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.
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| A photo of Humewood Mansions from many years before we stayed there. |
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| 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).
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| 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 6th 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.
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| Mid-year report card in grade 6. I don’t seem to have the end-of-year one. |
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| Grade 6 or 7 class photo, with teacher “Eggy” van der Nest |
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| Mid-year report card in grade 7 |
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| 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 7th 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.
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| 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 6th or 7th 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 12th 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 7th 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 5th 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.
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| St. George’s Park, Port Elizabeth |
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| 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.)
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| 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.
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| Steve Katz at work in Los Angeles |
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