Grumpy Old Men

This morning I finished a book that was brought to me all the way from my beloved Underberg in South Africa. The book in question was written by a notoriously grumpy old man who has lived in the district of Underberg for many, many years, and who just happens to be one of those world-class raconteurs that we very rarely get to cross paths with in our lives. When I closed the book, I took the time to lean back and reflect on the years I had known him, and how we had met. After that, I decided to write about it here. Before this, however, I went on the Internet and googled him. Knowing him as I do, I very much doubted that he would be active on the web, but knowing how randomly one’s personal details can find their way into cyberspace these days, I gave it a try anyway. Sure enough, there he was. Under an article on what to do at “Splashy Fen” (Underberg’s reply to Woodstock) were a number of entries concerning local attractions. One of these was the Himeville museum. Himeville is five kilometers from Underberg, and despite the ancient feuds that raged between these two isolated outposts over the last hundred or more years, they are both a part of the so-called “Underberg district”, and their inhabitants and the inhabitants of the farms that surround both towns are all happy to call themselves locals within the context of the greater area. My friend is now curator of the local museum in Himeville, though he would fit in as one of the exhibits too. I know he’ll have a good laugh at that one should he ever read this.Unfortunately, like so many of his kind, computers and the Internet are foreign concepts to him, so I shall have to send him a printed version of this entry.

Anyway, unbeknown to him his home number was also listed on this site, so I gave him a call. We spent a delightful 45 minutes on the phone. The sound of his voice, the cultured colonial English rolling off his tongue in his well-modulated baritone, brought back a flood of memories. It was as if the last 12 years had never occurred. We discussed the weather, politics (both local and international), local affairs and past characters and events, and bemoaned the decline in standards in South Africa and the world in general. We could have been standing in the queue at the local farmers co-operative for all the change in our conversation. I have thought of him often over the years, but to hear his voice again was quite electrifying. To those of you who have read the rest of the blog, he is the gentleman with whom I would share my finds out in the wilderness as related in the entry entitled “Forgotten Places”. To read this one, go to the column on the right of the page you’re looking at now and look under “Popular Posts”. It should still be one of the four there. It used to be the most popular, which has prompted me to share more of my Underberg tales with you.
Well, I’d like to tell how I met my friend, and as I have his permission to share his name with you all, I shall, for the first time ever, use a real name.

Time: Sometime in September 1994.
Place: Underberg, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.

I hadn’t been long in town as the new “Chief of Underberg Protection Services” when I had the pleasure (some would say misfortune) of meeting Mr. Michael Clark. By now I had left the provincial traffic police for a new position in Underberg, for those of you who have only read the “Screaming Patrolmen” and “Shooting the Spider” tales, and was rather un-firmly ensconced in Underberg. It was a responsible position that required a responsible attitude which I will elaborate on another time. Suffice it to say that under the circumstances in which I first saw the terrifying Mr. Clark in action, I was forced to remain hidden behind a door.

I had an office in the old building that housed the original Underberg Health Committee. Health Committee was the name given to the town council of a town so tiny, insignificant and poor that its municipal seat of office didn’t even warrant the title of Town Board, which was what they got if the town was marginally more noticeable. This was followed by the title of Municipality, and if a town had this status then they were well on the way to getting included on a map sometime in the future.

Back to the point. Housed within this little building were the town clerk, the local sheriff (yours truly), a front office clerk-cum-secretary who handled day-to-day town business (permits, accounts, etc.) and a back office lady who dealt with all matters to do with transportation, such as the issuing of licenses, renewal of registration plates, etc. At the time there was no town clerk, so we were all without a boss. I was the only man about. The front office was operated by a geriatric of doubtful vintage (she lived down the road with her boyfriend of similar age to herself) and the back office by a young girl of my own age who was as quiet as a mouse and had a heart of gold. The old bat reigned supreme in that establishment. I was only 21 and the young lady in the back office (who later became, and still is, my sister-in-law) was a year younger. The old girl was probably only about 67 or so, but she looked and acted about 80. At least to our young eyes. She was an extremely domineering and shrill old woman, and she would go out of her way to make life unpleasant for the two of us. She knew how to operate though. Moments after she had nearly caused me to draw my pistol and fill her with lead, she would be bringing in a tray of tea and biscuits, all beautifully laid out on a silver tray with cups and saucers and the whole works, with some comment such as “here you are my dear, have some tea!” Whilst munching on a biscuit and sipping delicious hot strong tea, I would think back over the last hour and suppose to myself that maybe I had just misinterpreted her intentions and misread her words. Perhaps she wasn’t so bad after all. These musings would then be shattered by the crash of my office door flying open and her shrieking incomprehensibly at me while she waved some form in my face. “Did you tell Mrs. So-and-so that I’m the one who deals with this application? Well! Speak up, boy, I don’t have all day, you know. I’m a busy woman and I won’t have the general public all flocking up here to waste my time!”

I would be hastily trying to choke down the remains of my half-chewed biscuit and get to my feet, my face red hot with rage and humiliation, ready to inform her that that was precisely what her job was about and that the only reason she was actually still employed at her advanced state of decay was to deal with the very “general public” that she so despised, but before I could even open my mouth she would have slammed my door and been back at the little glass window giving the poor unfortunate on the other side a further dressing down. I hated this treatment of the town citizens, and it was one of the reasons that I eventually came to realize that, despite her moments of kindness and the fact that she didn’t even realize how she was perceived, I actually truly disliked her.

One day I was sitting in my office with the inter-leading door to the front office open. It was shortly before lunch time, so I was winding up my paperwork and preparing to nip off home for a bite to eat. My aged protagonist was ensconced in her knitting in front of her typewriter, just out of my line of sight. All I could see through the doorway was her reflection in the glass panel that separated her from her tormentors when they summoned up the courage to visit the seat of the town authority. Through the hole in the glass I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, followed immediately by the sharp and hurried sound of typing. How she got her knitting safely stowed and her fingers flying over the keys in such a short space of time befuddles my brain to this day. I had by now stood up and was putting on my jacket, preparing to leave. As I passed the inter-leading door, I got a glimpse of her, just as a deep baritone voice made itself heard over the clacking of the electric typewriter.
“Good morning.” An instant of silence and then the clacking resumed. After another ten seconds or so had passed there came another “Good morning”, followed by the same pause in typing and then more clack-clacking. I now had the door to my office open and was in a unique position whereby I could look through the door between my office and hers as well as out the glass panel in the door that separated our side of the building from that of the public. Standing there in the area before her counter was an elderly gentleman with a weathered look about him, his eyebrows rather tussled and bushy, and his large, elf-like ears sprouting the odd clump of hair similar in appearance to the ones protruding from his nostrils. He wore an old blue jersey and some corduroys of indeterminate age. The holes in his sleeves reminded me very much of the ones in my father’s sleeves. Not ones there through poverty, but simply there because the owner saw no good reason to rid himself of his favourite garment simply because it had begun to show a few minor signs of wear. In fact, the gentleman in question reminded me unmistakably of my own father in all respects. A similarity that was to be borne out in the next few minutes.

All of a sudden, there was a loud bang as the man crashed the base of his clenched fist down on the wooden counter and bellowed “I said GOOD MORNING!”. The clackety-clack of the typewriter ceased instantaneously, and I quickly shifted position so that I could look back into the old she-wolf’s lair. She turned to her would-be customer with a look of absolute disbelief on her face, her mouth hanging open in surprise. I was frozen in delight. This was bound to be interesting, most interesting indeed! I shifted again to get a view of the old chap. He had a grim set to his features and was eyeing her like an eagle on high studying the movements of its prey far below. She leapt to her feet and fired her opening salvo.
“Can’t you see I’m busy!!” she screeched.
“No, you’re bloody well not!” he replied, leaning her way and fixing her with a beady look from under his beetled brows.
“I certainly am,” she yelled, “and I won’t have just every Tom, Dick and Harry waltzing in here and interrupting my work!”
The gentleman gave her a look that would have melted rock and with a slight increase in his already impressive volume replied. “You’re bloody well sitting here knitting on public time, time that I pay for, you old bag, and time that therefore belongs to the public, so get up off your lazy backside and give me the service I expect!”
By the end of this sentence, his voice had taken on the power and volume of a Berg thunder storm, matched only by his thunderous visage. The old girl was apoplectic. There was a moment of silence, during which I wondered if she was in the throes of a coronary seizure brought on by her rage at this unheard-of attack on her supremacy.
“What?! WHAT did you say?” I heard her squeak in a choked voice. “What did you say to me, you…you horrible, uncouth man!!?”. By now she was panting in her rage and quite unable to find her voice, so indignant was she. I had shifted closer to the door in order to get a better view of the stranger through the little glass pane, and was now crying tears of pure mirth at the scene being enacted in front of my eyes. This grizzled old gent was like an incarnation of my dreams, a rugged apparition from the past. The formidable ***** was simply no match for a man of his ilk, and he knew it. He loomed over the counter, his nose inches from the glass, and said, “I suggest you stop wheezing and get on with it before I REALLY lose my patience!”

This last shot seemed to defeat the tyrant, for she snatched up the form from where he had thrown it under the glass and flopped into her chair with an indignant little “Oh!” and began processing whatever it was that he had come for. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and straightened up, the laughter-induced cramps in my belly not yet gone. A last fit of giggles convulsed me before I was able to compose myself into the serious chief of the traffic police that I was supposed to be and step into the room in which he stood. As I closed the door behind me and turned to leave, I found myself face-to-face with him. He gave me the once-over and harrumphed in disdain before turning his attention back to the office in which his now cowed adversary was silently attending to his needs. With a last smile of delight at his broad back, I exited through the front door. Once outside I broke out in howls of unrestrained laughter again. I was so incapacitated by mirth that I must have lingered longer than I intended to, for suddenly I heard the door slam behind me and there he was.

“And what the bloody hell are you laughing at?” he demanded to know. This was too much, and I doubled over in mirth once again, all thoughts of professionalism cast aside in the joy at seeing a real old character of the past do his thing. The wonderful accent, with its overtones of British Imperialism, the tatty old clothing that told the world to go jump, the expectation of a member of the public from his public servants and the classic manner in which he had dealt with a typical, rude bureaucrat had endeared this man to me without his even knowing who I was. Like all Underbergers, he had of course heard about the new young upstart in town who was to fulfill the hated and despised role of “traffic cop”. For the locals, it didn’t matter what grandiose visions I may have had, or that the times and laws had changed, giving the local law enforcement far more powers of criminal investigation if they so chose. I would remain a traffic cop, a being put on earth to plague and harass regular souls as they went about their business, relieving them of their hard-earned cash and generally performing a function that they deemed completely unnecessary in their day-to-day lives.
I straightened up and attempted a serious look. This was not the time to make an attempt at conversation. That could come later. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied, “it’s just something personal. Have a good day, sir!” With that, I scampered off to my vehicle and left. I could see the old gent in my rearview-mirror, standing there gazing after me with a puzzled expression on his face.

There is more to tell about the famous Mike Clark, but I will relate it in another entry. For now, I wish to let those of you who would care to read more about Underberg and the rich tales it has to tell know where to get hold of copies of some of the excellent books written by this wonderful man.

These are the titles:

The Saga of Sani Pass and Mokhotlong (also available on www.abebooks.co.uk )

Ihlanyati

The Lighter Side of the Berg and other Stories

The author’s name is Michael Clark, and books can be ordered via the following address:

Mr. M. Clark
PO Box 122
Himeville
3256
South Africa

Alternatively, post a comment on this blog and I will telephone Mike with your order after making contact with you. His writing gives one an insight into how life in one of the true last outposts in the wild country of the Drakensberg really was. I was privileged enough to have experienced the waning remnants of this lifestyle, and it was a pleasure to read his stories. Those of you who have enjoyed my tales will undoubtedly relish the stories Mike has to tell.

In closing, I must mention that in spite of my decision to make the next entry one of the tales of my military adventures, I am going to continue with the story of how I met Mike properly for the first time, and how he became my friend. It’s been great thinking of you, Mike, and I thoroughly enjoyed your book. I know you never thought of me in the same light that I thought of you, and I understand. Just know that your humour, your knowledge and your great insight (not to mention your pessimism, your complaints and your incessant grumbling) have never left my memory. I considered you one of my best friends in Underberg. Keep the home fires burning, and don’t stop writing…