11 1947 – 1952: Greytown High School

11 <> 1947 – 1952: Greytown High School

At the beginning of 1948 (my Standard 6 year) I became a pupil at Greytown High School. Mum took me (on the train) to enrol me and, I imagine because I can’t remember, probably left me with some ‘official’ there who took me to the Standard 6 classroom — Miss Ledeboer’s class. If every grown-up was formidable to me, then Miss Ledeboer was doubly so! The term had already started some few days or weeks earlier so I had to walk in as a new boy into a class already established — in fact, most in the class had been together in the Standard 5 class the previous year. I was told to sit in a seat in the front row next to JPC Nel (known either as JPC or Boet). While I spent that first day at school Mum stayed on in Greytown and probably went to Ross and Company General Store to buy my school uniform which consisted of grey worsted (woollen) shorts, a white shirt and a navy blazer. And, I presume, a pair of black school shoes and a satchel of the type made of canvas which slung over a shoulder. When required, the strap of the satchel was long enough to loop round the back and then sling over both shoulders, which was very useful later when I daily rode my bicycle the twelve miles and back to school.

That first year I travelled to school every day by goods train, at first catching the train at six in the morning for the one and a half hour trip but the train was often late, getting me to school after the class had started leaving me to walk in with all eyes upon me — which I found disconcerting. So I then switched to catching the four o’clock in the morning train which got me to Greytown sometime between six and seven depending on how much shunting it had to do at sidings along the way. After school, if I was lucky, I could catch the passenger train at two-thirty, but usually the goods train at four o’clock.

One little benefit I had from catching the early morning train was that Dad gave me a shilling each day to buy myself a meat pie with gravy and a cup of coffee at the Atheneum Tea Room. That was delicious — something that was always a treat even in later years! As I travelled anywhere by train in later years, changing trains at Pietermaritzburg I would always treat myself to a pie and coffee at the station restaurant. Coffee was part of my life from the early days on the farm when a housemaid would bring us each a wake-up cup of coffee in the morning. No coffee today can ever meet the standard of the coffee of those days for me — coffee brewed in a coffee pot with a cloth bag inside holding the grains, which stood on the side of the wood stove all day long! The smell of it permeating the whole house as it brewed in the early morning is pure nostalgia! But Dad wasn’t a coffee person. He was a tea person so the coffee-days at Seven Oaks ended when Mum left home for ever. Dad would wake me with a cup of tea at 3:15 in the morning. Then I would throw on some clothes and hot-foot it to the station listening for the chug-chug of the goods train as it came up the last hill before gliding down to Seven Oaks station.

The train journey either way was okay — until a farming family from the Free State settled on a farm near Mispah, a railway siding half-way between Greytown and Seven Oaks. The two sons travelled home on the train with me. The older brother was a big, burly chap of my age who liked to wrestle me. This I had to endure nearly every afternoon. That is not a good memory, but I did manage to hold my own without complaining.

In that first year I escaped all after-school activities on the excuse that I had to catch the train which, in summer when school came out early, was the 2:30 passenger train, and in winter, the four o’clock goods train. I didn’t have the same excuse in the following year (my Standard 7 year) when I became a boarder at an establishment called St. David’s. But even then I somehow evaded all after-school activities, I suppose, by simply sneaking out the gate and pedalling away unobserved by any teacher!

St. David’s had once been a Private School run by Mr. and Mrs, Owen who, on their retirement, ran it as a boarding house. A talking point there was the arrival of a woman who claimed to be, or was reputed to be, a Russian Baroness who had fled with her two children from the Communist purges of the aristocracy. Her son was a bit younger than the other of us boarders at the time — I think his name was Karl — and his sister was younger still.

Two things stick in my mind about Mrs. Owen’s establishment — the first was a bad spill from my bike, the second was being ‘sent down’ by Mrs. Owen.

The boarding house was on the side of the mountain above Greytown with a road so steep that cars seldom drove up the last stage to the house but parked at the lower level halfway down to the gate. Apart from being steep, the road was also stony and rough. Out of the gate, the road took a turn to the left and a footpath led off to the right down a further stony stretch to a footbridge over the stream. I would normally walk the bike all the way to the gate before getting on to ride down the footpath but on this occasion, in response to a challenge or a dare, I mounted at the very top. I immediately knew I was in trouble because there was no stopping the bike. The brakes just caused the bike to slide over the pebbly surface. I managed to stay on through the gate and take the turn to the right but halfway down to the stream on a particularly rough, stony patch, I lost control and flew off over the handle bars to land headfirst on the rocks. I was badly grazed and bleeding but straightened out the handlebars (actually bent as well as twisted) and went on to school.

The second event was worse in its consequences — Mrs. Owen lined all of the boys up (there were five or six of us there) and was grousing at us for something that had been said or done to one of the girls. While she was talking, she suddenly singled me out and said “Why are you smiling!” I was definitely not smiling but it seems to be an expression that comes on my face when I am bemused, and I was bemused being faced with a situation like that so I said “I am not smiling!”. She said “You are!” That should have been the end of the matter but it wasn’t over for me. A few days or weeks later when we were all packing our bags to go home for the holidays, she came to me and said: “Make sure you pack all your things!” It was more than clear that I was not coming back the following term. My friend Boet was also a boarder at St. David’s. I think it was through him that I got to hear of the place and, as he told me recently, it was he who upset one of the girls and brought on us the scolding from Mr.s Own!

The next year, my standard eight year, I boarded with Aunt Lillie (the same Aunt Lillie, Ben Braithwaite’s wife, on whose farm I had boarded when we lived at Success and I went to the Seven Oaks school. Ben had died and Aunt Lillie had moved to a house in Greytown). My stay with her also ended in ‘disaster’ when I said something which annoyed her and ended the relationship; it hadn’t lasted very long as far as I can remember because for the best part of one year (probably the remainder of that one) I rode my bicycle every day the twelve miles to and from school (which also let me off sports and cadets). That daily ride was tough in the winter when the frost lay thick on the grass in the valley at Chaley Siding, and also in the summer riding home in the heat of the day! And the road was a corrugated round-pebbled surface for part of the way, scraped through shale for another part, and red soil for another — bumpy, shaky and slippery (when it rained) in turn.

Cadets for boys was compulsory — unless one was required for the school choir! So at a stage when I had no excuses left, I added myself to the choir. That lasted for a couple of weeks until one day the singing teacher, Mr De Beer, singled me out and told me in front of all that I had ‘a voice like the wind through the shutters’. I got the point and that was the end of my choir experience, but I still didn’t join in with the cadets. I knew I was supposed to so I skulked around the boys’ toilets (outside bucket toilets in those days) until the session was over. Eventually someone, and I don’t remember who, cornered me and convinced me that I just had to be there. So I said I would do it if I could be a drummer in the band. I was issued with a side drum and fell in beside Edwin Browning. I had no clue how to march and even less about playing the drum so I just kept pace with the others and with the drum sticks poised at the rim of the drum. In a couple of weeks I knew I wasn’t going to make it as a drummer so I had to ‘enlist’ as an ordinary infantry man. The trouble was that I didn’t know the drill because I hadn’t been there when the essentials were taught and was too afraid to ask. I thought I would fix it quickly when I volunteered for a cadet camp at Ladysmith in the holidays. There I was in real trouble because the drill sergeant was a senior cadet officer from another school who acted like a permanent force sergeant! The very first day when we had to ‘Right dress!’ I was in the front row with not the slightest idea what it meant. I shuffled up as I saw the boy next to me doing but without putting my arm out to touch the next chap’s shoulder. The ‘As you were!’ command was given and the ‘Right dress!’ came again. I did the same thing and the process was repeated without me knowing who exactly was doing the wrong thing — until I got pulled out of the line and given a dressing down in front of everyone. Things seemed to have improved a bit after that, especially when I volunteered on the day off to go and fight a grass fire that had started somewhere in the outskirts of the town. It didn’t exactly brand me as a hero but it did leave me with a large scab on my chest where the sun had burnt me in the V of my overall. I had to receive some attention from the medics which left me feeling sort of vindicated! After the camp, I must have coped with cadets all right because I can’t remember another thing about it during the rest of my school days.

I mentioned before that I had thought of leaving school as soon as I turned sixteen to take up an apprenticeship in whatever — motor mechanic, telephone electrician or wireman, butcher, carpenter, bricklayer — but I think I changed my mind when friends told me about the tricks and jokes that journeymen played on apprentices. Jokes like sending you to the hardware store to buy sparks for the emery wheel, or skyhooks for the butcher shop. That was at the end of the Standard 7 year. I returned to carry on with Standard 8.

It was in Standard 7 that I had another life-changing experience. A short while into the first term I thought I wasn’t going to cope with the German 3rd Language lessons — or with the teacher — so I decided to change to Geography. I told the teacher before the lesson. Then in the middle of the lesson, he stood in front of the class looking at me intently while stroking the hair at the back of his head (which was a habit he had) and said to me: “You haven’t got the backbone of a jellyfish!” I could have shrivelled up and died on the spot — but I didn’t quit his class. I eventually passed German 3rd Language as one of the subjects in Matric.

I still wanted to quit school so I had firmly decided to leave after Standard 8. During the December holidays I received a letter to tell me I had passed the Standard 8 exam and that I had been awarded a boarding bursary for the school hostel. It seemed a pity to waste it, so — back to school I went, arriving on my bicycle the afternoon before school opening, with my worldly possessions in my haversack on my back. I spent my Standard 9 year living in the hostel but going home most weekends (which was not normally allowed, hostel dwellers usually being allowed home only every third or fourth week) because, as I explained to the hostel master, “My ageing Dad is all alone at home”. Come Friday after school, I would leave straight from school to ride the twelve miles home, but, now more often than not, one or other of the teachers on his way to Pietermaritzburg for the weekend would find me on the road and give me a lift with the bike crammed in the boot.

I started playing Rugby, I think, in my Standard 9 year when I stayed at the Boy’s Hostel. Fortunately Boet gave me a pair of boots he had grown out of, and Edwin gave me a Rugby jersey otherwise I could not have played. All Dad had to find the money for was a pair of socks for me. So, thus equipped, and with minimal training, I was taken straight into the First Team in the position of suppotrt. I must say that I did enjoy the matches, but not the games so much as the good feeling after the match. I don’t know why it is, but boys — and men — seem to enjoy being battered around a bit. Maybe this is to develop the warlike character we males seem to require. We played against the nearest schools in the region, and as I remember we were quite a successful team.

It was at the hostel that I had my first real fight. Two of my roommates had shut all the windows and the door and deliberately stank the dormitory out. I said something about it and one of them challenged me to a fight, egged on by the rest of the boys. We agreed to meet on the rugby field after supper and settle it. The news got around and the boys from the other senior dorm were all there. Deon (that was his name) and I faced each other, each urging the other to hit first. After a few rounds of this, I said: “Oh, let’s get on with it!” and slapped him on the cheek, and the fight was on. But it didn’t last long because in no time at all, Deon, having landed a few good punches, had me on the ground in a grip that I could not break. I gave up, we shook hands and the fight was over. Deon and I later played in the front row of the First Rugby Team for the next two years, he as hooker and me as right support. That was quite hilarious in its own way because Deon was a lot taller than I was and the left support was also taller than me so the front line sort of sloped from left to right!

While at home at Seven Oaks during one weekend or short holiday I developed mumps. I can’t remember but I don’t think I spent any time in bed with the swollen glands behind my ears — I probably sat around at home reading, and I might even have gone out to play with my friend Errol. On Sunday afternoon I rode on my bike back to the hostel ready for school the next day — but I was not yet over the mumps and the complications, that males are prone to, set in. Of course, I had had no idea whatsoever about the consequences of complications. By that evening the swelling was so severe that the matron immediately bundled me off to hospital where I lay for a couple of days until the swelling went down. It was the second time I had spent time in Greytown Hospital and the treatment there left me with a very good feeling about the nurses and the treatment in general. In those days all hospitals other than the Catholic ones were government or provincial.

Boet’s grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Martens, had moved from their farm into a house in Greytown and Boet was staying with them during the week and going home to his parent’s farm for the weekends. By the end of the Standard 9 year I had had enough of staying in the hostel so in the following year I boarded with Boet’s grandparents, along with several classmates in the Matric class and a couple of men who worked for the railways. The Education Department allowed my boarding bursary to be used for lodging outside the hostel.

It was Leon, a shunter on the Railways, who was responsible for my last main memory of Greytown High School. Leon had been transferred away from Greytown and was departing on the goods train one night. He arranged a good-bye party in the passenger compartment of the guard’s van while the carriage was standing in the marshalling yard waiting to be hooked up to the train. To the party he invited some of the male boarders at Mrs. Martens’ and provided a bottle of brandy, a bottle of wine and several bottles of beer. It turned out that only Leon and I drank the brandy and the wine (or most of it) while the others confined themselves to the beers. I remember saying “Cheers Leon!” as I downed successive tots of brandy and glasses of wine and then nothing until I awoke the next morning on my bed at about 10 or 11, not with a hangover — that came later — but still drunk from the previous night. Boet filled me in later with the details. I apparently fell from the carriage door flat on my front on the cinder-covered ground beside the railway tracks (the carriage was not standing next to a platform), miraculously sustaining no injury. From there friends carried or heaved me back to Mrs. Martens’ house and onto my bed. I don’t know if I awoke of my own accord or if Boet woke me up but I was due to write an English First Language paper that day. I wrote it and somehow passed — probably with something less than the usual seventy percent. I consider myself to have been more than lucky because that amount of alcohol in one session could have — should have — resulted in alcohol poisoning.

To conclude this section, here follows a somewhat cynical piece I wrote for a pamphlet Justus van Rooyen, a classmate, produced in 2002 on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of our Matric Class of ’52. It encapsulates some of the things I have included above:-

HIDDEN HISTORY AND CONFESSIONS OF AN OLD GHS SCHOLAR.

I BECOME A GHS SCHOLAR

Arrived for Std 6 class, 1947, shy, insecure, scared. Travelled daily by Goods Train from Seven Oaks. Resented salting. Evaded all sports and cadets. Was seated next to Boet. We became friends. Miss Ledeboer’s class, lady with a formidable presence — oh dear — heart filled with foreboding!!

I LEARN I CAN’T SING

I join Mr De Beer’s choir to avoid cadets. He soon finds I am a fraud and says before all: “You have a voice like the wind through the shutters”. I am no longer a singer. I skulk outside while others do cadets.

I LEARN LANGUAGES

German with Ja van Elinckhuizen (Std. 7). I wanted to opt out. Ja. standing in front of whole class. said: “You haven’t got the backbone of a jellyfish!” Complete dismay! Lesson learned — I carry on with German.

SMOKE, BUT DON”T BREATHE!

Standard 9 at Hostel. I sneak out with Barry to have a smoke. At evening homework session, Mr. Parish comes to sit next to me. “You have been smoking Jessop.” “No. I have not!” “You have. I can smell it”, he says. “Oh. forget it!” I say. “OK” he says, and we carry on with homework. George becomes a good friend and I am careful not to smell of smoke.

I LEARN BOXING

I challenge Deon to a fight. He clobbers me on the upper rugby field after dinner.

SEEDS OF PASSION

Class writes an essay on “A High Wind In A Village Street”. Mr. Fearon reads mine out as example to class. I curl up with embarrassment but lesson learned: I want to write. Alan became a friend.

I LEARN TO DRINK

Matric exams, 1952. Got drunk – very – at farewell party for Leon in railway carriage (Boet and another carried me home) on night before writing English A. Still under weather when due to write next afternoon. Mr. Parish found me holding up a wall. “Are you alright?” “Yes Sir. I’m fine.” George walks away. Somehow, I pass English and I matriculate.

WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM SCHOOL

I learn the names of the books of the Bible – “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers” —– I have RELIGION!! But I find the answer to all things in Pilgrim’s Progress: “Why choose to live when life is attended by so many difficulties?” Why indeed? I leave school agnostic, or atheistic (no religion at home either), and nihilistic. Life stinks. Society stinks. Down with everything!

WHAT I DIDN’T TAKE AWAY FROM SCHOOL

I didn’t take math away with me because I didn’t gasp logarithms. Boet, my friend, help me! — what are logarithms? I played rugby, but I didn’t get the rules. Oh, Mr Steenkamp! — what is ‘offside’?

I FINISH WITH EDUCATION.

I finish with school — and I flunk out of University. Can’t grasp math! I am useless!