold it, because he said it was too fast.

Uncle Piet always had a very good relationship with his workers. He cursed them when necessary, but those who had guts stayed with him, like Jerry and Apools. Once in cold weather they had to bring Aunt Salome’s Angora silk-hair goats to the kraal for the cold ahead and they were lying limp, so Uncle Piet chased them through the field with his Vespa and a whip - they ran as fast as they could.

Uncle Piet was apparently a car mechanic on Colesberg before he started farming, and he was always very interested in everything mechanical. He had a large workshop on the farm and for a few years built dams for farmers with his “Caterpillar D6” crawler tractor.

I can still remember well one winter morning at about 9 o’clock when we were still in bed. Tyre, the pitch-black driver, started the small petrol engine, which ran with such a high “prrrrr” sound for a while. Then he slowly let out the clutch and the big diesel started with its deep bass voice “Doef-Doef-Doef” until it ran smoothly. Then Tyre kills the petrol engine and starts his work.

For me as a young child it was always very impressive to see heavy machinery at work. Even when I was a student in Pretoria, I stood where new tower blocks were being erected and watched how crawler tractors dug up the soil and stones, how the driver even lay forward when the machine struggled to break a hard piece of ground.

Angelina was Aunt Salome's right-hand in the kitchen. For years they baked at home and supplied confectioneries and meat for the Home Industry in Colesberg.

An incident that I remember was once when we were there on holiday. Oom Pieter was sitting outside next to the rondavel and we were drinking beer. Jerry arrived there, then Oom Piet said to him: “Jerman, come sit here with us”. Jerry immediately sat down on a chair. Then Oom Piet and he talked about the farm, and the more they talked, the looser Jerry's tongue became. Until he suddenly said to Uncle Piet: "Pietman, you are not doing right on our farm." Uncle Piet argued with Jerry for a while, and then told him he could go now.

When Jerry became too old for farm work, Aunt Salome appointed him as her gardener and he kept her garden beautiful, until he became too old for that. Then he lived on the farm on charity until his death. He was buried on his beloved Twyfelpoort.

Tommy's brother once had to go to a farm to get an axle and two wheels to build a trailer for the farmer. He then saw an old “Red Indian” motorcycle lying among the rubbish and asked the farmer if he could get it, then he would make the trailer cheaper. He then rebuilt the motorcycle, and so Tommy got a motorcycle in Standard 9. We often rode it around.

It was a shock to me when Tommy told me one day that his experience with farms was limited to one day when he was on a farm with his older brother. Tommy had been in a farming community all his life, and he had never actually been on a farm. It was shortly before the March school holidays in Standard 9.

I called Oom Piet, explained the situation to him, and asked him if Tommy and I could come and visit them during the holidays. We then took the road to Colesberg. The old Red Indian motorcycle's engine stalled a few times due to overheating. After Tommy let it cool down for a while, we were able to continue driving. Middelburg, Noupoort, Colesberg, 200km. Then out to Twyfelpoort, about 30km of gravel road. Uncle Piet and Aunt Salome welcomed us warmly. Uncle Piet lent us his .22 rifle with cartridges and we rode all over the farm on Tommy's motorbike. We went up the mountain, rode all over the veld, and even rode around the Orange River on Uncle Piet's riverboat. It must have been something special for Tommy.

MATRIC AND THE CANDLE FLAME (1961)

By matric the world had started to change. I was always terribly shy of girls - I would literally cross the road to avoid them. But then I met Maureen van Staden. She was in the Trade School and lived a few streets above us.

My heart was irrevocably lost. We walked to the cinema at curfew, safe in an era that is now gone. I wrote to her at the time: "I am like a moth around a candle flame". I was caught in the glow of a youth that was as hard and real as the Karoo rock.