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'In all the years I knew him, not once can I ever recall seeing him in a suit. If he didn't wear a
polo-necked jersey, he wore a tie with the tail stuck in the inside of his shirt. Even on Sundays.
He always wore a tie. Never saw him with
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his shirt open and his chest exposed. He didn't have many teeth in his mouth -those he had he
brushed every morning. His shoes he polished every night. Otherwise he wasn't very fussy about
himself - although he shaved himself regular. He'd made his own razor, a cut throat. My father
had very thick, wiry, curly hair - so had my daughter - and he had to use a steel comb. He was
about 5'7", had gray hair and a face like yours (GH). His health was very, very good -until
about three years before he died.
'On his right arm he had a coloured tattoo of a big kangaroo. Everybody knew him as "Aussie".
He had an Australian accent and was known as "Aussie". He was a very good cricket-player
and smoked Venus cigarettes.
'My mother was very attractive, with long dark hair. She used to take orders for cakes, working
at home and icing and decorating cakes. And she did a lot of sewing and dress-making.
'Grandfather Roebl (or Robel) on my mother's side came from Germany, and he could speak,
write and read seven languages. I was the only one of his descendants who married a German;
Babette could speak his language and he was thrilled. He himself married an Afkikaans-
speaking woman, a Miss Niemand; they had 10 children. John, their eldest, went to Australia at
the age of 25 and worked as a journalist with some newspaper in Melbourne. He married, had
one child, a daughter. He intended to return to South Africa, but died before he could.
'As I said, my old man was a rolling stone. He was working as a coppersmith on the railways
during the First World War - he married in 1915 -and he got gassed. That's why he took to
liquor, he said. The old steam engines used to have big copper cylinders, and there was an
accumulation of fumes in one of these cylinders, and my father reckoned he got gassed and then
became an alcoholic in his way. He wouldn't go out of the house without a half bottle of brandy
in his coat pocket. He wasn't always drinking. He was a man who could last for months and
months without a drink. Then he would go on a spree.
'He played music only when he was drunk. He put a mouth-organ in his mouth, pushed it to the
side; and he played this bloody mandolin. And he would tap-dance, and he put this cap on the
side of his head, over his ear, and he'd sing all these music-hall songs. Oh, he was very comical.
But he had to be drunk.
'He couldn't stay put. He went all over the bloody country. He wanted to be on the move.
Mother would stay with my grandmother, my mother's mother, Mrs Roebl, in Johannesburg. So
would I. And off he would go, to Durban, Cape Town. The only home my mother ever had was
when my father went to Rhodesia and worked his way down to Messina, on the border. They
had a little minehouse there.
'When I was 16 (in 1932), I was living with my grandmother and had started to work as a
learner cabinet-maker. Before that I went to so many schools I didn't know whether I was
coming or going. On account of my old man I haven't got a good education. I was taken out
and replaced in so many
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different schools it was impossible for me to learn. I did pass Standard 6. Although my granny
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