Primary school years, part 3

This part is not directly linked to primary school other than that it is about the period of my life when I was in primary school.

I don’t recall when the Parrys moved in next door to us, though it was definitely while I was still in primary school.  Their son. Neville, is the same age as me and they had two daughters, one who was a couple of years younger and another several years younger still.  Neville and I spent many hours playing together – mostly backyard (or in this case actually sideyard) cricket.  Our scorecards had us playing the roles of the international starts of the day, not just South Africans but other teams too, including the mighty West Indies teams of that era, among them the fearsome fast bowlers Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, spin bowler Lance Gibbs, magnificent batsmen such as Rohan Kanhai and Clive Lloyd, and Garry (later Sir Garry) Sobers, generally considered to be the greatest allrounder of all time.  We could only read about their exploits, rather than being able to see them play.  Because of Apartheid South Africa could not play against the West Indies, so there was no chance of seeing them live.  But South Africa didn’t get a television service until 1975, so we couldn’t see them on TV either.

Neville and I were reasonably evenly matched in backyard cricket.  But he was a much more talented sportsman than me, going on to play both cricket and rugby at a high level in high school, whereas I didn’t even achieve mediocrity.  Effort and enthusiasm cannot make up for lack of talent.  Neville attended a different primary school – closer to our neighborhood – but then was at Grey for his first year of high school, before transferring to Graeme College, a public school in Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown).  He was there for a couple of years and then at Bryanston High for his last two years when the Parrys moved to the Johannesburg area.  (I think Neville’s father, Errol, went to Graeme College.)

Apart from playing cricket, Neville and I did other things together, including building “tree” houses.  I put tree in quotes because they weren’t in trees but on top of the frame of what was a roofless car port.  At one stage my mother promised to bake us a chocolate cake if we slept in the tree house overnight, which we did, though just on one occasion because the floor of the tree house was too cramped to be comfortable.

We may not have been able to watch sport on television, but we did occasionally go in person to some games.  My father took me to a couple of football (soccer) games featuring the local team Port Elizabeth City (P.E. City) which played in South Africa’s National Football League (NFL, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_(South_Africa)).  I remember the ones that we went to being evening games, played under floodlights.  I don’t know which year it was, though probably 1967, the year P.E. City won the league.  P.E. City was the first South African team to have a full-time professional squad.  They brought out players from England and Scotland – ones who were nearing the end of their careers or who had realized they weren’t going to succeed at the highest level in their native country.  http://www.vb-tech.co.za/nflsoccer/club.php?id=port_elizabeth

This was still deep in the Apartheid era, so there were no Black players in the NFL.  Some very famous Black clubs were founded a few years later, including Kaiser Chiefs, Orlando Pirates, and Moroka Swallows.  They played in a separate league for Black teams until the two leagues merged in 1978 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Professional_Soccer_League_(South_Africa).

Shoplifting and stealing.  One day when I was about 10 years old a friend and I went to a nearby convenience store.  (The friend may have been Neville, but I really don’t remember.)  The store had containers of loose sweets (candy) towards the back of the store.  I put a few pieces in a pocket in my shorts.  When we went to pay for our legitimate purchases, the shopkeeper noticed the bulging pockets of my shorts and, suspecting I was shoplifting, asked me to empty them.  I don’t know why, but in those days I used to have many handkerchiefs in my pockets.  I proceeded to start pulling out the handkerchiefs, almost like a magician’s trick.  After I had pulled out several, the shopkeeper seemed to think that the bulges had been just handkerchiefs and said I could stop.  I don’t know what he would have done to me (or us) if he had seen the candy.

At about the same time I started stealing small (and sometimes not so small) amounts of change from my father.  I knew where he kept loose change and some banknotes in the top drawer of a dresser and from time to time would take some.  Eventually he noticed that money was missing and confronted me.  When I confessed, he slapped me across the face – the only time that I can recall him ever hitting me.  He also said: “What would Neville think if he heard that you had stolen money?”  I didn’t tell him that I had got the idea from Neville!  (Honor amongst thieves?)  As punishment, I wasn’t given any pocket money for the next year or two and for the same period wasn’t allowed to have the Coca Cola or other soft drinks that my brothers and I were given at lunchtime on weekends.  I have never again taken anything that wasn’t mine.  I think one of my brothers may have done something similar a few years later because at some point my father asked me if I had taken money again.

What did I do with the money I stole.  Some of it I used to buy extra track or a new car for my Scalextric slot-car racing set.  Also football (soccer) trading cards.  These used to come in “lucky packets” containing two (or it might have been three) cards plus some sweets (candy) or it may have been bubble-gum.  This led to an early exposure to the idea of random variation, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  Some of the cards were quite rare.  If I recall correctly, one of the rarest was for the Scottish player George McLeod (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McLeod_(footballer,_born_1932)) who came to South Africa for the final year of his footballing career.  We kids believed that there was one George McCleod card in every box containing a gross of lucky packets (at least I think it was a gross per box).  So Neville and I used money we had saved and purloined to buy a gross box.  We were disappointed.  Although we did find some cards that we didn’t have yet, there was no George McCleod.  How does randomness apply to this?  Well, even if on average there was one George McLeod card in every 144 lucky packets, that doesn’t mean there would be exactly 1 in a specific box of 144 packets. 

A recent model Scalextric set

As well as a Scalextric set I also sometimes played with my father’s (electric) toy trains.  Other favorite toys included Airfix plastic model soldiers (1:72 scale, I think) and building plastic model aircraft and ships.  My brother Mick used to paint the models he built and maybe also even some of the small soldiers, but I didn’t have the fine motor skills or the patience to do that.

Airfix model soldiers:  World War II British 8^th Army

When friends came over, such as for birthday parties, we often played war games, or cops and robbers, or cowboys and crooks (or Indians).  Sometimes the toy guns we used were a bit more realistic, in that they could shoot things.  Everyone is probably familiar with water pistols (or water guns more generally).  Spud guns (potato guns) shot small potato pellets.  For a while Sekiden toy guns were popular.  These shot small, light pellets that weren’t shot hard enough to cause injury (unless perhaps a close-up shot to an eye).  The pellets were quite expensive, but we discovered that the seeds of a common shrub in our garden were about the same size as the pellets and worked just as well (better, in fact, if one considered that the seeds were harder and travelled further).  I think the shrub was a variety of Callistemon (bottlebrush).

Sekiden toy gun

Bottlebrush seeds – ammunition for Sekiden (photo from Wikipedia entry for Callistemon)

Life as a professional singer:  I bet you didn’t even know that I was once a professional singer.  Someone who gets paid to do something is a professional, even if it isn’t a full-time job and they are paid just a pittance.  When I was young my parents weren’t very religious.  They went to church at Christmas and Easter, if at all.  My father was brought up Presbyterian (originally Church of Scotland).  When I was very young, at Christmas we went to St. Columba’s Presbyterian Church.  The Christmas service we went to was family-friendly.  All I remember about those services is an angel that went flying up (or down) at some point in the service.   Later (or maybe even at about the same time) our parents made us attend Sunday School.  We went to St Hugh’s Anglican Church, which was a little less than a mile from our house.  (My mother had been brought up Anglican (originally Church of England).)  

The church had a fairly large and active choir, including children and adults.  At some point they needed new members for the choir and held auditions.  I was unsuccessful, which would be no surprise to anyone who has had the misfortune to hear me try to sing.  A few years later the choir again needed new members.  By that stage they were more desperate and accepted me without an audition.  Choir practice was on Thursday evenings and we had to sing at two services on Sundays – Communion at 9 AM and Evensong which I think was at 7 PM.  We were paid a very small amount for attendance at practices and services.  (We were sometimes asked to sing at weddings or, more rarely, at funerals.  For weddings we were paid by those who were getting married, and they tended to be reasonably generous.)  By my last few years in high school the choir had dwindled to just a few hardy souls.  The only two I can recall are a Mr. Boreham, who was quite elderly, and a Miss Armstrong, who was the organist and choir leader.  

After I was confirmed I could take communion, including drinking the communion wine.  I don’t know what the alcohol content was, if any, but I remember it being a sweet wine.  (According to an article in The Telegraph on 2/9/2025, the Church of England recently rules that communion wine cannot be alcohol-free, and gluten-free communion bread is also prohibited – “bread must be made from wheat flour and wine must be the fermented juice of the grape in order to be consecrated as part of the service.”  Back in 2017 the Vatican also outlawed the use of gluten-free bread for Holy Communion, according to an article in The Telegraph on 7/8/2017.)  The communion “bread” at St. Hugh’s was in the form of a white coin-shaped wafer, about the size of a US quarter.

St Hugh's Anglican Church (from their FB page)

St Hugh's Anglican Church from Google street view

For a while I participated in cubs (cub scouts as it is known here in the US).  The troop I belonged to met in the St. Hugh’s Church hall.  As was often the case, I wasn’t much good and didn’t manage to earn many badges, maybe just the one mentioned in the item below.  Everyday tasks, such as lighting a fire, are beyond my level of expertise.  I didn’t last very long and didn’t progress to scouts, though I seem to recall going to one cub jamboree.  Cubs (and scouts) periodically had to participate in Bob-a-Job, that is, doing small jobs around the house or neighborhood to raise funds.  A bob was the nickname for a shilling (later 10 cents, once South Africa moved to a decimal currency.)

The ”1^st Star” badge may have been the only one I earned as a cub.  I don’t recall what we had to do to earn that.

The church had a fairly large paved area between the main church building and the hall, as well as all around the hall.  Some of us often used to ride our bicycles there, whether before or after cubs, or at random times.  We used to play a low-speed “cutting off” game, where we would try to maneuver to cut one another off and make the other person have to stop against a wall or put a foot on the ground.

My father would occasionally get fed up, either with something our mother said or did or with us kids, and would say he is going to leave us.  He would walk out of the house and up the street, staying out for a while, maybe until he calmed down, and then returning.  I remember one occasion when I said I was going to leave with him (clearly, I couldn’t have been the source of his irritation that time) and so we walked out together.  We hadn’t gone very far when I asked when we were going to go back home!

Our parents bought our house in 1957, when I was about 3.  Initially it had 3 bedrooms and a single bathroom, with a separate toilet.  The bathroom had a bath but no shower.  It was painted a weird pink color with randomly splattered small dots of black paint.  The hot water cylinder was clearly visible, high up against one wall.  When Mick was still quite young, he and I shared a bedroom, which had a double bunk.  I had the lower bed.  As Mick must have been old enough for it to be safe for him to climb to the upper bed, I was probably already in primary school by this stage.  Later I moved to a bedroom of my own while Mick and Ian shared the bedroom I had previously shared with Mick.  It was only once I went off to college that Mick and Ian had their own bedrooms. 

Mick and I sitting on the front steps of our house.  The bottles to the left of me in the photo are empty milk bottles.  In those days milk was delivered to houses early in the morning, with the empty bottles being taken away for refilling.

Rough plan of our house as I remember it, before any additions/alterations.

Scan of a very blurry photo of our house before any additions/alterations.

In maybe 1966 or 1967 my parents had a new master bedroom added, with an en suite bathroom, plus another new bathroom and separate shower.  The old bathroom became an extension of the kitchen.  The passage to the new wing was through where the toilet had been.  The new master bedroom meant that instead of our parents’ bedroom being next to that of Mick and Ian, it was now next to mine.  Why this is relevant is that then I could hear my parents arguing on some occasions when they had had a bit too much to drink.  (It was only ever raised voices, never any violence.)  Usually I couldn’t hear what the arguments were about, though on one or two occasions it had something to do with the principal/owner of the small private school at which my mother taught English and History.

 According to that school’s web site, it was founded in 1963 https://hillcollege.co.za.  So my mother probably started teaching there when it was founded or quite soon afterwards.  A couple of my Facebook friends attended the school and remember being taught by my mother.  Back then it was called The Hill School, now it is The Hill College.  The original principal/owner was apparently an excellent teacher but not a very good businessman.  I believe the school was in financial difficulties when in the 1970s my mother and some of the other teachers bought out the original owner.  My mother became principal until my parents moved to Pretoria at the end of 1979.  I don’t know what became of my mother’s share of the ownership.

 The next addition to our house was a backyard swimming pool.  This may have been in 1967.  We – especially me – put in a lot of effort to move the earth that had been dug up for the pool to the other side of the backyard to make the latter more level and so better for playing cricket, soccer and other games.  It was worth every bit of effort because before that the ground had a substantial slope.  

Google Maps image showing what our old house looks like now.  It is the house with a small red circle I have drawn on the roof.  The pool is clearly visible on the right, with the part of the backyard that we had levelled being on the other side of what looks like a wall extending out from the house.  The brown shape is some kind of artefact on the image.  I created this image several years ago and it is much clearer than what is on Google Maps now.

Apart from living with my maternal grandmother in 1965 as mentioned above, we often travelled to Knysna to stay with my maternal grandparents (or just my grandmother, after my grandfather died).  Not only was Knysna home to my grandparents and other relatives, it also has nice beaches nearby and is relatively close to Port Elizabeth –about 165 miles / 265 km, though in those days it was necessary to negotiate a few mountain passes, where the going was very slow.  (There are now toll roads that avoid the passes.)  When I was at university in Cape Town, it was convenient to stop off in Knysna on the way to or from Port Elizabeth.  Later, Riëtta and I spent part of our honeymoon there, staying with my favorite uncle and aunt, and we visited on other occasions too, including once with our son when he was 2 and later with both kids, when they were 2 and 7.

My paternal grandparents lived in Gillitts, a municipality about 15 miles northwest of downtown Durban.  As far as I can recall, we visited them just twice.  That is probably partly because Durban is a lot further from Port Elizabeth – about 565 miles / 900 km.  It was perhaps also because my father didn’t get on particularly well with his father, maybe because the latter was a rather abstemious Presbyterian.  My father didn’t seem to be close to any of his family.  I am not even sure exactly how many first cousins I have on that side of the family.  Nevertheless, I think my father and his father exchanged letters (handwritten letters from my father, typed ones from his father) most weeks until my grandfather died aged 99, about 10 years before my father died. 

My paternal grandparents.  I presume this was at their house in Gillitts.

I think both our visits to those grandparents were while I was still in primary school, though I don’t know when.  I remember very little about those visits.  My grandparents had an orchard with pecan trees and we picked some of the nuts.  On one of the visits, probably the earlier one, we visited the whaling station on Durban’s Bluff and saw dead whales being hauled up the slipway to be cut up.  About my only other memory is of what was probably my first encounter with “political correctness”.  I’ll explain after giving some background.

South Africa has a quite sizeable Indian population.  Starting in about 1860, many Indians came to what was then the Natal Colony to work as indentured laborers on the sugar cane fields.  After their contracts ended, some returned to India, but others remained in South Africa.  Later arrivals from India included merchants and professional people, most prominent being Mahatma Gandhi, who lived in South Africa for 21 years, from 1893.  (Several Indian doctors worked with my father.  Some of them had done their medical training in South Africa, others in India.  They used to come to parties that my father held in our house for his colleagues.  The wife of one of the doctors, Ramola Parbhoo, always wore very elegant saris.  I made contact with Ramola through Facebook several years ago.  Because her then-husband was already working as a doctor, I presumed that Ramola was closer to my parents’ age.  A while back I discovered to my surprise that she is just a couple of years older than me.  Ramola has published some books on Indian cooking in South Africa – see image below.)

Ramola Parbhoo – Traditional Indian Cooking in South Africa

The Indian population is substantial enough that in the later years of the Apartheid era Indians had one of the chambers in the Tricameral Parliament.  In 1983 there was a referendum among White citizens about having separate chambers in parliament for Indians and so-called Coloureds.  Prior to that there had been just a White parliament.  The outcome of the referendum was that from 1984 until it was disbanded when Apartheid ended, there was a tricameral parliament, with the House of Assembly being for White people, the House of Representatives for Coloured people, and the House of Delegates for Indian people.  Each chamber had power over the “own affairs” of their race group.  “General affairs” needed approval from all three chambers, but as the number of members in the White chamber was more than the sum of the members of the other two chambers, things were still essentially under White control.  (For more information see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricameral_Parliament.)

You may notice that the description of the Tricameral Parliament makes no mention of the largest race group in South Africa – Black people.  That’s because officially there were no Black citizens in South Africa.  In 1970 Black people were stripped of their South African citizenship and made citizens of various autonomous “homelands” (also called “Bantustans”), even if they had never set foot in their designated homeland.  Four of the homelands were granted “independence” though this was never recognized by other countries.  If any evidence is needed for the sham nature of the independence, it is that they reverted to being part of South Africa when Apartheid ended.  (For more information see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan.)

Back to the point this was working up to.  Durban has long had a large market, now called the Victoria Street Market, with many vendors and stall holders (https://www.victoriastreetmarket.co.za/).  Back in the 1960s the stall holders were mainly, perhaps even exclusively, Indian.  Many of them sold various Indian spices from large open sacks or other containers, giving the whole market a strong, almost overpowering, aroma.  On our first visit to Gillitts / Durban, when we went to look at the market my parents referred to it as the “Coolie Market”.  On our second trip I asked whether we were going to the “Coolie Market” again.  My parents seemed shocked that I had used that name and said it is the “Indian Market”.  I didn’t remind them what they had called it on our previous trip.

Primary school years, part 2

Sixth and seventh grades

My parents didn’t explain why we spent just the second half of 1965 in Knysna even though my father was in Cape Town for the whole year.  I presume it became too expensive for us to stay in Port Elizabeth while my father lived in Cape Town.  I know our house in Port Elizabeth was rented out while we were in Knysna.  The tenants were still in the house for a while after we returned for the start of the 1966 school year in January.  So we spent a week or two in the Humewood Mansions hotel opposite Humewood beach.  While we were there I went swimming in the ocean after school each day.

A photo of Humewood Mansions from many years before we stayed there.

Another one from many years later.

In the time I spent at Knysna Primary I slipped behind my peers at Grey both academically and socially.  Unlike at Grey, in Knysna we seldom had homework.  I became even lazier than previously.  For a few years after that, when my school report was below what people seemed to expect of me, I used to blame the time spent in Knysna.  My parents rather diplomatically never mentioned that they had wanted me to stay at Grey as a boarder.  On the other hand, Knysna Primary had a much more diverse student body, not just girls and boys and English and Afrikaans, but also a broader socio-economic range.  So I had valuable lessons in learning to get along with a variety of other people

I don’t know when I acquired the nickname “Fatty” though definitely had it for several years at Grey Junior.  It wasn’t an ironic nickname.  I was certainly not obese, and maybe not even particularly fat relative to some kids these days.  But I was definitely chubby and didn’t lose most of the excess baggage until I was about 21.  I was self-conscious about my chubbiness and usually wore loose-fitting shirts rather than T-shirts.  At the beach or a swimming-pool I spent most of the time in the water.  Apart from being self-conscious, I didn’t mind the nickname.  I much preferred it to the one that replaced it (more on that below).

Looking chubby.  I don’t know when or where this photo was taken.

Through fifth grade we had one teacher each year, who taught all subjects (except PT and swimming).  For our last two years of junior school we had subject-specific teachers.  Unlike in high school, we stayed in the same classroom for the whole school day and the various teachers came to us.  However, we still had one teacher assigned as our class teacher, who was responsible for things such as our report cards.  (In high school each teacher had a classroom and so we would move from classroom to classroom for different subjects, but still had a class teacher responsible for reports.) 

I don’t recall much about 6^th grade.  I see from the mid-year report card that our class teacher was Mr. “Eggy” van der Nest.  His brother, “Birdie” was also one of the teachers at the school.  That was the last year as Headmaster for “Porky” Edwards, who served from 1946-1966.  Porky may have retired from Grey Junior, but he popped back into some of our lives as a math teacher a little over a year later.  More on that in the high school episode.

Mid-year report card in grade 6.  I don’t seem to have the end-of-year one.

Grade 6 or 7 class photo, with teacher “Eggy” van der Nest

In 7^th grade the school had a new Headmaster, Mr. Alec Jardine.  Our class teacher was Mr. Henry Martin.  If I remember correctly, he drove an old Borgward car.  As noted in their comments on my mid-year and end-of-year report cards below, both Messrs. Martin and Jardine believed (correctly) that I was lazy academically (and I didn’t score well for “Neatness” either).  I am intrigued by how they calculated the “Final Percentage” in those days before personal computers or even pocket calculators.  Perhaps the two languages were weighted more than the other subjects, because a straight average doesn’t give exactly the same result as written under “Final Percentage” whether or not one includes the “Neatness” entry.

Mid-year report card in grade 7

End-of-year report card in grade 7 (last year of primary school)

I remember a couple of embarrassing incidents from 1967, one illustrating the kind of tricks memory can play and the other how slow-witted I was (and am).

Usually we were not allowed in the school building before or between classes.  One day it was raining and those of us who arrived at school early were allowed to shelter in our classrooms.  I don’t remember how many of us there were, other than that Graham Buchanan was one.  He was wearing a raincoat that looked somewhat like a World War II German trench coat.  (We were part of the generation born soon after the war ended.  Some of our fathers, including mine, had served in the war.)  Because Graham’s raincoat looked somewhat German, we decided to make it look even more so by drawing swastikas on it using blackboard chalk.  Graham’s mother saw the swastikas when he arrived home (or maybe it was the next time he needed to use the raincoat, which might partly explain my memory lapse).  When she saw what had been drawn on the raincoat she called the principal.  The day after she called, Mr. Jardine came into our classroom and demanded to know who had drawn the swastikas.  I don’t know whether it was fear of punishment that blanked out my memory, but at the time I had absolutely no recollection of being one of those who had drawn them.  It wasn’t until a few days later that I recalled the circumstances.  (No-one else owned up either.  I don’t know if that meant I was the only one involved.  Graham was there and wearing the raincoat at the time.  He was definitely a willing participant.) 

Why would Graham have been wearing a big coat inside the school?  The school had neither heating nor air conditioning.  Temperatures in Port Elizabeth are generally mild, so wearing appropriate clothing is sufficient to keep one warm.  From Wikipedia: “Winters are cool but mild and summers are warm but considerably less humid and hot than more northerly parts of South Africa's east coast.  The climate is very even throughout the year with extreme heat or moderate cold rare.”  The all-time record low temperature is -0.5 C (31.1 F) and the record high is 40.7 C (105.3 F).  Average rainfall is about 590 mm (23 inches) per year.  The section on the climate in the Wikipedia entry makes no mention of wind, which is incessant, though the main part of the entry does say it is nicknamed “The Friendly City” or “The Windy City”.  The wind often abates somewhat overnight, so early mornings are relatively calm, before picking up again.  Cape Town is even windier.  It wasn’t until I lived in Pretoria that I realized trees could grow relatively straight if not continually battered by wind. 

Although I don’t recall what subject Mr. Jardine taught us, I do remember that he was our teacher for something.  One day he had us all stand.  He then said all those who had ever tried smoking a cigarette could sit down.  Remember that this was 7^th grade, when we were about 12 years old.  Just two of us remained standing.  (I don’t recall who the other one was.)  After that he said those who had ever told another lie should stay standing, otherwise we could sit.  I didn’t parse the “another lie” part correctly and so stayed standing whereas the other guy sat down.  The whole class started laughing at me for still standing.  I tried to explain that I was admitting to having told some lies in my life but that I was being truthful about never having tried a cigarette, but the damage had been done.  (I had probably tried alcohol by then.  From when we were quite young our parents let us have a glass of wine with a meal on special occasions.  This wasn’t just at home but also in restaurants.  No checking of one’s age before serving alcohol back then.  In the episode about high school I’ll mention the time when I was 15 that I thought I was at least slightly tipsy, but actually wasn’t.  How’s that for a teaser?)

The slow-wittedness as demonstrated by the incident above is part of the reason my “Fatty” nickname gradually became replaced by another one, which I detested but that I was stuck with through high school. 

Some South African history is needed first for context.  Before South Africa became a multi-racial democracy there were two official languages, English and Afrikaans.  (There are now 12 official languages.)  Afrikaans developed from Dutch.  Although there is still substantial overlap between Afrikaans and Dutch, they have become distinct languages.  (Perhaps because there were still too few works of literature in Afrikaans when I was in high school, we had to study some Dutch books in Afrikaans classes.) 

The Dutch were the first white colonists in South Africa, in 1652 starting a settlement at what eventually became Cape Town.  Towards the end of the eighteen century Great Britain occupied Cape Town.  It changed hands between the Dutch and the British a few times before larger-scale British colonization early in the 1800s, most notably the 1820 Settlers, who landed in what became Port Elizabeth.  Many of the Dutch were farmers (boere).  After British occupation of the Cape, many of the Dutch trekked (moved, by wagon trains) inland in what became known as the Great Trek.  They founded two Boer republics, the South African Republic (also called the Transvaal, meaning beyond the Vaal River) and the Orange Free State.  When gold and diamonds were discovered in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, respectively, the British tried to take over.  The Boer republics managed to resist the invasion in the First Boer War, but the British succeeded in the Second Boer War in 1899-1902 (also known as the Anglo-Boer War), eventually leading to formation of the Union (now Republic) of South African in 1910.  During the latter war the British made large-scale use of what have been known since then as concentration camps.  Tens of thousand of Boer civilians and soldiers died in the concentration camps, through starvation and neglect rather than deliberate genocide.  (What I hadn’t realized until recently, when I read this book https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Prophet_of_the_People.html?id=O9vxEAAAQBAJ by a neighbor here in Chapel Hill, is that many Black people were also interned in (separate) concentration camps.) 

Partly because of the war itself and partly because of the concentration camps, Afrikaners harbored much bitterness towards the English.  On the other hand, many of the English looked down on the Afrikaners as being unintelligent, with one crude expression being “As thick as a f---ing Dutchman.”.  I don’t know where the idea that Afrikaners were stupid came from.  Maybe it was because many of them weren’t very fluent in English and sounded dumb when trying to speak it.  On the other hand, far more English speakers, including me, were even less fluent in Afrikaans.  (After 26 years in the US I speak Afrikaans better than I could in the first 26 years of my life.)  Each language group had various nicknames for those of the other language group.  Examples include “rockspider” to refer to an Afrikaner and “rooinek” (red neck) to refer to an English speaker.  The derivation of rooinek is different from the American use of “redneck” with the derivation of the former apparently being that people arriving from Britain were not used to the African sun and became sunburnt, especially on their exposed necks.

Apartheid kept the race groups apart.  On the other hand, there was no formal separation of the two white “tribes”.  People from the two language groups tended to live in different neighborhoods and in cities and larger towns to go to separate schools.  But, as noted from my time at Knysna Primary, in smaller towns the two language groups were accommodated in a single school.  Even at Grey there were a few kids of Afrikaner background whose parents preferred to have them in a good English-medium school.  Without formal separation of the two language groups, there was often more opportunity for antagonism between them than between whites and people of other races.  Rugby, being a very physical game, provided an outlet for the antagonism, with matches between English and Afrikaans schools tending to be quite rough.  Antagonism was particularly strong at university level.  Students at Afrikaans-language universities tended to support the Apartheid government whereas those at English-language universities tended to oppose it.  (My parents used to refer disparagingly to the pro-government universities as “tribal colleges”.)  Animosity was particularly strong between the police, most of whom were Afrikaners, and students at English-language universities, who often held protests against the government and against police brutality.

Back to the point of this digression.  Because I seemed to be “switched off” and to be stupid, some fellow students began to say I was as thick as a f---ing Dutchman, leading to my nickname becoming Dutchman or shortened to Dutchy.  I should note that not only do I not have any Dutch ancestry, at that time my command of the Afrikaans language was pitifully weak.

One of our other teachers was Mr. “Ozzy” Osbourne.  (He may have been the deputy Headmaster.)  Mr. Osbourne’s favorite saying when one of us did or said something unintelligent was “You stupid fool you’ll never get to the hiiiigh school.”  Most of us did make it to high school, though not all of us to the high school right next door.

At the end of each term the school rented movies and screened them in the school hall.  South Africa didn’t get a television service until 1975.  (More about that in a later episode.)  Probably because of the lack of TV and thus of visual news, movie theaters played not just ads and trailers for forthcoming attractions, but also Movietone News.  As far as I can recall –this is something I hadn’t thought about since finishing primary school – the school didn’t rent feature films, just shorts, mostly slapstick type comedies and low-budget black-and-white Westerns.  Nevertheless, we used to enjoy these movies.  The windows in the hall were quite high and had pull-down blackout curtains.  Soe of the more senior students used to climb up and sit on the inner windowsill.  I am not sure whether that was necessary to keep the curtains in place or they just liked the high vantage points.

At school we had informal “seasons” when we participated in various activities during breaks (recess) in the school day.  Marble season was early in the school year.  I was quite good at marbles – one of the very few things I was quite good at.  I usually managed to win enough marbles that I could sell the excess to classmates (at a better price than they would be able to get elsewhere).  Later in the year was (spinning) top season.  For those who don’t know what these kinds of tops are, see the photo below.  The tops were made out of wood.  One wound string around them as in the photo and then threw them on the ground, holding the end of the string so that as the string unwound it made the top spin.  One could either just try to see how long one could make it spin or try to knock over someone else’s top so that it stopped spinning.  Silkworms hatched at about the time that leaves on mulberry trees came out, and then it would be silkworm season.  We had a large mulberry tree in our yard, so had a plentiful supply of leaves for the worms to munch on.  Although I had heard that the worms would spin different color silk if fed different types of leaves, such as from beetroot, I never tried anything other than mulberry leaves.

Example of a wooden top

We also used to play various games.  In lower grades they were ones such as Red Rover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rover#Game_instructions.  (Jump to the “Game instructions” part if it doesn’t automatically go there.)  In higher grades it was usually either cricket or football (soccer).  These were pick-up games, distinct from the more formal after-school sports.  Soccer was not an official school sport at either Gery Junior or Grey High..  The schools seemed to believe the old saying: “Football is a game for gentleman played by hooligans.  Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.”  (Whoever believes that has never spent time on a rugby field or in the company of rugby players.)  So there wasn’t a soccer field or soccer goals.  We used just articles of clothing and such-like to mark the two ends of the goal.  Although not an official sport, there were occasional matches between boys and teachers.  I was never good enough to be on the team for one of those games.  There were various soccer clubs that were not affiliated with any schools.  Several of my peers played on club teams.  I don’t know why I didn’t join one of these clubs.  It was probably because I was too lazy – not lazy in terms of playing, but with regard to things such as getting to and from practices and games.  One popular club among my peers was P.E.M. (Port Elizabeth Municipals?).  I don’t recall what the rest of the uniform looked like, but they had what were called wasp socks, because they had horizontal yellow and black stripes.  It looks like there are now houses where their playing fields used to be.

For the pick-up cricket games, usually two of the kids were captains and then they took turns picking other kids to be on their team.  On one occasion in 6^th or 7^th grade I wasn’t picked by either captain.  I was told, in effect, to go away by one of the other kids, Derek Finnemore, who I don’t recall as having been a particularly good player himself.  I remember feeling very hurt.  Later I decided that I would be responsible for bringing the bat(s) and ball, and then I couldn’t be left out.  I also took responsibility for bringing a ball for soccer – usually a light plastic (or maybe vinyl, according to a Google search) ball made by Frido.  The balls would occasionally get punctured and then I’d get some of the other kids to chip in towards buying a new ball.  We continued planning soccer through high school, and I continued to be the one who brought the ball.  In 12^th grade there were just a few of us still playing and then we used a tennis ball.

In terms of after-school sport, the primary ones were cricket in the warmer months and rugby in the colder months.  The school had a few cricket teams that played against other schools.  The rest of us played just intramurally.  I don’t remember whether those games were between classes or between houses (a la Harry Potter).  The school’s web site has this to say about the houses: “Four houses operate within the school, namely Draycott House (yellow), School House (red), Edwards House (purple) and Faure House (green). Inter-house competition is fierce, which helps to maintain the high standards of academic, sporting and cultural excellence which have become a hallmark of the school. This balanced development of body, mind and spirit is also encapsulated in the school motto – TRIA JUNCTA IN UNO – meaning three joined in one.”  In my day Edwards House was called Way House and I think the color was blue rather than purple.  Way House was renamed in my final year as Edwards House after “Porky” Edwards retired at the end of the previous year, after serving as Headmaster for 20 years.

Most local schools had multiple rugby teams but few cricket teams, so rugby was usually inter-school rather than intramural.  Having read this far you won’t be surprised to learn I wasn’t any good at rugby.  That wasn’t helped by having to use ill-fitting and uncomfortable boots (cleats) from the school’s secondhand store.

In the early grades there used to be an annual sports day involving activities such as egg-and-spoon races, sack races, and such-like.  Being slow and uncoordinated I was never any good at those.

One day in 7^th grade I saw a number of boys running through the school grounds.  When I found out that it was a cross-country race, I wondered why I hadn’t heard about it beforehand and thought it was something I would like to try.  I don’t know why I thought I might be any better at that than at any other physical activity.  That may have been the only cross-country race at the school that year.  I didn’t hear of any others, and it wouldn’t be until about 3 years later that I first ran cross-country.  More on that when I write the episode about high school.

The school had a tuck-shop that was open only during breaks (recess).  It sold mostly sweets (candy) and fizzy, sugary drinks.  For most of my time in primary school a few of the older boys worked behind the counter.  There wasn’t an orderly line of boys waiting to be served.  Rather, it was more like a rugby scrum, with everyone pushing and shoving to try to get to the counter and then shouting to make their orders heard.  Younger/smaller kids would ask older/bigger kids to “buy for me” – I think they offered a cut of the proceeds.  Eventually someone in authority must have decided this was unseemly, so the tuck shop was closed for a while and then reopened with some of the boys’ mothers working behind the counter and enforcing more civilized behavior.

In 1967 some classmates and I were hired to sell scorecards at the 5^th cricket test between the touring Australian national team and South Africa.  A “test” is a cricket match between two countries, lasting for up to 5 days, with 6 hours of playing time per day.  That was the only type of international cricket match at that stage.  Since then, shorter versions, taking just a day or even just a few hours, have been introduced.  The 5-day version of cricket is still played.  In fact, the 2024 Boxing Day test between Australia and India played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) had an all-time record attendance for a test at that ground.  The test at the MCG starting on Boxing Day has been a tradition for many years, though Australia’s opponent varies from year to year.

The main cricket ground in Port Elizabeth is in St. Georges Park.  The first image below from Google Maps shows the cricket ground and part of the rest of the park.  The second image, also from Google Maps, shows a game in progress.  The caption on Google Maps says the photo is from January 2020.  Judging by the size of the crowd and that the players are wearing white, this must be a test, rather than either an inter-provincial game, or one of the shorter versions of the game (for which players wear more colorful attire).  So it must have been the test between England and South Africa that took place in January 2020.

St. George’s Park, Port Elizabeth

Cricket at St Georges Park, January 2020

When selling the scorecards, we had to stand near the inside of the entrance, in our school uniforms.  I presume the uniforms made us look more legitimate. We sold scorecards each day, with the cards being updated overnight to reflect the current state of the game.  After there was no more demand for scorecards each day, we were allowed to sit on the grass just outside the boundary rope and watch the rest of the day’s play.  In South Africa in those days sport was generally not allowed to be played on a Sunday, so tests usually started on a Thursday or Friday, with Sunday being a rest day.  South Africa won that test very comfortably, with a day to spare.  https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/australia-tour-of-south-africa-1966-67-61366/south-africa-vs-australia-5th-test-63003/full-scorecard.  Two of the stars of that South African team were local favorites, Peter and Graeme Pollock, both of whom grew up in Port Elizabeth and attended Grey, though well before my time, being 13 and 10 years, respectively, older than me.  (The main cricket field at Grey was later renamed as the Pollock Field.)    South Africa won the 5-test series 3-1, with Australia lucky to escape with a draw that is, no result, in the fourth test – it looks like there was a full day lost to rain and there must have been some time lost on other days too.

I don’t recall whether we sold other merchandise, such as the souvenir miniature bat in the photo, which has the signatures of all the members of the South African squad rather than just the 11 who played that particular test.  (A cricket team has 11 players.  Although substitutes are allowed, they may only field, not bat or bowl.)

Souvenir miniature cricket bat, 1967

The South African teams that played against Australia in 1966/7 and 1970 are widely regarded as being the best teams the country has ever produced.  (I’ll mention the 1970 series again in my high school episode.)  Unfortunately, because of Apartheid and sports boycotts against South Africa, these players had their international careers severely curtailed.  Some of them did go on to play domestic cricket within England and Australia, but most saw out their careers on the domestic circuit within South Africa.  At least they did achieve some success and recognition.  Non-white cricketers had it much worse.  They toiled away mostly in obscurity, playing at vastly inferior facilities.  The government may have claimed Apartheid meant “separate but equal”.  Separate, certainly, but most facilities were very definitely not equal.  That includes not only sporting facilities but schools and just about anything else one may care to name.

One non-white South African did achieve fame and success.  Basil “Dolly” D’Oliveira, a so-called Cape Coloured (i.e. mixed race) cricketer was born in Cape Town and emigrated to England, to play the game professionally.  He was already relatively old for a cricketer when he left South Africa (28 or 29).  After a few years he became eligible to be selected for England.  He played his first test for his new country in 1966 when he was 34 (and last in 1972 when he was 40, which is later than when most cricketers retire).  In 1968 he was selected for the England team to tour South Africa.  The South African government did not want to host a multi-racial team.  They claimed D’Oliveira had been selected not on merit but just to embarrass them.  The government demanded that he be withdrawn.  England refused and cancelled the tour.  (Looking at D’Oliveira’s stats and articles about him, it is clear that he had earned his selection.)

Through most of primary school we still went to one another’s birthday parties.  These generally involved eating and drinking a whole lot of sugary stuff – fizzy drinks, cake, candy, etc., etc. – with breaks in between for running around and getting rid of some of the excess energy.  Robert Pudney, one of the kids in our class, couldn’t go to parties because the religious group to which his family belonged wouldn’t allow it.  They were in a branch of the Plymouth Brethren.   Using Facebook I have managed to re-connect with several of the friends whose parties I went to and who came to mine.  (At least one of them has since passed away.  More on that later.)

During a school vacation in 1966 or 1967 my parents sent me to an Afrikaans farm to try to improve my knowledge of that language.  The owners of the farm used to take in groups of probably 15-20 kids, all about the same age, with the idea that being immersed in the language for several days (it may have been as long as a week) would be beneficial.  The idea may have been good, but it didn’t work out so well – having so many (English-speaking) kids together meant we spoke English to one another and used Afrikaans only when the farm owners were nearby, rather than trying to do all communication in Afrikaans.

Most of the kids in my year at Grey Junior went on to Grey High.  A few moved to other schools.  One who moved away was Steve Katz.  I didn’t know what had happened to him until we made contact through FB in 2011.  It turned out that he had transferred to a Jewish high school in Port Elizabeth, Theodor Herzl.  I don’t think he wanted to go there, and he told me that he had always felt like part of our cohort.  He had been living in Los Angeles and was in the shoe trade, which he said had been his life-long passion.  We corresponded through FB a few times and in 2015 chatted once by telephone just after he returned from a trip “home” to South Africa.  We didn’t get an opportunity to meet in person here in the US – he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in 2018 and died a mere 6 weeks later.

This is an extract from a Facebook post by Steve’s daughter on the day he died, with a couple of comments by me in […]:

This is the hardest post I have ever written.  My father passed away peacefully in his sleep this morning.  My dad is forever the coolest person I know.  Moved to the US with no money to his name, and created an incredible life for himself. He always says he moved here to be closer to Rock ’n Roll – a fact that is made funnier due to his lack of any musical skills [so we were alike in that respect].  (He was in the choir, growing up though, and you better believe he never let us forget that!)  The truth was, while he loved music, he left because he was far too open-minded to stay in an apartheid government.  He wanted to be somewhere where all humans were treated the way he treated them ... with love and respect, no matter their background, color of their skin or religion.  This is no small feat when you're raised with such extreme racial segregation.  My dad always saw the good in everyone, sometimes to my frustration??  But that didn't stop him from being fiercely opinionated. He saw the evil in our current President [this was during Trump’s first term], and it made me so proud to see him standing up and speaking out against hate.

Steve Katz at work in Los Angeles

Primary school years, part 1

 

Although Port Elizabeth (PE) has a new name (the unpronounceable by Western tongues Gqeberha), I will continue to use the old name here.  I don’t have anything against the new name, but that isn’t what it was called when I lived there or even when we visited in 2019.

In case it seems in places that I am being too hard on myself, I’ll state at the outset that I had a good childhood.  I also mostly liked school.  I seldom felt stressed out – if anything I didn’t get stressed enough.  As noted in a few places here and when I get to writing about high school, some of my teachers said I had the potential to perform better if I put in more effort.  My parents didn’t try to push me.  Maybe they should have, though of course we’ll never know whether that would have done more harm than good.

Although this episode is supposed to be from the time I started “big” school in 1961 at age 6, I’ll begin with some earlier medically-related events I had failed to include in the previous episodes.

The first occurred when I was much too young to be aware of it.  I know about it only because my father told me about it later and because of the faint scar I still have on my abdomen.  When I was six months old I apparently started crying loudly because of pain in my abdomen.  My father took me to the doctor, who didn’t seem concerned.  But my father had graduated from medical school a few months earlier and remembered the signs as being consistent with intussusception, a rare condition in which one part of the intestine slides over another part, essentially “eating” itself.  It is a very serious condition that needs immediate surgery.  My father said he had trouble persuading the doctor that this was indeed the problem.  So I had abdominal surgery (and had my appendix removed at the same time for good measure).

A few years later – it must have been more than 3 years later because my brother Mick had been born by then – Mick and I were circumcised.  Presumably because I was no longer an infant, mine was done under a general anesthetic.  (Mick’s probably was too, but I am less sure about that.)  I remember having quite a bit of pain when I woke after the anesthetic.

When I was 4 years old my maternal grandmother came to visit for a few days.  One morning she and I went outside to say goodbye to my father when he was heading off to work.  I put on a pair of rubber rain boots belonging to one of my parents.  I don’t remember which parent, but regardless of which one it was, the boots were obviously much too big for me.  I ran up the street waving to my father.  The boots being too big caused me to trip and I happened to land on a piece of broken glass.  The glass cut my right knee so deeply that I needed to have four stitches to stop the bleeding.  I can still make out the very faint scar on my knee (among the various other scars from more recent running-related falls when wearing more appropriate footwear).

I don’t recall when I started – or stopped – sucking my left thumb.  I know I did it for several years, which was long enough to develop some kind of lump on my thumb.  The lump disappeared eventually after I stopped sucking, but for quite a while after that I used to tell left from right by looking at my thumbs.  My parents tried various ways to get me to stop sucking.  I don’t remember what they tried, though bribery was probably one, nor do I remember how or why I stopped.

Something else I don’t recall is when I became scared of aircraft flying overhead.  I remember seeing what I thought was something falling out of an aircraft – probably a Harvard (North American Aviation AT-6 Harvard).  Harvards were used as training aircraft by the South African Air Force (SAAF) and were quite often buzzing around over the city.  After that, whenever I saw or heard an airplane I used to run to get under cover of some sort, such as going indoors.  This carried on for at least a few years.

Harvard in SAAF colors, from the Harvard Association of South Africa website http://www.theharvard.co.za/

A Harvard on the ground in the SAAF Museum in Port Elizabeth

Back to starting “big” school.  In the US there are typically three levels of schooling – elementary (grades 1-5), middle (grades 6-8), and high (grades 9-12) school.  In South Africa there are just two, primary school (grades 1-7), also often called junior school, and high school (grades 8-12), also often called senior school.  Although in recent years South Africa has referred to grades 1-12, back then grades 1 and 2 were called Sub A and Sub B, and grades 3-12 were called Standard 1 through Standard 10, so Standards 6-10 comprised high school.  Back in those days a married woman could not be appointed to a permanent position at a public school, which is why the female teachers I refer to below are all Miss XYZ.

Apart from the second half of grade 5, I attended Grey Junior School http://www.greyjunior.co.za/  and then Grey High School https://www.greyhighschool.com/.  The two schools are adjacent to one another, as can be seen in the image below from Google Maps.  The schools are public schools in the American sense of the word, though modelled on British public (i.e. private) schools such as Eton.  These days the Grey schools are considered to be semi-private, charging fairly substantial tuition/fees, though not nearly as much as fully private schools.  The schools were founded in 1856 and named after Sir George Grey, who was a Governor of what was then the Cape Colony.  The schools are for boys only and until the fall of Apartheid were restricted to white boys.  (For someone as shy as I have always been, especially when I was young, it was probably not good to have gone to a boys-only school.)

 

Grey Junior and Grey High.  Grey Junior is on the right, with the orange roof tiles.

Some old guy standing next to the school entrance that commemorates the school’s founding in 1856 (though originally the school was at a different location).

First and second grades

In grade 1 we were split into two classes, one taught by Miss Shaw and the other by Miss Parnell.  I was in Miss Shaw’s class.  Below is our grade 1 class photo.  I am third from the right in the third row, looking as if my chest is about to explode.  We had Miss Shaw for grade 2 too.  The only incident I can remember from back then, though I am not sure which of the two years it was, involved Bryan Heine, who is to the left of me in the photo.  One form of punishment for misbehaving in class was being made to stand outside the class.  If the principal happened to walk past when one was out there, one risked being given corporal punishment – a couple of strokes from a bamboo cane.  One day Bryan was misbehaving and Miss Shaw told him to stand outside the class.  He refused, so she had to drag him out, with him resisting all the way.  (Bryan was probably the biggest kid in the class.  I was also one of the biggest.  Bryan continued to be one of the tallest in our cohort whereas my growth spurt ended early.  I reached my maximum height when I was 13, after which many of the other boys grew taller than me.)

Sub A (Grade 1)

South Africa doesn’t (or at least back then didn’t) have school buses.  So most of those of us who lived too far to walk to and from school had to ride city buses.  My mother was a teacher.  She  didn’t have a car in the early years of my schooling.  I used to catch the bus with her in the mornings and then on my own in the afternoons.  In grades 1 and 2 one of the janitors used to escort us to the bus stop in the afternoons after school.  I don’t recall my mother being pregnant with my brother Ian but, as he was born in 1961, I presume my mother took some time off work and I must have ridden the bus to school alone.  Eventually my mother had a car (a Mini Cooper) and then used to drop Mick and me at school on the way to her school.  From some time in grade 5 I started cycling to and from school, a distance of about 3 miles.  I cycled most days, except in grade 12, when it was apparently beneath my dignity to do so.

It was probably in grade 1 that we had to start performing in school plays.  I was much too shy about public speaking to be given a speaking part, but did have to be in the chorus or act as an extra.  I hated the plays.  Worst of all was that we had to be made up, including having to wear lipstick, and had to travel to and from school in costume and make-up.  I am sure that was when my dislike of lipstick, even on women, started.  Even today I find lipstick very off-putting, notably on Taylor Swift who seems to be so fond of very obvious lipstick.  (She can probably afford not to care about my opinion.  It is hard for me to avoid seeing her face in the media whereas she is fortunate enough not to have to see mine.)

Towards the middle of grade 1, on May 31, 1961, South Africa became a republic, changing from being the Union of South Africa to the Republic of South Africa.  There had been a referendum the previous year (with voting restricted to the White population).  Most English-speaking South Africans opposed becoming a republic whereas most Afrikaans-speakers were in favor, and there were more of the latter than the former.  At about the same time the currency changed from pounds, shillings, and pence to rands and cents.  I recall us being given small denomination coins in the new currency at school.  It was probably about the same time that South Africa moved to the decimal system for measurements.  The government being autocratic, it was able to legislate that newspapers and other media phase out the old measurements (though I don’t recall the time frame for that happening).

My only memory of the old currency was from one school vacation when we were staying with my maternal grandmother in Knysna.  There was a small convenience store next to the long driveway down to her house.  I saw a toy bow-and-arrow set that I wanted, for what I thought was 19 ½ pence and asked my mother for money to buy it.  She must have given me a pound.  When I brought her the change, she realized it was 19 shillings and sixpence rather than 19 ½ pence and made me return the bow-and-arrow to the store.

Apparently even then I wasn’t very neat, though according to the report card below I was trying to be neater.  Trying but maybe not succeeding.

Outside of end of year report card from 1962 (grade 2)

Inside of end of year report card from 1962 (grade 2)

Third and fourth grades

Our teacher in grade 3 was Miss Tribe.  Below is a class photo from that year.  I am fourth from the left in the back row.  I don’t recall anything
memorable from that year.

Std. 1 (Grade 3)

Inside of end of year report card from 1963 (grade 1)

In grade 4 our teacher was Miss Shirley “Suiker” Siberry.  (“Suiker” is Afrikaans for “sugar”.)  She was quite a character.  She would march us around outside in the school grounds in squad formation, reciting out multiplication tables.  We may have started being given homework in grade 3 but definitely had homework in grade 4.  We also had homework books that our parents had to sign to acknowledge that we had done our homework.  A frequent punishment for not doing homework, or not getting the homework book signed even if we had done it, was to be sent to the principal’s office to be caned.  (The principal was – and still is – officially referred to as the Headmaster.)  I was very lazy and even when I did my homework often couldn’t be bothered to get my mother to sign my book.  So, I was a frequent visitor to Mr. S.F. (Porky) Edwards’ office.  I became so used to being caned that it lost its deterrent effect!  (Being caned in high school was much less benign.)

Std. 2 (grade 4).  I am the fourth boy from the left in the back row.  Bryan Heine (mentioned earlier), is on the right of me (to my left)

End of year school report from 1964

At around that time a medical doctor came to school to check for various anatomical problems, such as scoliosis and flat feet.  Those of us diagnosed with any of the issues were given remedial exercises.  One of the teachers was assigned to oversee us doing the exercises at school (maybe once a week).  We were also supposed to do them at home every day and have an exercise log signed by a parent.  My left foot is very flat, so I had to do exercises to try to remedy that.  I wasn’t very diligent and often my mother signed the log without checking that I had actually done the exercises.  I have no idea whether my foot would have improved if I had done the exercises more regularly, but I still have mismatched feet.

I am not sure when we had to start swimming at school, maybe from Grade 3.  The school had an outdoor, unheated, Olympic-size pool.  In the two warmer quarters of the school year we had to swim once a week in place of one of the two weekly PT classes.  I was already able to swim when we started having swimming lessons at school.  What was very frustrating was that even those of us who knew how to swim had to use flotation devices (old inner tubes from cars) and kickboards for the next several years.  Before and after getting in the pool we had to have a cold shower – cold because there wasn’t any hot water.  Also, at the start of the season the pool used to be quite chilly.  As part of the swimming class we had to pass various levels of lifesaving tests.  Mr. Francis Horne, the old caretaker of the pool and also the school’s swimming coach, taught these classes.  In these classes he used to say that after pulling a victim out of the water we had to clear the airway, making sure to remove any “toffling apples” (toffee apples / candy apples).  I don’t know why he seemed to think that people who were drowning usually had candy apples stuck in their throats.  Another frustration was that one of the strokes we were taught was “lifesaving kick” instead of butterfly.  Consequently, I never learned how to do butterfly when I was young.  More than any of the other strokes, it seems to be one that needs to be learned early if one is to master it at all.  Our daughter, on the other hand, learned butterfly early and could do it very well.

For a while I also belonged to a swimming club.  For that my mother used to take me to the St. George’s Park public pool before school.  She was a reasonably good swimmer, but I don’t recall if she swam there too.  I also don’t recall swimming in any meets.

Lifesaving test results from March 1966, when I was 11 years old

Fifth grade

In 1965, when I was in Grade 5 (Std. 3), my father spent the year working at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, so as to qualify as a specialist anesthesiologist.  We stayed in our house in Port Elizabeth for the first half of the year.  Our class teacher at Grey Junior was our first male class teacher, Mr. Munro.  Up to that point we had been doing all writing in pencil.  We then started using fountain pens (definitely not ballpoint pens).  As soon as our handwriting (in pencil) was deemed good enough by Mr. Munro we could switch to fountain pens.  I was the first to be allowed to switch.  (Anyone who sees my handwriting these days would be amazed that at one stage my handwriting was the best in my class.  Now I sometimes can’t even read my own writing.)  We were told we had to have “radiant blue” ink.  I came to school the next day with “blue-black” ink.  That was not acceptable, so I couldn’t start using a fountain pen that day.  By the next day I was no longer the first / only one.

I don’t recall how long we had to use fountain pens.  It was probably at least through junior school.  Fountain pens are very messy for someone who is left-handed because our hands usually move over what we have just written, smudging the ink before it has a chance to dry.  It was a relief once we were allowed to use ballpoint pens.

Back when we still had to use pencils.  I don’t know what year the photo was taken.

Midyear report card from 1965 (“Gym” is PT.  I was always very uncoordinated, so not surprised to see I was near the bottom of the class for that – 29^th of 36).

Grey Junior class photo, 1965.  In case it is not obvious, I am second from the left in the second row.

The second half of 1965 we (my mother, brothers and I) lived with my maternal grandmother in Knysna, the small coastal town where my mother was born and raised.  My parents wanted me to stay on at Grey, living in the school’s boarding house, but I refused.  So for the second half of that year I attended Knysna Primary School. 

My grandmother was a widow, my grandfather having died of cancer about 5 years earlier when I was 5 years old.  I don’t remember anything about my grandfather.  I do remember some things about their house, though.  As mentioned above, there was a small convenience store next to the long driveway down to the house.  The driveway was off what was the main highway between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.  At that point the highway was very narrow, with just one lane in each direction and no median.  The house itself was old and interesting.  The bedroom where my brothers and I slept had a door directly into the kitchen.  The kitchen had a coal-fired stove.  I remember the coal ashes having to be removed and new coal added before water could be boiled to make coffee, tea, and breakfast in the morning.  There was one bathroom, which had just a bath (no shower) and a window looking into an enclosed porch.  There was a separate toilet.  My parents slept in a rondavel, which was close to the main house.  I am reasonably sure the rondavel had its own bathroom.  (The house has long since been torn down to make space for a newer development, so doesn’t appear on Google Maps.)  The house was at the edge of the Knysna Lagoon, but the part of the lagoon near the house was marshy and not suitable for swimming.  The area must have been dredged some time later because there are now jetties for small boats.

The Le Roux family lived next door to my grandmother, on the other side of a small creek.  The father was a local doctor and there were 4 daughters, Glynis, Debbie, Nicky, and Cindy.  I think Glynis was a year or two older than me, Debbie was about my age, and the other two were about the same age as Mick.  I don’t know why, but we didn’t ever play with them.  That was probably because having no sisters and going to a boys-only school, girls were a foreign species and I was dead scared of them.  A Facebook search turned up Debbie in Colorado, here in the US, but it looks like she has turned off receiving friend requests.  I sent her a message using FB Messenger but haven’t had a response.  I can’t find FB profiles for her sisters.

Postcard from me to my father sent from Knysna.  I obviously had not yet learned how to hyphenate words appropriately.

Knysna being a small town, there was just one primary school for white kids.  Whereas Grey is a school for boys only, with the language of instruction being English, Knysna Primary had both boys and girls and separate classes for English and Afrikaans kids, with somewhat more of the latter.  Going to a school with much more demographic variety, I learned a lot about people.  But when I returned to Grey the next year I seemed to have missed out on some development stuff that my classmates went through in the interim.

I wrote “for white kids” above.  But there was a boy, Hentie, who lived near us and who I often played with after school.  Some time after we moved back to Port Elizabeth, I heard that Hentie and his family were reclassified as “Coloured” and had to move to a “Coloured” township.  I don’t know whether the family requested to be classified or if this was forced on them by the government department that was responsible for racial classification.

The Afrikaans-speaking kids tended to be rougher and tougher than the English-speaking ones and when I started at the school the former used to bully the latter.  (There are more details of English-Afrikaans antagonism more generally later in this episode.)  I was big – tall for my age and overweight.  I used my size to fight back and end much of the bullying.  After that most kids played peacefully together at recess.  One of the games we played was cricket, for which I brought a bat and ball to school.  A rougher game was “Bok bok staan styf” (English translation “Buck buck [or Goat goat] stand firm”.  Apparently this game has been traced back to antiquity.  The first kid stands bent forward.  The next runs up, puts his hands on the first kid’s back and essentially vaults onto and over him and then also bends forward.  The next one does the same but usually can’t vault all the way over and so has to squirm across the first two kids.  This carries on, forming a kind of centipede.  I don’t recall how the game ends – maybe once everyone is part of the centipede.

Some of the kids in the school were from farms in the surrounding area.  One of our weekly classes was called something like “agriculture”.  All I remember about “agriculture” was having to dig up lupins (lupines in the US?) that were cultivated in one part of the school grounds.  I think we had to do this on more than one occasion, though I don’t know how there could have been two crops in the half-year that I spent at that school.  Maybe it was different fields of lupins on different days.

Knysna Primary is marked on the image below (from Google Maps).  My grandmother used to live on the water’s edge below “Candlewood Lodge” which definitely wasn’t there back in 1965.   The road with a 2 marked on it is the main highway between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.  As noted above, back then the part through Knysna was a narrow road with just one lane in each direction.  I had started cycling to school before our time in Knysna and continued to do so when we lived there, cycling on the highway, which didn’t have sidewalks or a lane for bicycles.  The only thing I remember about cycling there was that there was a gravel road in front of the school.  One day as I left the school grounds and turned onto the gravel road I hit a patch of fine sand, my bicycle slipped out sideways under me and I fell quite heavily even though I was going very slowly.  I don’t have a photo of my first bicycle and haven’t found anything similar on the Internet.  Neither that one, nor the bigger one I had when in high school, had any gears.  Each did have a carrier on the bag for my bookbag and each had a light powered by a dynamo.

Dynamo for a bicycle light, similar to mine.

Map of Knysna

End-of-year report card from Knysna Primary

The satellite image below is a closer view of where my grandmother lived, though it looked nothing like that at the time.  The highway now has two lanes in each direction, though still without a median.  My grandmother’s house was about where the right-most of the three jetties is.  Soon after we lived with her, she sold her house to a developer, who built holiday cottages.  I think the ones that are there now replaced those earlier ones.  My grandmother moved to what is marked on the map above as “Hunters Home” which is just to the east of the Knysna Golf Course (not marked on the map).

The Knysna Provincial Hospital is in the upper left.  It is now much bigger than it used to be.  My friend Hentie whose family was reclassified as “Coloured” lived in the hospital grounds before they had to move to a “Coloured” township. 

One of the people my father worked with at Groote Schuur Hospital in 1965 was Dr. Chris Barnard, who a couple of years later performed the world’s first human heart transplant.  My father had a low opinion of surgeons in general and Chris Barnard in particular, believing that surgery was much less demanding than anesthesiology.  I never had the courage to tell him that putting a patient to sleep and waking them up again doesn’t actually treat anything.  Incidentally, Chris Barnard’s brother Marius was an anesthesiologist.  Like many doctors at that time (and earlier) my father was a heavy smoker, not just of cigarettes but also pipes.  (I clearly remember his pipe rack and pipe cleaners.)  At some time while he was in Cape Town in 1965 he quit, cold turkey.  He never smoked again and became very opposed to smoking.