Today while going to work my Tata Indica packed up...again (for the fourth time). By profession I am an accountant and if my life was on the line depending upon my vehicular knowledge, then you will have to shoot me. Obviously I can’t be too much of a success as an accountant if you look at the car I am driving/was driving. That car can now go to hell, I will sell it for scrap and take what I can. While sitting in the countryside, just outside Krugersdorp, waiting for a rescue vehicle from the company I work for, I thought of my Dad and realised that my cars are just as bad as his were. It is actually worse because the extent of my skills are only as for as being able to change a flat tyre if required.
In the 1960’s my first memory of driving with the Old Man was when we were going up a hill from town to Amalinda where we stayed.
Smoke, like from an idly held cigarette, was curling up from the dashboard of the old Ford Prefect as we struggled up the hill, as car after car passed us. I remember it being dumped in the backyard of the smallholding where we stayed at 10 Oliver Road and we as kids loved playing in it. Why the thing was on its side is beyond me; I can only assume it was to scavenge parts.
Our family then moved to Welkom in the Orange Free State where the lure of money from the gold mines was too great to resist, particularly since my Dad had to pay maintenance for the children of his first marriage.
By trade my Dad was a qualified electrician but my mother would not allow him to run his own electrical business as he was too soft, for example, he helped repair the fridges at Sanan’s fruit and veg, and the owner gave my Dad a discount on the ice cream he bought. Stingy old blighter! But “Fruity” as the Old Man was known in the extended family, hated working underground due to the terrible heat. So we as a family yo-yo’ed between beautiful (but poorly paying East London) and Welkom which paid extremely well.
Back to EL we went and we stayed in a corrugated house near my Grandfather Lofty’s small farm. We used to call it the “Rat House” for obvious reasons. My Dad owned a scooter, a Vesper? He had to go early to work while it was still dark and he would give me a lift to the Amalinda Primary School, it was in 1966. I can remember how cold it was and I used to hold tight to get some warmth, the sound of the scooter while smelling the petrol fumes I will never forget. I used to go to the one side of the small school building where the first rays of the sun would warm a few of the early birds. Once he went off the “ridge of the tar” onto the gravel and he blamed the tiny wheels of the scooter for the crash. Even though he was wearing a leather jacket he got some very nasty skid burns; goodbye to the treacherous scooter!
When in Welkom during the second yo-yo inland, he got an old two stroke Honda;
I think he had to mix some oil in the petrol but he always put too much oil in. We lived in Romeo Street, a beautiful home that my mother loved the most out of all the homes we lived in. The street was lined with trees on both sides and when we saw my Dad coming home in the early afternoons, the white cloud from his Honda engulfed the entire width of the street for at least a hundred meters in his wake; how the traffic cops never caught him amazes me now when I look back.
We often went to East London on holiday, by now my Grandfather had sold his farm and bought a house at 3 Empire Avenue in Cambridge. My Mom used to go visit her Dad and Aunty Phyllis, his second wife, who was a cripple from polio. She had a daughter Yvonne, which event was recorded in the local newspaper. She was a devout Catholic. I remember when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and we listened to it on the radio. I was particularly interested as Aunty Phyllis said the world would end if man walked on the moon. I was a bit disappointed when life carried on as normal afterwards.
When returning to Welkom after one such holiday, the car packed up in a little town, Reddersburg.
My Dad’s older brother, Uncle Eric who lived in Bloemfontein, came down and fetched the whole tribe of us in his Volkswagon Speedback?! He, unlike my Dad, was a man of great precision like their father, Spuddy, and he had a garage full of the most wondrous equipment and tools, perfectly aligned and kept in a spotless environment.
Back to East London again! My Dad was happy but poor and my mother was unhappy. Now we were teenagers and the Old Man’s car was a source of great embarrassment to me He owned a Holden and the car could never start, so we had to push start it outside the Church. I was mortified but the Old Man didn’t seem to mind at all. I hated that car.
My Dad once got a job in Dimbaza, an industrial area in the Ciskei, where he worked in a Chinese owned factory.
In the old Apartheid South Africa, homelands had been created to keep the black people in their areas away from the “white” areas. Large tax incentives were created to open factories to employ black people in these rural areas where there was almost no industry. It was so ludicrous that it would pay the wily Chinese “industrialist” just to employ people and let them sleep at their workstations. The wage was a pittance and how people could survive on that I could not understand. The government used to “recognise” the leaders of the various homelands with large bribes so that there were white majorities in South Africa. One of these leaders was Jonathan Cebe who used to say “half a loaf is better than none” for “his” impoverished people. Anyway this industrial area was about 30 kilometres past King William’s Town and the Old Man used to work as a night supervisor. One day he was travelling to work and he came over a blind rise (hill), only to see a stationery small truck in the middle of the road. The black driver had come upon a huge accident involving an 18 wheeler and he had decided to stop in the middle of the road to pick up debris. My Dad slammed on brakes but it was to no avail as the debris prevented the wheels of his Toyota Corolla from stopping. He hit the truck so hard that his false teeth were embedded in the steering wheel. When he came to his senses he was walking around in small circles on the road.
A warrant of arrest was issued by the Ciskei prosecutor for my Dad.
Fruity was very concerned and went to see the prosecutor in East London. He was advised to ignore the warrant but for his personal safety he must quit his job and not go back to the Ciskei.
He was a terrible long distance driver and could never keep awake.
My mother NEVER slept in all the years that he drove as she had to keep him awake. I remember travelling with him once to Cape Town and falling asleep. When I woke up, I looked at him and saw he was sleeping too. I am just the same and also battle to keep my eyes open. Another thing we both share, is a love for “PADKOS”, an Afrikaans word meaning road food. Before we even left the suburbs and got into the countryside my Mom would have to start feeding the Old Man.
When driving he would often get caught speeding and issued with a traffic fine.
If he was in traffic and got pulled over, he would be incensed as to why the other drivers where not getting fined but he was. He always felt it was so unfair. He refused to understand or accept our explanations. He also hated being caught when he was just “freewheeling” and not applying the accelerator.
My siblings consisted of 3 brothers and a red headed sister. She was more than a match for the rest of us Philistines.
I still remember my mother gathering all of her sons (including me) and told us that Sheralynne was coming home from the Cape Town Teachers Training College, therefore we were not to walk around the house in our underpants any more and we better improve our language. This fear was fully justified, I still remember her slapping my one brother for some or other misdemeanor and this was when we were all adults! Anyway Sheralynne decided to acquire a car after following advice from me, her older brother. The Old Man was her teacher, on one occasion when it was raining and he was teaching her how to drive’ he advised her to take a short cut through the veld, the road was slippery so he told her to “floor it” in order not to get stuck, unfortunately the car was driven into a tree. She was furious with the “Bright Spark” but her brothers were all highly amused.
In his declining years while in his late 70’s, he used to love picking up hitch-hikers on the side of the road to proselyte and give his trapped victims a Book of Mormon.
Despite repeated warnings to the Old Man about the dangers he never stopped trying while driving around in his Opel Cub . However his final incident came when he was driving past the local mental institution (Sterkfontein) and he saw a fellow walking next to the road in white overalls. He stopped and offered his potential victim a lift. My Dad asked him where he was going. The chap seemed dazed but spontaneously decided that he wanted to go to Jan Smuts Airport (named the O R Tambo Airport now), so my Dad took him most of the way and dropped him off. Obviously the chap was an escaped inmate! He was eventually found in Durban. That was the last car that the Old Man owned. He never seemed to be unhappy with life and the automotive challenges he faced.