Clay Brick

 

My dad once told me that when your childhood became important to you, you were reaching old age. I have also been told that you are only as old as you feel. These two conflicting statements are a bit much for a blonde, so I’ll try to ignore them, and go where the story goes.

This Clay Brick site has somehow or other flipped a switch in my head that keeps trying to open the portal to my (much) younger years.

While pondering over the topics and subject matter that would be suitable for this site, fresh, and worth reading, it came to me that children no longer play. I won’t be going into all that now, just those bits that are about clay, and its effect on my life.

On our walk home from school, to save the 2c bus fare (a packet of Simba chips), we would pass a patch of continually wet ground. It may have been a leaking water pipe (service delivery problems?). In really wet weather you didn’t walk there, as the hiding you would get (for messing up your shoes, socks, and if you slid and fell, the rest of your uniform), wasn’t worth the risk. During holidays it was great fun, as we would run toward the mud hole, and then jump onto the slick surface and see how far we were able to slide. We discovered klei-latte back then. A direct translation would have it be a clay cane, which is not too far from the truth. Using the kitchen knife smuggled from home, or a penknife (lifted from Dad’s bedside table and Heaven help you if it weren’t back in place before he got home), you would cut down the dream branch, and spend hours whittling away at it until it was the right length, the right thickness, and sufficiently supple. This could take forever, as we were pretty much restricted to thorn trees, notorious for not having the straightest branches until they were quite large, and then the branches would be useless.

When you eventually had your cane, or stick, you would go and collect some of the mud clay from the edges of the mud patch. Back in ’67 plastic packets were scarce, so the clay mess would go into the rolled hem of your shirt.

Teams would be picked.

Boundaries would be marked out.

Lumps of clay would be carefully broken off, and moulded around the top of the cane.

The lump of clay would be flicked at members of the other team.

It was difficult to get the hang of the flicking motion required, to get the clay lump to come off the cane at the right time, and heading in the right direction. Once mastered, some practice would ensure reasonable accuracy, and hitting milk bottle 10 metres away was an accomplishment.

Klei-latte battles and competitions helped us get through eternally long holidays. I must add that we would also build huts and “forts” in the bush, we would build go-karts, corrugated iron canoes, go on cycling trips, and so much more.

I found a website that really brought all these things back to me, and even though the owner of that website grew up in Johannesburg, whereas I grew up in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, the similarity in what we did as kids is amazing. I always thought kids from Joeys were a different species. Head over to his All at Sea site and relive the good “Old South Africa”.

© copyright Tony Flanigan 2009