2006
Graham Hayman meets Pixie
 

Hi Martin,

My cousin Eggy Boggs sent me your page about Port Alfred. Love the place, used to live in Grahamstown. BTW I taught Nola Gilder, one of Uncle Bob's daughters? Either at Rhodes or at Collegiate high school, PE, where I taught in 1971.

My horror story about Port Alfred. I was a student at Rhodes in the 60's and used to go down to Port Alfred with mates who came from Uitenhage, Bruce Gillmer and Doran Herringer. I'm sure we irritated the PA folks.
They hated students anyways, they were all objectionable anytime.
Arrogant noisy little pimples weren't we. One time their mate Derek Cherrington came to visit . We tanked up in the afternoon on Old Brown and towards evening six of us piled into his hot Anglia and streaked for the sea. There was a big session at one of the hotels or a hall or something. They were still building the bridge over the river in that little pass just outside Bathurst, and we skidded on the dirt detour and slowly rolled. We were all OK, pretty much. Bruce got a cut on his temple, Doran who was sitting the middle in the front got the handbrake up his backside and could not sit down so comfortably for a week or so, but it sort of ruined our weekend. But that's another story.

It might have been the very first term in our first year, we hitched down to PA. We waited a long time outside Grahamstown and eventually an old man in a Ford Cortina picked us up and we chatted away. I was fascinated by his local stories and Eastern Cape accent, since I came from Joburg. All the way he was telling us about "the Kowie," and I was getting worried. We wanted to go to Port Alfred, what was this place "the Kowie" that he was going to? I nudged Bruce and eventually it came out that (phew!) these two place were the same place.

Then he got around to a long story about this big rail disaster when lots of people were killed. I started listening hard, trying to figure where this place was and how long ago it had happened - the way he described it, it happened the previous year or so. I couldn't remember anything in the newspapers. Turned out it was the Blauuwkrantz bridge disaster of 1911. Time moved slowly in lower Albany district back then.

At the sea at last. We swam in the river, drank our pocket money on beer in the pub, crashed some party and slept under the trees near the beach, with a bottle of Old Brown to keep us warm. On Sunday evening we were hitching back to Grahamstown with hair full of sand and pockets full of empty and head full of babbelass and face full of sunburn. We stood on the road to Grahamstown along the riverbank, and opposite the bait shop run by Pixie John the fisherman who always wore a pigtail. Guess that's why he was called Pixie.

This was before there was any tourism down there, so we had to wait a long time. it was a beautiful evening next to the water, but we were so hungry we didn't notice. We shared maybe a bag of chips from the fish and chip shop just near the bridge (the old bridge of course). A few kwedins were hanging around the street, slowly walking back to the township up on the hill. Some asked us for a cent or two, they were really out of luck.

We got so bored, eventually we started throwing stones into the river.
We were aiming at the buoys, and some hit a few boats. We skrikked and stopped throwing. But just then we saw a squat figure with a pigtail come out of the bait shop. It was Pixie. He came over and stood right in front of us. He had a kind of gleam in his eye, and he was carrying a long sjambok. Our knees were already knocking. He stood and looked at us a while, like we were pieces of vrot bait.

"Don't you know it's against the law to throw stones into a tidal river? he said.
"NNN-No," we stammered.
"Well now you do, and don't forget," he said. And he turned around and and walked back into his shop.

We looked at each other. The whites of our eyes were big. Gradually the blood came back into our faces. Yirra boet, would we ever forget.

The jelly went out of our legs. We got a lift soon after and never said a word the whole way back to Grahamstown.

Thanks Graham, nobody could have told that story better than a Rhodent who was THERE AT THE TIME.
10 outta 10, that's our Pixie for sure.