Re-living the first driving lesson.
Jess relives some of her first memories of South Africa.
"This family picture hung in the dining room. My first connection with technology came about from outings in the Ford. If it rained we would put up the mica windows with the cavas surround. I would climb on the running board to push the studs through the eyelets.. and give them a twist.
We lived on a farm in the Ciskei, South Africa. I rode to my school five miles away on Bonny Boy. He was my best friend, but he had a mind of his own.
Our life changed because of petrol rationing during the Second World War.
Background Noise
For our Christmas holidays, we reverted to using the ox wagon to take us to Haga Haga. We all piled on with our supplies - two housemaids, a crate of chickens, a box of eggs (six gross), home cured salt beef and three dozen bottles of home-made lemon squash.
For the everyday jobs, twice weekly, we would take the eggs and cream to the bus by Scotch-cart. The bus resembled a heavy army lorry.
The carcass of the old Ford had been dumped at the bottom of our yard, away from grown ups. This is where the farm children and myself learned our driving skills.
It wasn't until after the war that Dad bought a tractor. Ever since my feet could touch the pedals I had been helping to service the car. But in 1949, the year of the severe drought, I was 17, and it was time to grow up.
Dad took me for my first proper driving lesson. We needed to take the Dodge pick-up truck to the spring and ferry the water to a field. On the back I had four Xhosa workers, three forty-four gallon drums and numerous "gogogs" (tin paraffin drums made into buckets).
When I had to reverse down the bank to the spring, I gave too much juice. The boys scattered like hens with a jackal in the henhouse.
Dad's only instruction to me was, "Any fool can drive fast, but it takes skill to drive slowly."
Jess Twycross
