Sunday, 13 July 1986: Riding the Teeny-Bopper Express to East London

 At 2:51 PM, the Amatola Express pulls out of the station one minute late.  See, I got on after all!  There was a mob scene at the platform when I found the middle-aged Afrikaner conductor around 2:10.  I have him my usual, “Middag, menier” (“Afternoon, sir”) bull shit.  They always seem to like it when you greet them in Afrikaans.  He said he’d find me a seat.  I stayed close to him but made sure I didn’t bug him for the next 10 minutes as he handled various seat assignment problems.  Finally, he turned to me and said, “Let’s see.  You need a seat.”  It didn’t even cost me a bribe and the second-class ticket for the 20-hour journey was only R60 (US$24) with my 40% foreign tourist discount.  Full train, eh?  MY 6-person compartment only has four in it – me and three high school kids.  Dad is saying goodbye to one of them (in English) telling him to study hard and see the headmaster about getting help.

We’re on our way to Germiston, our first stop.  We pass through a crummy residential area.  Young blacks are playing soccer in a school field.  There’s Bob’s Auto Spares with junked cars all piled up.  Then, the Denver Soap Works – makes me feel right at home.  God, am I glad to be on this train and away from Cathy. 

I’m standing in the corridor outside the compartment watching the “scenery”, and these various fucking kids keep walking up and down the corridor squeezing past me.  Veritable pain in the arse, it is.

Germiston station.  Hot damn – a shiny class 15CA choo choo, with a nameplate that says “Cheeta”, is on the siding.  Puff, puff, puff.

A couple of the high school boys in my compartment are from Dale College, an English-medium boys’ boarding school in King William’s Town, not far from East London.  Another kid takes a seat in our compartment.  Who knows who belongs where?  The kids are friendly and talkative.  A short kid wearing a red and black rep tie says 60% of the students at Dale are from Jo’burg.   He points to a bunch of old abandoned steamers on a siding and I snap a picture.  Just south of Germiston, we pass Elsburg and a mine dump.  The kid in the rep tie points out a factory where his dad got him a job during the holiday.  They’ve been off since June 20 and are heading back now.  He says Dale is good in rugby.

 

Elsburg with long, flat-topped mine dumps on the horizon.  I wondered why the area in the middle of the photo was burned.

A few minutes later, Rep Tie says we’re passing through a black township.  You can tell by the high floodlights.  The blacks would smash regular street lights, he says.  Factories, factories, factories all along our route now as the electric train makes for Vereeniging.  The boys ask me a bunch of questions about America, Zimbabwe, etc. Fortunately, they don’t try to straighten me out on local politics yet.  I always hate it when South Africans have to start out a conversation that way.  In America, we consider it rude to start talking politics the minute you meet someone.

Vereeniging – the small Transvaal city where the British and Boers signed the treaty ending the Second Boer War in 1902.  We cross the Vaal River (hence the name of the province, Transvaal, named by the Boers who crossed the Vaal River from the south to settle the area.)  Rep Tie points out a synthetic petroleum plant.  We head into Sasolburg – huge factories, very flat, lots of smoke.  I appear to be riding on the Teeny-Bopper Express.  The average age out in the corridor is about 15. Most adults (what few there are) are smart enough to stay in the compartments given this unruly horde. 

The Vaal River at dusk on July 13, 1986

 

My kiddie cattle caravan hums across the high veld and into the night.  Though most of the kids are boys, a few sexy young birds walk by that catch my eye (“Too young, Will!”)  I talk with the guys in my compartment about hobbies (models and stamps).  Rep Tie’s name is Stephen.  His dad sells ventilation systems to factories.  His family is from England and Stephen carries a British passport.  He has now changed out of his school duds and into a baggy black cable knit, crew neck sweater, jeans, and tackies (sneakers)

The fucking train is now running a half an hour late.  Hope I have enough time in Bloemfontein for a phone call to Jonathan in East London to confirm my arrival tomorrow.  While ordering a sandwich down in the snack bar car, I meet a maroon beret (medic) named Maloney.  He guards a SASOL plant in Secunda.  He’s a rowdy, young, good-natured guy.  Gives me his address and phone number and invites me to stay with him at his flat if I ever get to Secunda.  Bravo for Irish hospitality!

Teeny boppers are walking off with 6ers of Castle Lager long toms (16 oz cans named for a Boer War cannon).  One kid who can’t be more than 17 carries off two little bottles of Smirnoff Vodka.  The chubby old Afrikaner selling booze to these kids in the canteen car doesn’t bat an eye.

Back in my car, a teen-age bird in light blue slacks with white stripes is bending over looking out the window about four feet away from me.  It’s driving me up the wall (“Again, Will.  Too young!”)  Another bird throws a tissue out the window reminding me that South Africans are real litter bugs.  It’s bad in Botswana too.  Actually litter is less of a problem in Zimbabwe and Zambia because they have no aluminum cans and all glass bottles have a deposit on them.

The young folk are getting rowdy now.  Lots of whistling and cat-calls.  Turns out the kids are from a number of different schools.  The Dale boys aren’t drinking or smoking because they are afraid of being reported to the headmaster by an adult school monitor who is on the train.

Stephen explains that the non-white passengers are in carriages (cars) in front of the canteen car (we are behind it).  Even though they can now ride first or second class, they put them in separate cars.  He explains that they would never put blacks in cars with a bunch of white school kids.  He acts as if the reasons should be obvious to me.  I don’t want to act like a total dumb shit and admit that I don’t understand.  Maybe they think fights would break out or the “evil kaffirs” would teach the white school kids about sex and drugs…or maybe the white kids would discover that the black passengers are nice human beings and fun people to be with.  No, we wouldn’t want that to happen!

The train is now 23 minutes late as we pull out of Theunissen.  C’mon baby, I need time for a phone call.  We pull into Bloem at 9:50PM (we should have left here nine minutes ago).  The conductor says we’ll be here for at least 20 minutes.  I sprint over to a telephone, but have to wait for some soldier to finish using it.  I get through to East London.  Jon says Billy will be at the station tomorrow to fetch me.  I try to phone Woolfie and Irene, my friends in Bloem, but there is no answer. 

As I hang up, the train starts moving.  Oh, SHIT!  They can’t be leaving early!   Not another sprint and precipitous jump on to a moving train like I had to perform in Waterfal Boven a couple months ago.  I jump down off the platform, cross two tracks, over another platform, across another track and jump on to the bottom step of a coach holding on to the handrail with one hand and opening the door with the other.  Fortunately, the train is not moving fast yet.  Then it stops.  False alarm.  He was just moving a few meters down the tracks.  I think they are switching from electrics to diesel-electric engines here. 

I walk back to my car and encounter some kotch (puke) in the corridor along the way.  There was some in our car earlier.  It keeps the black janitors on the train busy.  Don’t know why these kids can’t do their “liquid laughs” out the window.  Run into a boy and girl smooching in the hall.  Christ, does that make me horny.

OK, time to TRY to get some sleep in the midst of these youthful party animals.