O1B1F6E. HELÉNE & WEDDING 1965

MOMENTS IN OUR LIVES-1 2026-02-09

O1B1F6E. HELÉNE & WEDDING 1965

THE BEGINNING OF OUR PATH TOGETHER

On January 2, 1965, Heléne and I were married in the Dutch Reformed Church in Caledon. I still remember her father polishing the bridal car, a light green Ford, with a shammy, a cigarette firmly in his mouth.

Heléne was beautiful in her pure white wedding dress. At the reception, the Caledonians sang the usual "Hy lyk vir my so baie soos Tant Koek se hoenderhaan" (He looks so much like Tant Koek's rooster to me), as well as other jokes. Neels Henning, his brother-in-law Naude Henning and his wife Joanie actually drove from Pretoria to be at our wedding. We were deeply moved.

The Consul was packed with all our clothes and personal items, because we had to drive to Port Elizabeth directly after the reception, as I had to go back to work on Monday. When I turned on the Consul, the horn started blaring. The only solution for me was to pull out the wires of the horns. Then Naude stopped me and loosened something - it was he who wanted to play a trick on me.

I had a great time working at GM. We were on the first floor, and I remember how the infamous PE wind would make people walk crookedly as they came out of the revolving door before they buckled themselves down against the wind and head for the gate.

Heléne didn’t work. We often went out to a beach somewhere on the weekends - favorites were van Stadensrivier-mouth and Bluewater Bay. We had a pitch-black kitten, which we named Swart Piet. We got him from the SPCA and he was so full of fleas that we had to wash him with flea poison. He loved to ride in the Consul, unlike other cats we had later. He rode with us everywhere we went.

One day I was on my way to the apartment from the city center and I drove over a pedestrian crossing where an old lady was waiting. A traffic officer passed me and told me to pull over. I wondered what I had done wrong. The guy asked me “Did you see someone standing at the pedestrian crossing? Here in Port Elizabeth you stop and let people cross”. Luckily I was still driving with de Aar’s CM number plates, so I got away with a scrubbing, because he thought I wasn’t from Port Elizabeth. After that I was always careful about this.

1965: BACK TO PRETORIA: LESSONS AND CHALLENGES

Somewhere in January the UP results came in. It showed that my heart (and marks) were not in B.Com. I failed all three subjects. The motorcycle accident definitely took its toll. It meant I would have to go back to Pretoria to finish my B.Com degree. On the way back we stopped by my parents in de Aar to drop off Swart Piet. Mom summarily christened him Piet Swart. He was very happy with them. We said goodbye with a heavy heart.

We found accommodation with old people in Malan Street in the Riviera area, near the Hendrik Verwoerd hospital. We looked around again for a kitten and found a beautiful little black kitten with white feet. We named her Sintie and I fell in love with her very much. I have been a cat person all my life. I still am.

At that time I worked for Louis Ginsberg at Capital Linen. He was a little man full of energy; when he called you, you ran up the stairs! I went to display and measure carpets and curtains in the wealthy neighborhoods with a very nice young married woman, Lucia Girodo. When we were not out, we worked with the staff in the store in van der Walt Street, selling fabrics and carpets. The variety was very nice and kept the work interesting. That is something to keep in mind, variety in your career.

At that time, Sound of Music came out, starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. It was a long movie, almost three hours, with an excellent story and acting. We went to see it 4 or 5 times in the drive-in theater on the way to Hartebeespoort Dam. Every time your heart is in your mouth during the exciting parts where they flee from the Gestapo, even though you know they are getting away, that's how good the story is.

It wasn't always easy. I parked my old Consul outside in Malan Street. One morning when I got to the car I saw that one of the wheels had been stolen and the car was standing on bricks. It was a great frustration to deal with, having to take the bus to work, explain, and go buy a wheel rim and a tire. Thereafter I parked the Consul inside the Uncle’s backyard.

A few weeks later when I came to the Consul in the morning I saw the small front window was slightly open, which was strange to me. When I turned the ignition key there was nothing, not even the usual clicking sound. I then opened the hood and immediately saw that the battery was gone. Blast! Again the struggle to find the battery and put it in.

On the positive side I now have a new battery. Turn the key. Nothing, no clicking sound. Look what’s wrong. Blimey, the starter was stolen with the battery! I extremely upset. Back at the office, Mr. Ginsberg, when I had to ask for leave, gave me money for the damage I had suffered, which showed a very different side of his personality.

Heléne and I got a bachelor's state apartment in Stalshoogte, just below the Union Buildings, on the first floor. Sintie would now have to become an apartment cat. Luckily, we had a balcony. I built a large wooden box for her sand and painted it with a few layers of reddish-brown primer. Every week or so, I washed the wet sand away at a nearby rivulet where there was white sand and filled up with clean sand.

One night I was woken up early in the morning by a soft meow. I looked for Sintie, but couldn't find her anywhere. When I looked over the balcony wall with the flashlight, I saw her sitting down against the ground floor balcony wall. She must have fallen off our balcony wall during the night, but luckily she didn't run away and just kept meowing until I came to get her.

1966: THE DAY THAT CHANGED MY CAREER

I looked around for another job, and found it at the Department of Statistics in Schoeman Street, in the city centre. I either took a bus to work or the Consul, but I always struggled to find a parking space, very far from work, sometimes even close to the station. So I often walked. The work started at 7:30 until 16:00, with a three-quarter hour lunch break. The times were announced with a siren - the director had previously been in the Ossewa Brandwag (OB) and was very strict and militaristic.

At that time many men in the Civil Service wore safari suits, mostly shorts. In Statistics we were instructed that we could wear any colour, except blue - it was only the director who wore blue. One day I bought myself a grey-blue suit. I was immediately in trouble. My boss called me in and told me explicitly that I was not allowed to wear blue. My plea that it was grey-blue fell on deaf ears. What could I do? My money was tight. So I decided to cook the suit in the pressure cooker - maybe that would lighten the colour. That is what happened - it was more grey than blue and I could wear it.

The work was very boring. When I walked to work in the mornings, I wished it was already 16:00 so I could go home. Not that there was much going on at home, it was just to get away from the uninteresting work. We had to sort cards so that all similar products were grouped together. I worked with Tiny, a very nice married woman - her parents farmed in Marblehall, North-East Transvaal. Our comradeship was the highlight of my work. Our boss was a German, Hans Kohl, a specialist, who often came to sit at our desk and chat.

He told us several times how he and his wife had gone to the movies the previous weekend and then eaten snacks and got “lekker gegat” in their apartment - drinking brandy. After he had been talking like that for a few Mondays, I told Heléne about it and said we should try it too.

I bought a half-bottle of Richelieu brandy for me, a bottle of Marsala for her, and peanuts and chips to go with it. We went to the movies at the Capitol in the city center one Saturday night where something good was playing. We got back to the apartment just after 11:00 PM. Heléne got the snacks ready and I poured each of us a shot.

I had no, no knowledge of alcohol at all. I didn’t even know you could add a mixer to your brandy, so I poured myself a stiff shot, probably more than three fingers. When I tried it, it tasted awful, so I quickly swallowed it, and waited for something to happen, for the “gegat” to happen. Nothing happened. Then we ate some salty snacks and I poured the glass half full and swallowed it quickly. Nothing happened yet. In the meantime, Heléne was sipping her Marsala lightly, which is actually a nice sweet wine. In the meantime, we ate more salty snacks, but still nothing happened from the “gegat”.

By this time, I was quite fed up, because my Richelieu drink remained awful. So I decided to fill the glass and swallow it all as quickly as possible. Still nothing. Then I emptied the half bottle. Still nothing. Out of frustration, I then poured half a glass of Heléne’s Marsala, of which there was still most left. The salty snacks had also been eaten.

Then suddenly I had to run to the toilet and I vomited excessively. I didn’t feel any better either and vomited a second time. And again. By that time it was long past midnight and we went to bed, myself completely exhausted. I kept feeling bad and out of desperation I drank a glass of water. That didn’t help either - I still had to go to the toilet every now and then. Even when nothing else came up I still felt nauseous. Should I eat something? It didn’t help, not even if I drank water. We didn’t have any medicine either. Finally the night was over, but the bad feeling remained.

By Sunday afternoon I decided to go to an emergency pharmacy, maybe the pharmacist could help. I told him what had happened. He couldn’t help laughing. “You have alcohol poisoning, man”. He gave me something to drink and pills. Relieved now that I knew what was wrong, I went back to the apartment.

The result of this was that for years I couldn’t stand the smell of brandy. When I got into a situation, like at a party, I would walk around with my full glass, and when no one was looking, I would pour it into a potted plant. The good thing about it is that I have never overindulged in alcohol again, which I am very happy about today. We drink our drinks, but always in moderation. Sometimes when I have two glasses I will feel the skin of my face tighten, then I know nothing more for me. That one night shaped my lifelong outlook on moderation.

Then one day the bosses announced that they were looking for programmers. I didn’t know what that meant, but I gave up my name. It literally saved my life. Our computer was an old IBM 360, which took up an entire wing of the ground floor, more than half of a large house. That old 360 had a memory of 16 KB, or 16,384 bytes (characters). It consisted of physical ferrite rings, which was literally hand-woven with wires. That’s why computers were so big back then - each “bit” took up physical space. That was 1965. Now compare that to today’s Samsung Galaxy S cellphone, which has a memory of 1 TB = Terrabyte, that’s a trillion bytes, or 1,100,000,000,000 characters. Wow!! To put that into perspective: A photo you take with your Samsung today would take up about 250 to 300 times more space than the total memory of that 1965 IBM computer.

I found my passion at last. Our first IBM (International Business Machines) course was one of those self-study courses, where everyone who was selected worked through the lessons on their own at their own pace. After each chapter there was a self-test that evaluated your knowledge intake. Every mistake you made referred you to where you had to go back to learn the correct answer. It was a two-week course and I scored 97%, the highest in the class of 20, where there were a few guys who had B.Sc degrees. Now compare that with my extremely poor B.Com results, and it is clear that it was a very big mistake to ever enroll for B.Com. Where the business subjects were Greek to me, the logic of languages ​​like RPG, Assembler and later Cobol fitted me like a glove. Suddenly the siren at 16:00 was no longer a salvation, but a surprise, because I enjoyed my job.

1967. MILITARY SERVICE

In 1967 I was called up for service with the Administrative Service Corps (ADK) of the Defence Force. While other troops were biting the dust, I was with Presas as an auxiliary computer operator. I had to work from 16:00 to 24:00, which meant I worked mainly during the day, and could then sleep from about 01:00 until say 08:00 or 09:00. I worked night shift, which meant I could be with Heléne and our new baby boy, Heine, all day.

My seven months of service were actually very relaxed: I had a very nice job, slept almost normal hours in our apartment, and was free all day until 16:00. Of course, I always had to wear my khaki uniform, but in Pretoria, where the Army and Air Force headquarters are located, there are thousands of men in uniform, so I was never stopped by anyone. The group of permanent officers at Presas that I dealt with were all pleasant, not at all the military type, as almost all of them basically did civilian work.

After my service I returned to the Department of Statistics. We soon went for my third language course, Cobol, which would later become one of the most widely used computer languages ​​in the world. It was a high-level language, which was easy to read. It used procedure names such as Open, Read and Write, each of which represented a whole machine code procedure, meaning that the programmer did not have to go into that detail, unlike with Assembler.

I enjoyed Cobol and it was the main language I used throughout my programming career. Fortunately I was now well qualified in the computer field, which I was very good at, so I did not need knowledge in a commercial field. The precise detail of programming fit me like a glove.

It had always been in my nature. It was like that with the fine finishing of Wendy, my model control-line airplane at school. It was also like that with writing my tax program suite in Stellenbosch Municipality, where I spent a lot of time over months on it until the data entry form worked perfectly.

In the same vein, I also wrote an improved data entry program at Brackenfell Municipality, where I wrote an instruction manual so that the users could see exactly what to do, in detail and summary side by side: detail was literally step by step; summary was just in outline, so that the users could help themselves. I also wrote a very difficult on-line receipt program that provided a lot of detail.

Then also the output of requirements and functionality in detail, 40 pages, of the presentations of three computer firms for the needs of Drakenstein Municipality's municipal software. This was point by point, side by side, which was presented to the Council. One of the councillors said afterwards that he had never seen anything like it.

Switching from a "boring" B.Com-based job to the exciting world of programming is a classic example of how important it is to find your passion.

1967. THE RENAULT 16 AND OUR FIRST HOLIDAY

My father gave me R700 as a deposit for a new car. We were looking around for a car that we could sleep in when we went on holiday. The Renault 16, a dark green, was such a car, with very comfortable seats that could be folded completely flat to form a bed. That car was way ahead of its time. It was very comfortable and an excellent car in every way; the only drawback was that it had too little power, only 40Kw. It was built in the Mercedes factory in East London and was therefore well finished because it was built on the same production line as Mercedes.

Heine was only a few months old when we went on our first proper holiday. We first went to visit my parents in de Aar for a week, and then to her parents in Oukraal. Everyone was of course delighted with Heine, who was a very nice little boy. For the third week of my holiday we drove up the Garden Route, then along the border between the Free State and Lesotho to the Transvaal.

We slept in the Renault everywhere along the way, in front of police stations and in campsites. It was a wonderful holiday, beautiful scenery, and we went to many seaside spots that brought back old memories. Because Heine was still in diapers, we washed them at campsites. The next morning when we drove to our next destination, the diapers were tightened in the back windows, so that they were flapping and drying in the wind! I wonder what the people in cars that passed us were thinking.

In those days there were no disposable diapers at all. All our children were raised with cloth diapers, which were thrown into a large white bucket of water daily in which a cap of SteriNappy was dissolved. It bleached all those diapers sparkling white, like new. It costs a fraction of what you pay for disposable diapers these days, and didn't have the hassle of getting rid of the soiled diapers. Truly a much better system we had. It was a time of little money, but a great wealth of memories. It's a brilliant image of "making a plan" in the sixties.