In the 60's there was no TV in OM nor in SA
What you don't have, you don't miss. We finished school at 12:30 or 1:00, quick lunch, then off out on our bikes. Return home time was when the hooter was blown by the power station - all so simple.
Our bikes generally took us to the swimming pool but there were so many other exciting things to do - we were never BORED like so many children seem to be today without all their gadgets. All our childhood was spent out of doors: cycling down the "hill" into the town (is that hill still there - it was the way in from the Airport), cycling through the alleyways from one end of town to the other (no barriers stopping cyclists in those days!), playing Monopoly with friends for endless hours, making popcorn and toffee apples, cooking little balls of bread (water and flour) over a little fire in the garden, the trees, the barneys, the "out of bounds" big park where we all went, Girl Guides and Scouts, collecting the post from the post boxes (No 493), trying on shoes in The Store ... oh there were just not enough hours in the day. No worried parents because there was no crime and no cars on the road (there were only the odd half dozen used by De Beers staff as required - no-one had a permanent car), everyone knew everyone in a wonderful mixed community which as a child was the norm and we all looked out for each other. Sorry, too much rambling, you just had to be there. Go-karts, cafe, Saturday bioscope and on and on and on.
Then there was only Springbok radio too so no luck there. In the in the afternoons, they had Afrikaans plays -not quite what we called entertainment. Evening on Springbok was a treat - "Mark Saxon and Serge in Operation ......", the different plots going on over about a 13 week period, and "The Money or the Box". Really, just too exciting. And aren't we pioneers all the better for it? I love Mike calling us pioneers - never really considered us to be that. But it really was the greatest of times.
Hi Anne, really enjoyed reading your post about being a child in Oranjemund. When we arrived in 1981 there was tv in Oranjemund but come to think of it we only used to watch it of an evening. Afternoons were also always spent playing outside, in the park, amongst the trees and also cycling all over town to play at our friends houses. There wasn't such a thing as sitting at home and playing on a pc. Luckily our girls go to a daycare centre after school where they have a ball of a time playing with their friends in the dollshouses and making up games. I can remember one Saturday when they spent ages having snail races in the garden with a couple of garden snails and the neighbours children! We are still very lucky in that our kids can enjoy playing safely outdoors between the neighbours houses.
The kids grow up differently in O'mund as what they do outside, there they are used to going to shopping malls and games arcades.
Ann .. Total agreement ... a safer place ... radio .. books ... they spurred the imagination .. listening to Mark Saxon , the mind of Tracy D'Arc , Consider your Verdict .. Inspector Carr investigates etc etc ... as one listened the pictures formed in the mind .. running in the desert .. playing in the parks ... safe roads ..
Sorry to sound negative but today it is all spoonfed .. TV games .. etc etc imagination lacks ... families do not gather together for meals anymore ... Our Lodger had his younger brother stay over for the school holidays ... This boy of 14 did not seem to want to join us at table , but we forced the issue . found to horror that this young man lacked certain basic social skills he could not hold a knife and fork properly .. He was not taught as his parents did not notice .. after their long days work they would throw together a meal and everybody in the house would come and collect their food and retreat to their rooms , to continue with PC games etc ... only too eager to not be bugged by the kids thereby leaving them to their own devices , Ouch !
Friday Night on Springbok Radio, was --- " They Control the streets in their fsat Cars..." these are the men of Squad cars......
Man... those were the days when a radio was a radio........
:(
And what about the chappie chipmunk show and Pip Friedman and the Super super Shopper Show and Best Sellers... many a night sitting under my sheets listening to my trusty old transistor radio (remember the red one I had Mike?)...
We're so old the radio reception was still in Balck and White!!!!
I remember when TV first came out... the excitement in our house... first, just snow on that old Telefunken... then some snow.. with groot Krokadil wagging his finger... propaganda had arrived
Don't you find it odd, that a 74 cm screen is a luxuary these days but in those days that was pretty much the standard size????
Mike, remember the first time we saw a TV at Bobby Fielders house in Cape Town, we hid behind the couch because we though folks on TV were talking to us????
Hell yes! and we saw those moving stairs at the golden acre, you know this silver shiney stairs that move between the levels.... and then there was that time travel machine, you press a button on a wall in the mall, and this door opens in the wall, you climb in , press a button , doors close and when it opens again, all the shops have changed to something else..... man that was awesome...
I'ts fun being a country bumpkin!
8)
And I forgot - the best radio treat was on Sunday night. Great if you could smuggle a radio under your bedclothes and listen to LM (Lorenco Marques) radio to the top 20!
Bridge the gap for the young ones... LM Radio later became Radio5, now known as 5fm. None of the original DJ's anymore.
Springbok Radio methinks, Sunday evenings... test the team... aish
SteL YOUR father's matches and make fires in the first avenue bushes was a cool thing to do, it was even cooler if you managed to get the fire truck called out to your informal braai in the bushes...
remember taking the match box, cutting off the side strips, putting the heads into the middle, make a cube and gooi them on the road! Phhhhhwsssssssht!
:o
Best thing ever - When someone got a new delivery of Sand for their Garden - was always left outside the fence, we used to take Laurences cars and dig tunnels in it on make roads. Not realising that the damp patches were cat or dog pee.
I remember roller skating (on four wheels at the time...they wernt even the ones with the boots !!) down at the Netball courts...as it had the smoothest surface.
also playing marbles in the street lol Great memories
Wendy
please,please,please,delivery of new sand,yes i rember it,getting on youre bike and seeing who can ride over the mound of sand,then youre front wheel getting lodged in the sand heap,you going forward with the jolt,no bloody wonder ive got no kidsjavascript:void(0);
Shocked
great site, many names that I remember and people I have thought about
was it just me or did anyone else climb onto the roof of the rec club to look in the window during the balls and dances.
All the parents dolled up and the glitterball twinkiling, I was to young to be invited to the teenage dance at the time.
we would run away from Joseph who was suppose to be kidsitting and often saw gemsbok on our way back.
almost peed my pants the first time.
amazingly we all just got used to it ...
If you are a private person in Omund today, it costs an incredible R50.00 to have a lorry load of sand, otherwise take your bakkie into the quarry and fill up with the stuff, anybody want some?
How much would you pay for a lorryload of sand where you live 2day?
;D
Never had the need to buy sand but out of acedemic interest I looked it up on google and got a quote,
free delivery to anywhere in the UK, for 1 ton of sharp sand would cost me £89,90. Huh.
I do know a faarm where I can go and fill the boot of my car for free with useful (smelly compost) for which I have more use.
barbara i dare not ask what you are doing with the smelly stuff,hope you are not smoking the resulting produce,ha ha
ha ha, Bobby sorry boet its pure gardeners delight. As you know everyone is a gardener in the UK. You can plant anything and it gorws here. Never had such green fingers. It's fantastic.
Quote from: barbarak (Fry) on August 01, 2007, 05:57:42 PM
great site, many names that I remember and people I have thought about
was it just me or did anyone else climb onto the roof of the rec club to look in the window during the balls and dances.
All the parents dolled up and the glitterball twinkiling, I was to young to be invited to the teenage dance at the time.
we would run away from Joseph who was suppose to be kidsitting and often saw gemsbok on our way back.
almost peed my pants the first time.
amazingly we all just got used to it ...
I think most of us climbed on the roof of the rec. I remember i could never get from the wall to the roof and always had to be pushed up by butt. The boys used to snigger much better because wow they could see down the dresses from up there......cleavage.
We used to live up on that roof on Saturday afternoons, whilst mom and dad were having a singsong in the sportsmans... there were a few good places to get up onto that roof, but the best was at the back of the Hexen Kessel in the loading yard..... For some reason I still remember those big double doors by the library side of the rec club hall and that noise they made on a saturday afternoon when you opened them..
:o
many of u have probably seen this as its been doing it's rounds by e-mail for a while now but to me it captures the essence of an o'mund childhood - puts it all into a nutshell: enjoy :)
Close your eyes and go back in time...............
Before the Internet or the Apple Mac,
Before semi-automatics and crack cocaine,
Before playstation or Cartoon Network
Way back..............
I'm talking about the time of hide & seek in the park... or dark,
The café down the road, hopscotch, donkey, skipping & handstands
Backyard cricket with a tomato box, Dandy & Beano annuals,
French skipping, charms & "arlies",
Jumping the river, living on the beach,
Building a swing from a piece of rope tied to a tree,
Tennis on the street or swingball in the backyard,
The smell of suntan lotion, hot tar and Oros
Wicks bubble gum for a cent,
An ice cream cone from the kombi that plays a tune......
Wait, can you still remember.......
When around the corner seemed far away
And going into town seemed like going somewhere....
And your mother made you "dress up" for the trip,
A million mozzie bites and peeling skin in summer
Sticky fingers and sand in and on everything,
Cops and robbers, rounders, stingers, foefie slides and climbing trees,
Walking or riding your bike to school – no matter what the weather,
Running till you were out of breath
Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt,
Jumping on the bed, pillow fights
Spinning round and round getting dizzy and falling down,
Being tired from playing........ remember that?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team,
Paper water bombs and clay "lats" were the ultimate weapon,
A piece of cardboard in the spokes held by a peg transformed any bike into a motorbike,
I'm not finished just yet.........
Can you still taste & smell....eating raw jelly from the box,
Ice lollies made from cooldrink from Tupperware holders in the freezer,
Making sherbet from sugar & Eno,
And boiling tins of condensed milk to make caramel – took hours!
Remember when, there were two types of takkies,
Tommie & the others & the only time you wore them at school, was for "PT",
It wasn't odd to have 2 or 3 "best friends",
Nobody owned a pedigree dog and 25 cents was decent pocket money,
When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for 5 cents and feel lucky,
When nearly everyone's mom was at home when the kids got there
Remember when it was magic when dad would 'remove his thumb", or make 10 cents appear from behind your ear,
When it was considered a great privilege and very unusual to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant or in a proper hotel,
Or when on the rare occasion Dad stopped at a roadhouse or took you to a "drive in",
Remember when any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to carry groceries and nobody, not even the kid, thought anything of it
When being sent to the headmaster's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home,
Basically, we were in fear of our lives but it wasn't because of muggings, drugs, gangs, etc. – our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat!
Didn't that feel good...just to go back and say,
Yeah, I remember that
Remember when....
Decisions were made by going "eeny meeny miny mo"
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming "Nix"
"A race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest,
Money was handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly",
The worse thing you could catch from the opposite sex was germs,
Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a Bic pen pea shooter,
Taking drugs meant orange-flavoured chewable vitamin C or milk of magnesia,
Ice cream was considered a basic food group,
Skills and courage were discovered because of a "dare"
Older sibling were the worse tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors
If you can remember all or most of the above, then you have LIVED!!!!
That really sums up my childhood in Oranjemund! I remember it all! Won't be doing the rounds in the UK :)
I'll pay R50.00 for a truckload anyday!! Gheez on the other side of the river you like pay rent for the lorry and the diesel used etc.
Entertain ourselves . yes lots of house parties ... Mike looking at the Mc Cullagh photos I see a few more of your Mum ... as I said about her before " always in her moment" is my fond memory of her ... another good friend of your Mum was Flo Worth ( still going strong and living with daughter Penny ) anyhow the One night we all at a braai at Sid and Flo about circa 77 , there was this big scare in the town with Putsi flies ( apparently they would lay eggs in your washing which could if brought in contact with skin allow it to burrow into skin , result being the larvae growing under the skin ... Uuugh ! ) instructions were to either tumbledry clothing or iron well as the heat would kill off the eggs .. anyhow one of the lady guests at the braai got a "bit tired " and decided to take a lay down on the lawn ... Flo and Vi in their jolly state decide that this is bad for the " tired guest " as she may well get Putsi flies from laying on the grass .. so the two of like naughty schoolgirls run into the house and emerge brandishing an iron ( cold of course ) and declare that they are going to iron her to " kill off the Putsi fly eggs " What a hoot .. "tired " guest is shocked awake finding herself being held down by Vi and being ironed by Flo Much screaming and laughing by all ...