Let's reminisce my friends.

by Anon

Let's reminisce my friends.

I thank God that I had such a wonderful childhood in such a beautiful country..
Close your eyes... and go back in time�����

When milk and newspaper were delivered to your back door. The grocer
used to deliver
your groceries to the house and in brown paper bags.
Doctors would be too happy to visit you at home at 2 am, not only that
they became personal friends.
Petrol cost 4/3d a gallon.
The "hot dog stall" near Bogies clock in Gwelo served the best burgers in town.
Before the Internet or the Apple Mac... Before semi-automatics, AK-47s
and crack cocaine...
But pellet guns ......� BSA were OK
Before SEGA or Cartoon Network... Before Playstation and MTV, and CD's
and DVD's...
Way back..���

I'm talking about the time of Drive In cinema�s, Hide and Seek in the
park or the dark.
The garage down the road, the Gremlin, Palace Cinema.
Mom dropped you for morning matinee for 1/3d of Tarzan, Batman and
Robin and swapping comics too.
And Nicks Caf�, Mermaids Pool, Dandy & Beano annuals,
French skipping,  swimming till your feet went wrinkly,
Jumping the river, building a swing from a piece of rope tied to a
tree, tennis on the street or picnics
in the backyard when Guy Fawks was cool.
The smell of suntan lotion, hot tar and Mazoe Orange Juice.
Dandy bubble gum for a cent, an ice cream from the Dairy Den on the corner.

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.  Wag �n bikkies,
stingers & climbing trees.
Walking or riding your bike to school & friend's houses - no matter
what the weather.
Playing in the Makabuzi was such fun, but the 21 Bilharzia injections
which followed were no joke.
Running till you were out of breath laughing so hard that your stomach hurt.
Jumping on the bed..... pillow fights, spinning around, getting
dizzy.. falling down.
Huga bugs and Hoola hoops. Being tired from playing ......

Remember that?
A piece of card in the spokes held by a clothes peg transformed any
bike into a motorcycle.

I'm not finished just yet����..

Can you still taste and smell.��.
Eating raw jelly or Tree-Top from the packet, Ice lol lies made from
cold drink in plastic holders in the freezer.
Eating Willard's Peanut Butter on the fattest slice of fresh Lobel's bread?
Fresh cream Doughnuts from Bake 'n Take after church on a Sunday.
Boiling tins of Condensed milk to make caramel - took hours!
Roast Beef on Sundays and Ox Tail too.

Remember when��...��

There were two types of takkies - Tommies and North Stars, and the only time
you wore them at school, was for "PT".
Wearing shoes with the toe caps cut off was accepted by all.
Slip slops to wear were just a ball.
How hard you tried to swop your hostel sandwich for a day Skie�s (day
scholars) lunch�no luck
The skin on the boiled milk at the hostel?

It wasn't odd to have two or three "best" friends;
Nobody owned a pedigree dog.
Sixpence could buy you a coke, Wilson toffee, nigger ball, and wrights
bubble gum.
25 pence was decent pocket money and your house boy was also called Sixpence.
Sixpence, would fetch you from school on his bike and you would ride
the bar or the carrier,
and hang on for dear life through the bush paths home.
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=2 0great privilege and very unusual to be
taken out to dinner at a real
restaurant or in a proper hotel or even better,
Haddon & Sly, or - Meikles.

Remember when���...
Any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or get him to
carry groceries and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it.
When being sent to the head mistress's office was nothing compared to
the fate that awaited at home.
Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of
muggings, drugs, gangs, aids etc.
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat... and some of
us are still afraid of them!!!

Didn't that feel good just to go back and say,
Yeah, I remember that?!!!!

Remember when..����..
Decisions were made by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo."
Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Ninger!"
Or revulsion was just �Siss Man�!
"A race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest.
Money was handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly",
The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was germs.
Having a weapon in school, meant being caught with a 'BIC' pen / paw
paw branch pea shooter
or an eraser catapulted by a 30cm ruler, or the catapult made from
golf ball elastic twisted on your leg
to shoot bits of orange peels.
Taking drugs meant chewing on 'Cafenol' chewable vitamins or Cod Liver
Oil...(yuk).

Colcom Ham, Flings, Willard's Chips, rock-hard marshmallow Easter eggs and
best of all �..kudu biltong from Uncle Scotty�s farm
Coke were considered basic nutritional requirements (and don't forget
Tomango Tomato Sauce) and Hubbly Bubbly.
Coke top collections got you plastic animals Elephants and sable
,baboons and hyenas.

Good times were always had at the following places - any evening of the week...
The Blue Gardenia / The Gremlin / The Yellow Orchid / Fritz in Byo /
across the Border at Maria's, or Merna Brown's place, or Machipanda,
and don't forget the Little Swallow.
Hiking in the Chimanimani�s the Vumba and Troutbek or trips to Kariba,
Wankie, Lake Kyle or Vic falls,
strip roads to Zimbabwe ruins.
Game parks were the best Wankie, Chirundu, Gona Rezoa,.Mataopos,Bumi and all.

And what about an afternoon at the following places...
Matopas Hotel /Rhodes grave/ Mazoe Hotel / Mermaids Pool / Aloe Park /
Hot Springs / Lake Mac/
Rusape Dam, Pie and Gravy in Meikles Umtali on a Sat morning with the mates.
Mixed grill at Helen's Umtali for 7/6d.

Window shopping at night without fear of being harmed;
Skills and courage were discovered because of a "truth or dare"
Older siblings were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors.

Remember when..����..
Jacaranda�s, Flame Lilies, Kaffir booms and Msasas�s bloomed
Afternoon tropical Thunder storms rained cat and dogs,
The smell of first rains and the Flying ants that followed by the zillion.

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have LIVED!!!!

Memories

by Terry

Anyone else remember the man with the horse-drawn
veggie cart that came down Montague Avenue mornings
in the early part of the war?

My brother and I would hitch a ride round to the next street and then
run home down the alley way. This was when Dad was in the Rhodesian
Air Force in the Desert for three years. (there's a photo of the squadron
on the O.R.A.F.S. site ) We moved into quarters at Belvedere station when
he got back, - went to Blakiston by bus; was on it when a kid jumped on
screaming "The war is over". We were there for a year after the end of
the war
when we moved back to Umtali and went to U.H.S.

Anyone remember the "Chisa Inja" stall in Umtali?
Or the afternoons spent at the swimming pool?  and the corrugated iron
change cubicles?

Terry

Damn I feel so homesick now.....

by Rob T-K

other things I can remember, was the citrus from Hippo Valley Estates,
oranges by the 10 kilo bag, and SOOOO juicy it was heaven.

Raw and Fired sugar cane from the Triangle cane fields, the clouds of black soot
raining down even in Cheredzi if the wind was blowing right, and we knew :-)

And oh wonder of wonders, if someone was going up to Bully's for the week or weekend,
and Mum or Dad placing their orders for Downings meat pies.....

Riding your bike for hours in the bush, never mind the idea of terr's,
clambering over kopje's and into little caves never knowing what you might find,
and TRYING to ride my bike IN the irrigation canals.....  :-)

Damn I had a wonderful childhood, and funny thing is,
looking back now makes me long for those days all over again, so I can do those things all over again,
and yes even make the same mistakes. They helped make it a wonderful life and now memories.

Bicycle Club, Mazoe

by Dennis Rawson

As children in Mazoe on the Citrus Estate we had no television, had to listen to the family radio when allowed, and a great luxury was a gramophone. We had to amuse ourselves. Books had their place, but being in the country, the outdoors beckoned, and anyone who has lived in the country will tell you, this is where the action really is. Bikes were a necessity out there, as we children all lived anything from 300 yards to four miles apart. Kids attract kids, it is a rule, and we would congregate at the grey pebble dash type new Citrus Estate Sports Club over the weekends. One day I suggested we form a bicycle club! This we all did, and I came up with a logo, the front wheel, and forks of a bicycle, with added wings. The logo was voted on, approved, and I set about decorating each bike, quite a task. My! Did we look smart when my handiwork was done!

We all met on given days, and went on tours, our imagination the only inhibitor, the Islands on the Mazoe river, the workers housing along the river which was linked by small paths through the long grass, and that was always adventurous, all kinds of things were come across from snakes (high adventure) to other young children (interesting conversation). The odd adult was almost literally run into, as the grass was taller than head height, and the path a little more than shoulder width at shoulder height, and about a foot wide at ground level. If there had been a bush fire, all sorts of interesting things lay around in the blackened earth, broken clay pots, old cycle wheels, tin cans and whatnot.

Bird life was aplenty, and if lucky, a rabbit, small antelope or a mongoose would be disturbed, and off they would go. Leopards were around, but they were nocturnal, and were always on higher ground anyway. Then there were the hills, we would ride as high as we could, abandon our bikes, and climb up to the top. That was no mean feat, and the hillsides were rocky and steep, more game up here, in particular blue vervet monkeys and baboons, which we were wary of, and on reaching the top, the vista of the Mazoe Valley in all its agricultural glory was there to behold. We were there up amongst the raptors, looking down on other birds, African huts, flelds of mielies, swathes of grassland, and then the military-like rows of citrus trees. The main canal snaked its way along the side of the hills, known as the Iron Mask Range. Beyond that was the river, a line of deep green trees meandered through the valley, the golden grasses between them and agricultural activity making a sparkling contrast. Now and then one could see a little of the river itself, maybe a bend, a stunted tree or a small beach showing one where the water ran. In the rainy season it was a different scene. The river, swollen and red with the African earth as it bled on its way to the sea.

Another adventure would be a bush fire in itself. There are many in Africa, some caused by people smoking out bees, others setting a patch of grassland alight in order to catch small animals fleeing for eating, others for a variety of reasons, lightning being one of them. They were not too intense, and one could ride a bike through them, and if on foot, one could run through them. The heat was rather intense for a moment, and singed hair and clothing were the order of the day, as was a parental lecture as to what could happen if one misjudged a given situation. Other occasions we would help beat out a fire if it was considered necessary. It was not too much fun, as the heat burned one's face, and in particular, one's hands, so one could only do so much, then beat a retreat to recover.

The odd crash on a bike was inevitable, and now and then one had to be attended to for one reason or another. We carried all the necessary tools and repair kits. We never left home without generous amounts of food packed by our Mothers, who always gave one enough to eat and share, so the stops were veritable feasts, We had a nine foot tar road running through the centre of the Estate, we would cycle down that, return on the parallel dirt road through the orange trees, the perfume a delight when the blooms were out, and a real treat was the cosmos in summer. Their multi-coloured blooms filled the roadside verges. My Mom had a dislike for them because they had no real perfume, as such, but had an odor that was not too pleasant. She complained that they were "not real flowers". I thought they were absolutely beautiful.

We had a variety of bikes, the fanciest was owned by Denise Osborne, a Sunbeam, which boasted a chain oil bath. Her Dad owned Osborne Cycles, which answers a lot of questions. They had the Sunbeam agency. We others were lucky to have chain guards, and they, in turn, were lucky to remain intact for too long! My bike was a Phillips roadster, which did me well in spite of all the accidents. The handlebars were not too well formed after a few falls, and the poor bell protruded a bit too far, and was a bit battered as it hit the deck, or a wall that was ridden too close to. The rain had the leather saddle misshapen before too long the hand grips wore out, brake blocks and tyres were a constant worry as they needed to be bought with limited pocket money, so one had to be resourceful and get one's parents to include them in the family budget. I think Suellen and Leone Crous had Raleigh products, Rudges, if I remember aright, and the rest, a blur now.

In the end the club just went away as we all learned to drive and moved on to greater things, but my love for a bicycle remains, and I have a mountain bike in my garage as I write, it awaits it's next outing.

Our Rhodesian Childhood

by Anon