A trip down memory lane - or how things have changed.

With the world in the mess it is, I find myself looking back at where I came from, trying to understand why my life took the course it did. It has been a time of immense changes. I am sure that many of you out there shared similar experiences.

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I grew up in a world with no television, the radiogram was the centre of entertainment and our black bakelite rotary dial telephone was the only immediate contact with the outside world. The family, especially my mother would listen to “From Crystal with Love” on Springbok radio, my favourite was “No Place to Hide” featuring Mark Saxon. In the evening it would be “Pick a Box” or perhaps “Test the Team”.

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Image - Pixabay

We had no car and my father had to walk to the station and catch the train to Cape Town. This was not unusual, most of the young married couples used the train and bus service. Red double-decker buses, we always sat upstairs at the back if we could. Saturdays was bioscope day. The neighbourhood kids would walk a few miles to the nearest bioscope, during interval we swopped comics. Bicycles were our mode of transport but when the south-easter blew it was not pleasant, I remember a newspaper boy (I am not going to use politically correct terms) was blown of his feet and all his papers spiralling up in the wind.

Image - Pixabay

There were still steam trains on the tracks then, although diesel locos were common. I remember the wooden carriages and the doors that made a pleasing ka-clunk when closed. The conductor blowing his whistle, clipping our tickets and giving change with a curious coin dispenser strapped to his waist. Tickets please – Kaartjies asseblief, we would hear him as he walked down the aisle. Woe to anyone who did not have a ticket.

Cape Town station at the end of the trip, along the way we would pass the Salt River works, I always imagined the sparks and foundries to be some sort of industrial hell. Cape Town station, the old Victorian one, meeting under the clock, putting a penny into the model steam train with the model driver turning his head as the wheels of the steam engine turned. There were many sounds on that station, the hiss of air brakes, loudspeaker announcements of train times, the screech of steel wheels on the tracks. There is so much to remember, I think that we look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. I will continue the reminiscences in another post. Life was not all good there was it’s dark underbelly also.

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