Full name George Aloysius Smith. Son of Joseph and Ellen. Born 1883 in Kokstad* in the Eastern Cape where his father had died. Was to become a priest and attended a seminary. Our mother regarded him as educated since he had some Latin. (Must have travelled to Ireland for this; there were no Catholic seminaries in SA). Evidently decided that the celibate life was not for him and went on to father the first of his nine children (our mother) in 1909.
* Kokstad was the capital of the then independent territory of Griqualand East established by Adam Kok III in 1862 after he had led his tribe on an historic trek east across the Drakensberg Mountains. Descendant of the original Griqua leader Adam Kok. The Griquas were a group made up of the descendants of Bushmen, Hottentots, runaway "Malay" slaves, white adventurers and others who had originally settled in the Northern Cape near Kimberly (Griqualand West) earlier in the century.
George at first worked for The Cable Co. Not clear whether this is the one that set up the cable-car that takes people from the foot of Table Mountain to its flat top. (For more information about the Cape click this link.)
Thereafter George was an insurance salesman/collector mainly in District Six, a 'coloured' (i.e. mixed race) area with a large Muslim community descended from slaves imported by the Dutch from East Indies in 18th century, though variously inter-married.
This 'Malay' culture demands proper burial rites. People would pay a shilling a week for years to ensure a decent funeral. If someone was unable to pay George might put it in for them and collect it the following week. My mother said he was one of the few whites who could walk safely in District Six because he had a special place in the lives (and deaths) of the residents.
[Spice up your cuisine by trying the Malay and other recipes that can be found by clicking here.]
There was more to Old George than this. (He should not be confused with his son, George - also a man of many parts.) Here are a few examples.
When George died our father, Rolf, a keen sportsman, laid claim to a framed photograph that hung on one of our walls for years. It showed the Aston Villa touring side of 1920-something plus various officials including one George Smith described as 'Local tour manager' or some similar title. The picture seems to have been lost (I suspect our mother - 'Football rubbish!'). The Aston Villa archivist has also been unable to trace it.
The Palace Hotel, Claremont, near to where the family lived after leaving Woodstock, is no longer there, but it was a favourite haunt of George's. When still quite young I was treated to a lemonade or two on the verandah while George and a crony repaired to the bar.
Not only Old George but his sons George and Frank, our dad Rolf, my brothers David and Alan, have been known to frequent the place. (Alan says David was 'honorary vice-president'. More on the brothers' drinking careers can be found by following this link).
Old George was a bit of a piss artist. I remember a conversation between my father and mother that went something like this, after she had berated him (Rolf) for having a brandy too many:-
Rolf: You never complained about your father's drinking.
Muriel: At least he could hold his drink. (Leaves the room, huffily.)
Rolf: (to me) He was always more fucking drunk than he was sober.
(I was slightly shocked.)
George was both idealized and feared by his children; some more than others. On Sundays and times like Christmas and New Year (when we from Jo'burg were often there), he would preside over an enormous dinner table, his wife at his side, and his children, their sweethearts, fiancés, spouses (many in uniform), their children, plus a few hangers-on, ranged around the table.
He insisted on good food from his wife, and good table manners from everyone else. Famous for hitting Noel (Stella's son) with a bread knife for trying to grab a slice before it was offered him. Most people were frightened of the irascible old bastard.
When his wife died, George demanded that Christmas dinner be exactly as it had been when she was alive. We were in the Cape that Christmas and this edict fell to our mother and her sister Joan to carry out. There was no problem with the turkey, stuffing and so on. But the pudding...
Our German granny, Elise (aka Ottilie), used to make the pudding according to a traditional recipe in her head. This involved mixing ingredients and then forming them into a football-sized sphere tightly wrapped in a cloth and boiling this for a long while. It was then suspended above a basin in the kitchen to allow surplus moisture to drain off.
I don't know what went wrong but their efforts were a disaster. They were left on the day before Christmas without a pudding, but didn't dare tell their father about it. Some whispered phonecalls established that Mrs. Jones, the mother of another sister's husband, had a spare pudding. So Graham (Joan's son) and I were dispatched with a stout string-handled brown paper shopping bag to collect it.
We would have been about ten years old at the time. Not only was it Christmas but Mrs. Jones always gave you biscuits and stuff. She also had a hand grenade on her mantlepiece. (I still wonder whether it had been disarmed. I didn't dare pull the pin, just in case). So Graeme and I were in high spirits, and on the way home competed to see who could throw the bag containing the pudding the highest.
The pudding turned out to have been made in a glass Pyrex dish which had shattered by the time we got it home. Muriel and Joan were furious, but fortunately could not give full vent to their wrath lest it attract their father's attention. But Graeme and I were, as my brother David eloquently puts it, "in big kak". Not least among their concerns was that they'd have to explain to Mrs. Jones and replace the pyrex dish, and just after the war these were unobtainable.
So they patiently picked out every piece of glass, mixed what remained with a hastily bought tinned pudding, poked silver coins into it, set it alight with brandy and served it up as the real thing with brandy sauce. Old George couldn't tell the difference (and nobody died).
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