Sweet Sixteen

Pictures:
My mom with her mother and stepfather, James Busch.
My mom with good friends, Louise Rhoode (left) and Daphne Poole(right).


My mom and her sisters moved back to town (from Sandvlei) when my granny had sorted things out after her divorce. My gran continued working as a cook for the Blochs, and for a little while my mother (16) worked as a maid, cleaning house for the same family.

A story I’ve heard my mom tell many times goes like this:
She bumped into a friend one day, and they started chatting about what they were doing. Her friend couldn’t believe that she was working as a maid, and encouraged her to try to find a better job, suggesting she simply walk into different companies and ask for work! Feeling inspired after the encounter, my mom, taking her (more reserved) older sister along, embarked on her employment search. She saw a sign outside The Cape Times (daily newspaper) building, went in and asked if there were any vacancies.

My mother still cringes when she recalls that, at the time, she’d mispronounced the word as “vackancies”!

She and her sister were hired immediately and she continued to work for The Cape Times (in the printing section) even when the company moved to Tiervlei, in the northern suburbs – she then commuted to work by train.

It was round about this time that my granny moved into a three-bedroomed house, on the corner of Bloem and Long Streets, in the city centre, with James Busch. My mother remembers finding out many years later that they’d not been married at the time they started living together. This man played a huge role in their lives: he brought happiness and stability back into their family, and they enjoyed a level of comfort they had not had before.

My mom went back to Billie Jones’s choir on Saturday mornings. She has happy memories of this time of her life.

While working at The Cape Times, my mom met an older man, Freddie Roussouw, a music lover who took a keen interest in her singing. He encouraged her to take advantage of an opportunity to study singing abroad, but she was not interested. To help her, he paid the deposit for her mother to buy her a piano. One of my mom’s regrets is that the piano, although hers, was never something she got to keep. Years later, her mother sold it to another part of the family (in Faure) and we’re not sure where it is today.

When we moved to Durban in 1968, my mother bought a brand new, dark wood, Bernhard Steiner piano. It cost R900, which was a lot of money at the time, and she paid it off in monthly instalments. She still has it, and she plays it almost every day. How do I know? She lives in the granny flat at my house, and I hear her tickling the ivories, singing or humming happily away. This piano has moved so many times, from Durban to Cape Town, to Bloemfontein and back to Cape Town, to many different areas in Cape Town – but that’s a topic for a separate blog post!

In 1946, Billie Jones prepared her junior choir for a concert, and my mom, aged 16, was part of this enthusiastic young group. On that night, both the junior and senior choirs performed. It was both an exciting and historic occasion for my mom, as she sang her first solo line in a song from the musical, “Briar Rose”. The line was, “Kiss her! Kiss her!” That night was also the first time she’d seen Dr Joseph Manca, who trained the seniors, another person who was to play a major role in her life. He pointed out to Billie Jones that three of her juniors were big enough to join the seniors, my mother and her friend Louise Rhoode being two of them. She moved to the senior choir, which began another new phase for her. Billie Jones, however, had spotted the potential in this young singer, and continued to help with her vocal training, giving my mom weekly singing lessons at her home in Sea Point, free of charge. My mom held her in high esteem, and kept in touch with her until her death.