A nostalgic walk home from The Hill High school to Linmeyer with Google Maps

I love Google Maps, I was chatting to one of the ladies on the Hill High website and she was telling me where she lives, so I Googled it and then took a nostalgic walk through the South.  Probably a walk I have not done for many many years and will more than likely never do in real life again.

Hill High

If you have been on Google Maps you will know how you can walk by “mouse” through the streets in the map.   So I walked home from School (Hill High), stopping at all the houses where my friends lived to see what had changed.  I noticed that most of the houses that used to have open gardens, all had walls now with fences, but really nicely done so that you could still see the house, not like in some streets in the Northern Suburbs, where the houses had been built up with really high walls and electric fencing.  Although walking back now and I see there are a few with 8 foot walls and electric fencing.

So we (the mouse & I) walked up Plinlimon Road, passing house after house till we get to “Linmeyer Gardens” which does not seem to have visibly changed – I mostly always walked home from school on the left hand side of the road.  And then when we got to the end of Linmeyer Gardens we used to cross over onto the right hand side, by Quaggashoek Road, Stuart used to lived there from as far back as I can remember.

The Top Shops in Linmeyer

We would then either cross over the veld, or cross by the traffic light by the top shops, which also has some really good memories.  The guy who owned the shops was a Greek guy called Tommy, and yes he was one of those that Barry Hilton always talks about that never gave you your change if it was 1c or 2c or even in those days ½c, he would say take “chappies”, I’ve got no change.

Outside of the shops he had a Big Bubble Gum machine in the shape of a rocket; I guess it was big because we were so small.  David P ran off with the machine the one day, and Tommy ran after him, from that day forward the machine was always chained to the door or somewhere with a big lock.

Paraffin and the One Arm Bandit

The first gadget that Tommy had in his shops was a “one arm bandit” which now thinking about it was illegal in the 70’s, but then so much in that shop would have been illegal today.  So the “one arm bandit” cherry machine was moved into a room at the back of the shop, where they kept the big drum of paraffin.  The maid would send us up to the shop regularly to get a bottle of paraffin for the primus stove.  You had to take your own bottle and there was a pump where you would pump the paraffin into your bottle, I loved the smell – you can understand why kids become hooked on smells.  If we weren’t sent for paraffin, then it would be “10 Lexington” (cigarettes) and a box of matches.

My dad would send us to the shop to either get Tobacco, Cigarillo’s or Minerals (Ginger ale and the likes).  For mom it would be Bread & Milk or minerals.  The Café was the greatest thing as they would be open from early in the morning till about 7 or 8 p.m., all day Saturday and to start with only in the mornings on a Sunday, then Tommy would close for lunch on a Sunday and re-open later in the afternoon.

There was also a Café, come Fish & Chips shop on the right hand side of the road at the bottom.

Pin Ball Machines

To entice the youngsters to spend their money in his shop, Tommy got in some pinball machines.  They were put into the shop on the right hand side by the magazines.  If you wanted to meet boys, you knew they would more than likely be playing pinball, or if you wanted to show off you would play too, 10c a game.  I remember heading off to the shops on a Friday evening with Charlene, when we were supposed to be at Y.P. back in ’79 – ’80 when young girls could still walk around without any harm coming to them.   But this could lead into a whole other story.

So getting back to the walk

So if you walked down “Johan Meyer Street” which is where Tommy’s shop was situated on the right hand corner, I think he was number 1, you would pass the bus stop, next to the bus stop was the “United Building Society”, then the “Green Grocer”, Vintage (Mainly a stationary shop) he would order in our overseas magazines for us, my sister used to get “Jackie” from the UK and I would get “Tammy”.  Mr & Mrs Shaw were the owners.

Next door to “Vintage” was the hairdresser, Sandy’s mom always got her hair done there, then next door to that was “Paulwin” which was like an ornament shop but sold all kinds of stuff, bric-a-brac and then last but not least on the Corner was the butcher, loads of guys dressed in white coats and boots carrying dead animals (cows & sheep) into the shop and cutting them into the cuts of meat that people would then buy.  Often if you wanted a certain cut, they would go and fetch the whole sheep or cow from the back and cut it up in front of you.

From what I can see on Google Maps, the UBS is now a hairdresser, the green grocer a movie rental place and “vintage” is now the infamous “McCoys Pub”, I believe owned by “Sean Mc Coy” who went to Hill High and frequented by many old Hill High pupils, a few pool tables I would imagine in the shop that used to be the hairdresser.  “Paulwin” is a beauty salon and the butchers a bead place – but who knows whether that is still right today as you never know how old the Google satellite maps are.

Across the road from Tommy, the corner shop – I cannot remember what was there, but I remember when it became the Pizza shop, it was like the first Pizza shop in South Africa to me, it opened in about ’76.  You could either get take-away or eat in.  Next door was the Chemist, owned by the same guy for years and year until he died, and now I can’t remember his name, Jewish guy.   Carol used to have an account at the Chemist and because her mom & dad had got divorced and she stayed with her dad, he paid the account, so she would buy make up and all kinds of stuff.   And we will never forget the day that Morné asked me to go and by “Female Stuff” for his mom as he was too embarrassed, which of course I don’t blame him, which mother asks her 6 ft hunky son to go and buy her woman’s stuff.  If she ever wonders why he is now gay, well I guess that is just part of it.

Next door to the chemist was a dry-cleaners and then a small hardware or lock-smith and of course then the “Linmeyer Bakery”, which when you walked past you would get all the wonderful smells.  Freshly baked hot rolls, Biscuits, my favourite were petty-fours although the “La Rochelle Bakery” made much nicer ones.

I can’t remember what was in the next two shops before the “Golden Reef Café, fish & Chips shop”, but I remember when the Portuguese restaurant opened there in the late 70’s early 80’s.  Urban legend has it that in some fish & chips shops in South Africa, they never changed the oil used for frying the fish & chips, and then when clients kept getting sick, the police came in and made them drain the oil and they found a dead cat!  I see it is now called Zanzi Superette.

So continuing our Nostalgic walk through the streets of Linmeyer, there was another café at the bottom of Linmeyer in Elizabeth street, below the “Greenhill’s” flats that were owned by George’s dad, George was a guy in our class and I can’t remember what his surname was, he loved the girls, especially the blonde ones.   The Linmeyer post office was down there too, we would often go and fetch the post for my mom & dad, although the post was delivered to street addresses, so people would have a box address too, especially if you did not want people to know where you lived.

Going back to the Butcher and the Golden Reef Café, which were on alternate corners of Risi Avenue and Johan Meyer street, at the butchers you would turn right and walk up, originally back in the day there was an empty plot on the corner of Michael street and Risi Avenue, on which they built a temporary fire station, the fire station was linked to the main fire station in Turffontein, and during the week in winter they would send a team over to Linmeyer so they were closer to the hills where fires always broke out.  Incidentally it was used for Girl Guides on a Saturday, Y.P. on a Friday night somehow linked to the Rosettenville Baptist church and then on Sundays for Sunday school.

Across the road from the fire station were two empty plots of land separated by a street called “Post Street”.  When you turned left into Michael Street from Risi Avenue, we were the 2^nd house on the right hand side, although we were the first house in Michael Street as the one next door’s address was in Risi Avenue.   Our house was a modest 3 bed roomed, 1 bathroom house on a ¼ acre stand, what sold my dad on the house was the fact that it had a beautiful panorama window in the lounge which looked over the empty plot in front, and you had a view over the Linmeyer hills as far as Alberton.  Remember in those days there was no TV so I guess looking out the window was there TV.

Michael Street

After having moved out of Linmeyer for the final time when I got married in 1995, I never walked those streets again, even when visiting my mom.  I often used to think of buying the house from her and then renovating it to be how I wanted to look.  However when my sister finally convinced her to sell up in 1998, and move in with them – we had already bought so Linmeyer was no longer my home.   The Estate Agent who sold the house to relations of hers, got it for a song (all in cahoots with one another), and then basically changed the whole look of the house.  Because they had paid next to nothing for it, they had the money to put in a pool and do all kinds of renovations. *Feeling Sad*  My dad was in construction so had already done a number of alterations, adding a 4^th bedroom and an extra bathroom and utility room out the back.

I don’t know what changes they made to the inside or the back of the house, but from the front you can see that the panorama window was taken out and replaced with a big glass sliding door that leads down to the pool, however the beautiful view of the open veld is gone, you can no longer see down to the main road because a monstrosity of a town house complex “Silva Villas” has been built on the two plots of land, incorporating Post Street with it.  And then what looks like visitor parking for the complex, right opposite our old house.

What amazes me is how vividly clear the memories are of all the places and the houses.  Watch out for the next post on walking through the streets of Linmeyer.