Disclaimer: Being autobiographical, these entries depend
on my memory of events around half a century ago. I didn’t take any notes or keep a diary (either
then or now). Being a time before
digital cameras (and because I was very camera-shy), I don’t even have photos
to serve as reminders. Why write a
disclaimer for this particular episode?
I mention more names of living people than in most previous episodes. I am happy to correct any facts or add extra
details that those who are mentioned point out.
Opinions are my own and others may have different perspectives. I would also be happy to include differing
perspectives of those who are willing to share them.
First, a somewhat related public health message. Make sure you get all recommended
immunizations. The polio vaccine, for
instance, has now eliminated the threat of that often-serious disease from much
of the world, including Europe and the Americas.
How is this somewhat-related to the topic of our old
neighborhood? Stewart and Shirley
McCurdie were friends of my parents who weren’t quite in our neighborhood. They and their children (the oldest, Ron,
being a little older than me, if I remember correctly) at one stage lived a
couple of blocks away from us, on the other side of Cape Road, a major arterial
which at that point has Fen Glen on one side and Cotswold on the other. At some point in the ’60s Shirley McCurdie
contracted polio. I think she was even
in an iron lung at one stage. Although
she mostly recovered, after that she always walked with a limp. I recently managed to re-establish contact
with Ron on Facebook. He now lives in
Limoges, France.
Cape Road is labelled near the top of the image, towards the right. Even back then I think there were two lanes
in each direction, with a center island (and in this stretch, a service road
running parallel to the main road).
Back to our side of Cape Road.
The Swarts
In the previous episode there was an open lot where the
house marked 2 below now stands. I don’t
know exactly when that house was built but from a date mentioned below it must
have been completed before 1962. The
couple who lived there from the time the house was built and for as long as my
parents were in Port Elizabeth were Oscar and Ruth Swart. Oscar was an Afrikaner who worked for the
Post Office. Ruth was a nurse. She was a German Jew and with her sister Inge
were the only members of their family who survived the Holocaust. Although I knew that at the time, it wasn’t
until recently that I found out how they had managed to get out of Nazi Germany
– on the Kindertransport to Britain (Glasgow in their case) when Ruth was 13
and Inge 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport. More on that below. I also hadn’t known until then how Ruth and
Oscar had met. They met when they were
both on vacation in Switzerland. Oscar was
touring Europe for 6 months with some friends.
Ruth eventually decided to emigrate to South Africa (from Britain).
Ruth and Oscar had a son, Anthony, born in 1958, so about a
year younger than my brother Mick. They
had a second son, Jonathan, who was born in 1962. Jonathan has Down syndrome (trisomy 21). Children with Down syndrome often have
congenital heart disease and other health problems. Life expectancy used to be quite short (25
years in the 1980s according to Wikipedia) though is now 50-60 years in the
developed world. Apart from Down
syndrome itself, Jonathan was healthy and is now in his late 50s.
One day Ruth came over to our house, absolutely devastated,
to tell my parents that Inge had died in an airplane crash. I must have been just 7 year old, though I
remember having met Inge a few times. (I
think Anthony used to refer to Inge as “Aunty Gaga”.) I hadn’t known when or where the crash
occurred until I managed to make contact with Anthony a few years ago. From information he gave me I was able to
find accounts of the accident, which happened soon after taking off from Douala
Airport in Cameroon on March 4, 1962, with the loss of all 111 passengers and
crew.
My father sometimes referred to Oscar as the ancient
mariner, because when Oscar started talking to my father it was hard to get him
to stop. Oscar became interested in
horticulture and constructed large hothouses in their back yard. He eventually had at least two, maybe
three. They aren’t visible in the Google
Maps image, so I presume they were demolished at some stage in the past 40
years.
Oscar passed away in about 1982, quite soon after my parents
left Port Elizabeth, and Ruth in 2014 aged 89.
Considering that Ruth left Germany at the age of 13, it is surprising
that she still had a strong German accent more than 50 years later. Despite all she went through, I never heard
her express any bitterness and she spent her whole working life caring for other
people. She was a good person. While that is true of most people I have
known, few of them have had to cope with what she went through.
Anthony is now a realtor (what South Africans refer to as a
“real estate agent”). When I first
re-established contact with him about 4 years ago he mentioned that he is
married to Karel and that they’d been together for 30 years. Although our families lived next door to one
another for 20 years, I hadn’t realized back then that he was gay. Maybe that’s partly because the old South
Africa was a rather homophobic society, so he didn’t come out. In late 2006 South Africa became the fifth
country in the world to legalize marriages between same-sex couples! Anthony also wrote “You know I’ve got a German
passport and have at times thought about leaving here, but our lifestyle is
still too good to even really consider a major move?!!”
Photo of Anthony Swart from his realtor web page.
The Parrys
In the previous episode I mentioned that the people in the
house marked 8 had two sons, one of whom had Down syndrome and died young. (South Africa doesn’t have a particularly
high incidence of Down syndrome. It is
just a coincidence that neighbors on either side of us had a son with Down
syndrome.)
I don’t recall if there was another family that lived there
after that but before Errol and Margaret Parry moved in with their three
children – Neville, who is my age, Gail, who is a couple of years younger, and
Kim, who is several more years younger. Their
address was 366 Cape Road and to help people remember the number Margaret Parry
used to refer to it as Leap Year Cape Road.
I think they occasionally even had mail addressed to them like
that. Margaret also sometimes used to
use the expression “what doesn’t kill, fattens”. Although I was a chubby youngster, I didn’t
associate “fattens” with being bad and thought she was contrasting a bad versus
a good outcome!
Margaret and Errol Parry are on the right in this photo
taken after my father’s funeral.
Neville and I quickly became good friends. We played a lot of backyard cricket together,
usually just the two of us. Backyard
cricket is part of the folklore of Australia in particular, but also most of
the other main cricket-playing countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_cricket We usually played at the Parrys’ house, in
which case it was sideyard cricket rather than backyard, with the wicket
running north to south parallel with the words “Malvern Ave” in the image from
Google Maps. We pretended to be the
great players of that and earlier eras, including those who played for the
then-mighty West Indies – fearsome fast bowlers Wesley (later Sir Wes) Hall and
Charlie Griffith, wonderful batsmen such as Rohan Kanhai and Clive (now Sir
Clive) Lloyd, and Garfield (now Sir Garry) Sobers, still regarded as the
greatest al-rounder ever to have played the game. Apart from a few of the South African stars,
we didn’t ever get to see any of these players in action, either live or on
TV. At that stage of the Apartheid era the
government would not allow black players, such as the West Indians, to play
against. Also, the country didn’t get TV
until the mid 1970s, when the government woke up to the fact that
state-controlled television is a powerful propaganda weapon.
<Aside>
White South African cricket administrators later began
throwing money around, paying players from other countries to participate in
“rebel” tours. They even managed to pay
a group of West Indian players to tour.
The latter were probably poorly advised.
Although they were mostly near the end of their careers and may have
thought it was an opportunity to cash in before retiring, they may not have
been fully aware that not only would they subsequently be banned from playing
cricket in their own countries again, but also that many would actually become
outcasts back home.
This article is about a “rebel” team from the West
Indies: https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/21298477/the-unforgiven
This one describes the lead-up to a tour by a team from
England:
In this one it is clear from the Australian players
themselves that they were generally past their primes. http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/959689/-prime-minister-hawke-called-us-traitors
My opinion at the time was that the “rebel” tours were
misguided. Even putting aside political
issues, they weren’t going to provide a true reflection of the strength of
(white) South African cricket. If a
touring team beat the South African team, then we would realize that we were no
longer world beaters. But if the South
African team won (which it did in most instances), that wouldn’t tell us much –
that we had beaten a team of mercenaries from another country, rather than the
best team that that country had to offer.
</Aside>
Neville and I were very evenly matched in backyard
cricket. In the real thing? It wasn’t even close. He was much better and played at a high level
through high school and beyond and he also excelled at rugby. I had minimal athletic talent. I played several sports with much enthusiasm
but little ability. In cricket I didn’t
progress beyond intermural level at high school, and even in those inter-class
games I was more of a liability than an asset.
(As I probably mentioned in an earlier episode, participation in sport
was compulsory at our high school.
Intramural cricket was the default option in the warmer months for those
of us who weren’t good enough to make one of the school’s many teams for
cricket or any other sport.)
When the Parrys lived there in the ’60s, there was a
structure, rather like an open carport, in front of a one-car garage, where I
have drawn a red circle below. There
were brick/concrete pillars, with beams along the tops of the pillars and going
across the driveway. The beams across
the driveway were probably spaced about 3 feet apart. At one stage Neville and I built a “tree”
house on top of these beams. (What does
one call a tree house if it isn’t in a tree??)
We even stayed in it overnight on at least one occasion, partly because
my mother promised to bake us a chocolate cake if we spent the night up there.
The red circle indicates where Neville and I built a “tree”
house.
My father used to keep some money in various drawers in
their bedroom. I found some of these
places and, presuming he wouldn’t notice, took some of the money from time to
time. Well, he did notice and confronted
me. I confessed. He was very angry – the only time I can
recall him being really angry with me.
One of the things he said was “What would Neville think if he heard
about this?” Well, honor among thieves
and all that, plus I didn’t want to rile my father up even further, so I didn’t
mention where I had got the idea. (Even
later in my life I never said to my father “You remember when you caught me
stealing money from your drawer and asked what Neville would think ….?”)
Soccer trading cards were big at one stage back then. The cards came in “lucky packets” which had a
couple of cards plus some candy. A few
players’ cards were rare and there were rumors about how many lucky packets one
had to buy to have a good chance of getting these rare cards. One of the things we did with the money I
purloined was to buy a box containing a gross of lucky packets. I/we reasoned that each box would include at
least one card for every player. (I
obviously didn’t know much about probability theory back then.) We bought the box and opened all of the lucky
packets. Although we found a few cards
that we didn’t yet have in our collection, we didn’t get all the ones we had
hoped for (and did end up with many, many, of the more common cards). When we started to lose interest in
collecting those cards Neville’s mother donated our collection to some
organization.
Neville and I were in different primary schools. Then we were at the same high school for what
I think was just one year. After that he
went to boarding school at Graeme College, which his father had attended, for a
couple of years. In 1970 the Parrys
moved to the Johannesburg area and he completed high school there. After that I occasionally heard news of him
through my parents, but didn’t have any direct contact with him until
connecting with him on Facebook a while back.
He is now also part of the South African diaspora, living in Prague. According to Linkedin he is Chairman of the “Woodcote
Group a.s”, a company in Czech Republic, with head office in Prague and which operates
in the Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
industry. Neville’s sister Gail lives in
Germany and his other sister, Kim, is still in South Africa, though I haven’t
tried to make contact with either of them.
Their father, Errol, was (and presumably still is) a great
character. He turned 90 in 2019.
Neville Parry – profile photo “borrowed” from Facebook
The Ashbys
In the previous episode I mentioned that the people in the
house marked 9 had a boogie man who lived in a shed at the bottom of the
garden. Later the Ashbys lived there –
Ken, Tania and their children Kevin and Clifford. I think Kevin is two years younger than me
and Clifford another year or two younger, so they are closer in age to my
brother Mick than to me.
A while back I found Kevin on Facebook. He is in Brisbane (Australia). He trained as a chemical engineer and is now
a patent attorney. Clifford doesn’t
appear to be on Facebook but is on Linkedin, though he hasn’t uploaded a
profile photo. He is CEO of “Coleambally
Irrigation Co-operative” in New South Wales, Australia, having previously been
CEO of various other companies.
Kevin Ashby – profile photo “borrowed” from Facebook
The Toppers
At some point after the woman who enticed Marmalade the cat
to move from our house to the one marked 5, the Toppers moved in. I don’t recall the names of the parents, but
there was a son, Desmond, who is my age.
Initially we were good friends.
We often used to play the strategy board game Risk. It was his copy and he taught me/us the
rules. When we were later given our own
copy, I read the rules carefully and found that they differed quite
substantially from what Desmond had said.
(His version didn’t give anyone an unfair advantage, so it wasn’t that
he was trying to cheat.) Desmond and I
both had Scalextric https://www.scalextric.com/us-en/
slot-car racing sets and we often combined our sets to make longer tracks. (A new slot car is one of the things I bought
with money purloined from my father.)
I said above that “initially” we were good friends. Later Desmond formed a “gang” consisting of
the younger boys in the neighborhood – my brothers, Anthony Swart and the
Ashbys. Neville and I were supposedly
their rival gang. We didn’t consider
ourselves a gang and mostly just avoided the younger kids. I think they used to “spy” on us, though we
didn’t ever do anything worth spying on.
Recently I asked my brother Mick what he remembered of this “gang”. He claimed not to recall who Desmond Topper
was. Maybe he didn’t want to be reminded
of someone who in hindsight might have been a little like a cult leader.
It looks like Desmond is on Facebook. I have sent him a message but haven’t had a
response yet. If it is the same Desmond
Topper, he retired a couple of years ago, most recently having run IGCS
(Industrial Gas Consultancy Services).
The web site for that doesn’t appear to exist now and even the Wayback
Machine didn’t turn up anything, so maybe he was a solo consultant and shut
down the web site when he retired. Previously
he was Regional Manager at the local branch of Air Liquide.
The Stirks
After the Parrys moved to Johannesburg, our new neighbors in
the house marked 8 were Bill and Joan Stirk and their lovely your daughters,
Sandra and Marilyn. Sandy is about a
year younger than me and Marilyn a further two years younger, making her the
same age as my brother Mick. They moved
in some time in 1970.
Sandy and I hit it off for a short while. Then the Stirks went away for two weeks on
summer vacation. I counted down the days
(maybe even the minutes J) until their return.
But on their vacation Sandy found someone else. My fragile sixteen-year-old heart was
broken. For a long while after that I
hoped we could get back together, but it was not to be. She occasionally agreed to go to a movie with
me and even to the South African equivalent of my high school prom, but just as
a friend. I still often visited her
after school and pestered her. I don’t
know why my parents (or hers) didn’t have a little word in my ear.
I recall watching Wimbledon tennis matches on TV at the
Stirks’ house. That must have been
several years later though, during winter break from college, because Port Elizabeth
didn’t get TV until early 1976. (Test
transmissions in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban had started several months
before that.) My parents didn’t get a TV
while we lived in Port Elizabeth, not because they couldn’t afford it but because
they thought it was a waste of time.
Later my father became quite fond of some programs, particularly The
Golden Girls. While on the subject of
early South African TV … for the 1976 Olympics all that was broadcast was a
30-minute highlights package each evening.
I remember nothing of what was shown, partly because it was hard to see
anything through the throng of students crowded around the one set in our
college dorm. (After 1960 South Africa
was barred from taking part in the Olympics until 1992.)
Somewhat surprisingly in hindsight, although I was unhappy
about being dumped, I didn’t feel any resentment or jealousy towards Sandy’s
new or subsequent boyfriends. They were
nice guys and better than me – certainly more dynamic.
Mick and Marilyn later started dating and I think that
continued for at least two years. I don’t
know what caused them to break up, though going to colleges in different cities
may have played a role.
After my parents sold their house in Port Elizabeth and
moved to Pretoria I lost contact with Sandy and Marilyn for three decades! Then in 2010, using the no-longer so
new-fangled Internet that you may have read about, and remembering Marilyn’s
married name, I found her email address on the web site for the Nelson Mandela
University (previously called the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and
prior to that the University of Port Elizabeth), where she was lecturing in
Physical Science education. (I think she
has since become the victim of a peculiar South African disease called “compulsory
retirement”. I understand the thinking
behind that, creating more opportunities for younger people to advance, but it
seems counter-productive for a country that has a shortage of highly qualified
people in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – fields.) Marilyn replied to my email and also gave me
Sandy’s email address. Sandy is an
elementary school teacher in Cape Town. In
my first message to her I apologized for having been such a pest when we were
young. It was great to catch up on
news. I later became Facebook friends
with both of them and with Sandy’s husband, Julian. When we were in South Africa in March 2019 we
had a chance to meet up with Sandy and Julian.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to see Marilyn and her husband, Keith, when
we were in Port Elizabeth. Maybe if I go
to my high school class’s 50-year reunion in a couple of years …
Cape Town, March 2019, my “little” brother Ian, some old
guy, Riëtta, Sandy
and Julian.
