Still friends...

LILLIAN
 

Lillian van der Merwe was born in 1944. Her family lived at 20, 10^th Avenue, Bez Valley and then moved to Cumberland Avenue when the family home was converted into playing fields for Kensington Laerskool and Sir Edmund Hillary. The house was a face brick house with a red corrugated iron roof.

 

Lillian went to Kensington Laerskool and then to Kensington Hoer, which is now an army base.





Outside school playing fields

 

She remembers Shamrock Dairies at the bottom of 10^th Avenue, next to the sluit, and the laundry a block away in 9^th Avenue. Every day the children used to fetch four pints of milk from the dairy in silver milk buckets. On an average day Lillian would play in the streets until 4 o’clock and then come home and wash her hands, before going to fetch the milk.

Other memories include going to the greengrocer to collect cabbage and other vegetable leaves to feed the family’s chickens that were kept in the backyard.

 

 

 

Shops Lillian remembers include Queen’s Chemist on Broadway and ST Stores on the corner of 8^th Street and Broadway. ST Stores was owned by a Greek café owner called Nick. He owned a café and a grocery shop connected to the café by an inter-leading door. The grocery shop closed at 1 o’clock on a Saturday and nothing would induce him to open it until Monday.

“Behind Kitchener Service Station, there was another café. On the other corner there was the garage owner, Shortie, who lived opposite in the flat. Then there was Mr. Green’s butchery and Settler’s Stores owned by old Abraham. All my dress materials and pajama material came from Abraham, because my mother used to sew. We used to take a walk down to Abraham and pick the material. It is one the few original shops that is still there but it is the son now, not the father. The old man is dead. “

RITA

Rita Pirie (nee Landman) and Lillian were childhood friends, and they are still friends. Rita lived at 226, 6^th Avenue with her two brothers and her parents. She was born in 1942 and started at Kensington Laerskool in 1949. Her high school was the Afrikaansehandelskool Parktown.

Rita lived in Bez Valley until she got married at the age of 22. The family went on living there for at least another five years.

Childhood memories include playing in the Chinese veggie gardens and pinching carrots at night, and riding the dairy horse in Bezuidenhout Park.

In the afternoons my brother used to go and fetch the dairy horse and we would take it to Bezuidenhout Park and ride it there. My brother had a friend who worked in the dairy farm, which was next to the old dam, where Avalon is. Avalon used to be a dam. It was a beautiful big old white dairy horse. At the end of the day my brother would take the horse back to the dairy. The horse pulled the dairy cart with those big milk cans. They delivered milk in cans and then later they delivered bottles of milk. If you ran out of coupons you would put your money in the bottle, outside on the pavement. There was no theft.”

Rita’s father was a tram conductor and then he became an inspector. Her mother was a seamstress in a factory in town.

Her father would work in the garden whenever he had a moment. “My dad had the most wonderful garden; I remember the dahlias and any flowers you can dream of. He used to live in his garden. When he finished work he used to change into his old khaki pants and go straight into his garden. People used to walk past and stop and stare and say, ‘Mr. Landman, your garden is the most beautiful garden…’ Ach, yes, he was a real gardener…

Women would dress smartly with hats and gloves and matching handbags: “My mom used to dress up in high heel shoes and long gloves and a hat with a feather in it. She was always dolled up. Every Saturday we used to go to town and we really dressed up in high heel shoes and hats and matching bags. We went by bus. We would walk down to Broadway and catch the bus near the shops.”

Rita’s first job was “in the City of Johannesburg, in the City Hall, on the 4^th Floor in the City Engineer’s Department. "I was in a typing pool.”

 

Rita remembers going to the Chinese grocery shop for her mother. “As a child of seven or eight, my mom used to send me to the Chinese shop. She would say, ’Go and buy on the book, ten pennies sugar and a loaf of bread, or whatever. And they would give it to me and write in the book under Mrs. Landman. And at the end of the month she would go and pay on the book.”



Rita's home today



Settlers Stores also featured in Rita’s childhood. “My mom used to be very good friends with Abraham. She used to sew and he would help her with materials and cotton. And Abraham had a son and my older brother and the younger Abraham used to know one another. The whole family just went on and on and on with Settlers’ Stores.“

The extended family used to visit the Bez Valley house on a Sunday. “On Sundays was a family lunch and then my mom’s sisters would come and my dad’s family would come and we would have this huge skaapbout and veggies and rice. And the whole family came, and the nephews and cousins and all the children used to play outside. It was continuous play…

We used to swim at the swimming pool at Rhodes Park. As children, we would walk up there at 10 at night in our swimming costumes…”

There were a lot of Jewish people in the area. “Both our neighbours were Jewish; Mr. and Mrs. Sanders on the one side and Mr. and Mrs. Ehrlich on the other".

 

...that fell away...

Merle Schubotz (nee Haigh) was born in 1936. When she was four, her parents moved into the house at 109, 7^th Avenue, Bez Valley. “I was four years old when we moved to Bez Valley in 1940. Then my sister arrived five and a half years later. That was a great day. It was just me and my mom and dad before that….I remember rushing home from school to see my little sister, Jenny. I was so excited. My friend Lorraine Hess (now Lorraine Birch and still a close friend) couldn’t understand the urgency to see a baby. She had six siblings!”



Childhood memories are happy and full. “What I remember most are the carefree days of playing in the street with my friends, sometimes until 7 o’clock at night! We played ‘gemmertjie’ and hopscotch and rounders with tennis rackets, and hide and seek.”



Under the grapevine

All the family’s shopping was done locally. “On the corner of 4^th Street and 8^th Avenue there was a little Chinese shop where we bought some of our groceries and cigarettes for my dad. There was a general store, a butcher, a chemist and a café on Broadway. Round the corner from us in 6^th Avenue, there was a Chinese vegetable farm where vegetables were picked fresh as you bought them. A tickey of soup greens was so heavy I could hardly carry it and it made two big pots of soup. I used to walk there and buy the veggies for my mom and dad. It was directly behind our house.”

Merle went to Bez Valley Junior School in 7^th Avenue, which is Rand College today; then to Bez Valley Central, which is now Sir Edmund Hillary; and finally to Observatory Junior High, which is now Athlone Girls. She would walk up the 5^th Street hill to catch the bus in Observatory every morning, and walk down in the afternoon.

Koppie in the background

For several years, Merle was ill and unable to attend school. “…In spite of our healthy eating, I was very ill between the ages of seven and eight, going on to nine years of age. I had Rheumatic Fever, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria and Yellow Jaundice as well as measles and mumps (that the other children had). My mom nursed me at home with a dear family doctor coming to see my twice a day…

I remember my dear friends coming to visit me after school, talking through the bedroom window! That was so special because I was in bed for months.

Some of those friends are still in touch. Maureen Knox (now Maureen van der Merwe) lived over the road with her five siblings. Now she lives in Pietersburg with her husband and family.  She is still a close friend.”

Extra-mural activities included drama lessons. “When I was 12 I used to go by tram on my own. I took drama lessons and elocution lessons. I used to go to Troye Street for lessons. It was quite a notorious street. All the prostitutes were there.  But my teacher, Kathleen Kelly, had a flat up there. I would get off the tram and walk right up to the top, near Bree Street. I did a bit of drama from the age of 11 until about 15 and then that fell away.”

During the War years, sugar, butter and tea were rationed. Merle remembers doing up parcels for her grandparents who lived in England. She was 12 when she first met them. “My grandmother used to scrape that paper of the butter until there wasn’t anything left. I still do that today…”

Next to the Mulberry tree

Merle’s father worked for the municipality near City Deep and her mother worked for OK Bazaars in town. Merle’s first job was with Prudential Insurance in town, just off Loveday Street.

Tea at the OK Bazaars or Stuttafords and the cinema were weekend treats. “We used to love going to the OK Bazaars in town for tea and cream cakes and to listen to the bands there. And we used go to Stuttafords in town. We used to go on the tram…We used to go to the cinema, to ‘The Gem’ in Troyeville and to ‘The Regent’ on Langerman Drive in Kensington. It eventually became ‘The Fairways’. They changed the name. And then it burnt down. We avoided ‘The Regal’ (near Eastgate) because it was rough. It cost a sixpence to go to the bioscope. I got a shilling and I could either get on the bus or walk and keep the other sixpence for an ice cream.”

“When I was much older my parents had a car. It was just before I got married when they got their first car. It was a little ‘Prefect’”.

“I lived in the house in Bez Valley for almost 16 years, until I got married. Then I went back there for two years after my divorce. I loved our old house. We had a grapevine that spread from the front gate to the front door, and there was a huge apricot tree and mulberry and pomegranate tree. The house is still there but it looks completely different. All the trees are gone and there is a garage where the grapevine was. The property looked huge when I was a child but now when I drive past it doesn’t look very big at all. The garden was in the front. We had no backyard. We had side lanes and we were right on the border of the next house at the back.”

“Once I went there and asked if I could have a look and they let me in. There used to be a huge lounge but they made a passage and another bedroom on the one side. My tiny bedroom had been made into a bathroom with steps going up. My mom’s bedroom became the lounge. We used to have our toilet on the back verandah; they changed that into a breakfast nook. And the old bathroom became a pantry.”