1977

 Today in Ireland, our favourite Radio station that started out as a Pirate Radio Station many years ago, and eventually go a licence to broadcast 13 years ago today!  

So that was back in 2010 and I must admit that every single one of our radios are on 100.3 or Nova.ie - during their broadcast this morning, the DJ was saying about them turning 13 and do you remember when you turned 13, so of course sitting in traffic, I went down the nostalgic route of thinking about when I turned 13.

It brought back many memories, the year was 1977 to be exact, and I had just started High School at the Hill High.   It was daunting, coming from Highveld Primary where we probably had about 120 kids in Standard 5 in 3 classes, to going into the Assembly Hall and there were hundreds and hundreds of kids going into Standard 6.  

The Classes started from A so 6A, 6B right down to 6K with approximately 40 kids in each class.  11 x 40 = 440 kids, 320 more than what we had in Std. 5 and of course the school was huge with still classes from 7 - 10 - if I remember correctly there were about 1100 + kids in the whole school. 

Our class was pretty evenly split with Boy / Girl ratio, and as you can imagine that age the hormones are running wild.  I was in 6G pretty much the worst behaved class in the whole school.  Our teach Ms. Harvey was pretty strict and very liberal, me coming from a very conservative background where we never spoke about sex at home, and my form teacher giving the girls a lesson on sex education on probably the first week of high school, and telling us all about contraception and the various types.

However, we figured the reason for this was there were a lot of kids from "Pram Valley / Stork City" that attended the school.  

In context Highveld was probably the best primary school in that part of the South of Johannesburg, most of the other primary schools work in more disadvantaged areas not all but some such as South Hills which was known as Stork City as the girls would fall pregnant in High School and end up having to leave. 

So that is the school bit done!

What else do I remember from 1977 

Elvis died and yes I cried ... I remember waking up and hearing the news on the radio before I went to school, it was still winter and dark and depressing and I was now even more depressed! 

This man was my hero, I was going to see him in Las Vegas when I finished school and could afford to go - I always wished he was my dad when I was that age!


The same teacher who taught us about Sex-ed arranged for us all to go to the movies after school one day to see "Close encounters of the third kind" it had just been released on circuit. 

We all took the bus into town and went to the Kine centre in downtown Johannesburg, across from the Carlton Center.  It was a great afternoon out and a great sci-fi movie for it's time!  

But I must say I loved musicals, and 1977 was the year that one of the greatest musicals came out - who could forget "Saturday Night Fever" and John Travolta, which guy did not want to be John Travolta and which girl did not drool over him!  Many a fantasy dream had John Travolta in, and of course this made the Bee Gees really famous especially with the young kids. 

The way he moved on that disco floor was by far the sexiest thing, we had every seen.  And then of course we had the teenage disco's at Club Chicago and Plumb Crazy, all of them playing "Night Fever" or some other song from the movie.  


We would also go to the Skyrink on a Saturday as they would have the disco on ice and they would play all the hits.

Other Movies we saw that year

"Star Wars" - The first one - even though it was called  Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

It was the first of the series of Star Wars films made by George Lucas, we saw it at a movie house in Claim street (I think), I just remember it was the first time we had been to a surround sound movie and it was SO loud.   

"Smokey and the Bandit" - Another "hot" actor Burt Reynolds

"The Deep" with Nick Nolte (hottie back then) 

Music:

Who can live without music, my radio was always on constantly and the Top 40 with David Gresham on Springbok Radio, was all we waited for every week. 

I just looked up and found the Top 40 for the year 1977 here is the list:  https://sacharts.wordpress.com/category/1977/ 

I must say a lot of the songs I can't really bear to hear on the Radio anymore!

The list from the 8th of April a week after my birthday was: 

Pos LW Weeks Song Artist

1 2 7 Don’t Leave Me This Way – Thelma Houston

2 1 5 Smile – Pussycat

3 4 5 Living Next Door to Alice – Smokie

4 3 6 Love Me – Yvonne Elliman

5 11 4 Rock ‘n Me – Steve Miller Band

6 5 10 Lost in France – Bonnie Tyler

7 6 12 If You Leave Me Now – Chicago

8 7 10 Livin’ Thing – Electric Light Orchestra

9 8 7 Just Another Poor Boy – Chris de Burgh

10 New 1 Don’t Cry for Me Argentina – Julie Covington

11 10 8 Keep on Smilin’ – John Paul Young

12 16 3 I Recall a Gypsy Woman – Don Williams

13 15 4 Couldn’t Get it Right – Climax Blues Band

14 9 8 Moody Blue – Elvis Presley

15 14 9 What Have I Done – Mike Eager

16 New 1 Hey Mister Dream Maker – Cliff Richard

17 12 5 When a Child is Born – Johnny Mathis

18 18 2 Who’s Gonna Tie My Shoes – Barbara Ray

19 19 2 Chanson D’Amour – Manhattan Transfer

20 13 14 Howzat – Sherbet

I am sure there is a lot more stored in the memory banks from 1977 but I think this post has been long enough and you are probably bored by now, so until next time enjoy the read!

Johannesburg and The Hill High School ...

Although I attended The Hill High School in the Apartheid Era, of course which we were very ignorant about "Apartheid", did not even know the word.   I feel privileged to have had the upbringing in the South of Johannesburg and attended this school.

In South Africa in the "White" areas, we had "English speaking" schools, where English was the first language that you were taught in, and "Afrikaans" was a 2nd language that you had to learn, due to the fact that the "Boer" Government was "Afrikaans" and run by the Dutch Reformed church.  There were also Afrikaans speaking schools, that were very strict and every subject except of course English was taught in the Afrikaans language.


There was the "South" side of Johannesburg, which consisted of area's like Rosettenville, The Hill, Linmeyer, Oakdene, Glenvista, Townsview, Forest Hill, Turffontein and many others.  The South side was always looked upon as the "Poor" side of Johannesburg and the older working class, it was also close to the Western suburbs mining towns like Roodepoort etc.

And the the North would have been more upmarket bigger houses with bigger grounds, it incorporated wealthier suburbs such us Parktown, Rosebank, Hyde Park, Craighall Park, Illovo, Melrose and many other suburbs.

Living in the South you did not venture over to the North that much!

So getting back to the South and the Hill High School, The South was like a melting pot of all different nationalities, thinking back on it now it was a bit like a multi-national school, we had kids who were foreign nationals and some who were first generation South African, almost every single child was from parents who each would have come from different nationalities.

To list bit a few here, there were children whose parents would have come from Portugal and then those that would have been refugee's from the war in Mozambique.  Majority of Portuguese as well as Greek and Italian would have gone to a government or private school and then after school they would have attended a few hours at the relevent country schools e.g. Portugese School which was held in Rosettenville I cannot remember the name now but will find it out!  So most of these kids would also not really date outside of their culture and would end up marrying into the culture.

Whereas for example with myself, my father was born in Austalia, so we believe but would have come from mixed Irish / Scottish protestant parents.  My mother was born to a father and mother who were both of French descent "Marais & De Villiers" but would also have been of mixed origion somewhere along the line, I think on my Mother's side there was some Dutch mixed in as well. 

So the Nations in our school were all very mixed, French, Dutch, Irish, British, Scottish, Hungarian, Polish, Lebanese, Portugese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Mauritian, Afrikaans, Canadian and that is probably naming a few, at Hill High we came from all walks of life, Poor, Rich, Orphaned, many many single parents, and a lot of divorced parents who were re-married.  Some parents were very young and some like mine pretty old.   And of course from various different Suburbs, South Hills, The Hill, Rosettenville, Rewlatch, Regents Park, Linmeyer, Oakdene, La Rochelle and various other suburbs.

In Standard 6, I was in probably one of the worst behaved classes in the whole school, Ms Harvey was our school teacher and she was strict, so strict that she did not hesitate to give us detenetion.  One day she gave us detention, locked us all in the classroom and then went home, she apparently fell asleep and did not get back to the school before 6, by which time most of the kids had climbed out of the class room windows (including myself) and had gone home.

In the year I started we had 11 classes of Std 6 and almost 40 students in each class - that was a record number of over 400 standard 6 students - in total in the school there were about 1,800 of us.

A lot of kids looked like they had crossed the colour line somewhere a long the line and many would have been re-classified in an instant were the government that hell bent on colour.  But I think in majority of cases they just turned a blind eye.

The Hill was a very disciplined school, with lots of Rules - which a lot of kids were just hell bent on seeing how many rules they could break.  The guys wore striped ties and would put a mark on the back in pen whenever they received a "cut" from the principal.  A cut was performed with a long think cane.

There were quite a few incidents at school with Drugs, violence, gang fights, a lot of kids were expelled, in most cases kids that were expelled either ended up at Forest High, Damelin or those that were just not able to conform ended up in Boys Town which was like a kind of reformatory.

Teachers:

Well where do I start there were those teachers that came to the school and just stayed there until they retired ... Mr Tobias, Miss Katz, Ms Teper, Mr Krueger, Ms Sacks, with some of us they taught our parents and probably more recently our grandparents.  But they were Good teachers and they had a calling.  Not like some of the teachers today!

Wow I have rambled on about School and probably not even touched the surface of some of the wonderful moments we had at school and of course some of the really bad times, but I will save those for future posts. 

The Hill High School (1977 - 1981)

I haven't blogged for a while, but I was just reading over some of my comments and thought, I really should post some more of my nostalgic memories here! 

So where better to start then the place we got some of our Grounding ... or did we!?

Coming from a really strict Junior School (Highveld Primary) which had about 720 - 800 pupils, we were fairly disciplined, although if you compared it to the Afrikaans schools you would have said that we had no discipline at all. 

In Highveld we had three classes in each standard with approximately 30 students in each class.   Our first year in High School 1977 and we were practically bursting at the seams classes 6A - 6K or was it L, some with almost 40 students in a class, almost 12 classes of standard 6's.

So put a bunch of teenagers together from all walks of life, including a lot of new foreigners who were not used to the staunch Afrikaans government and ways of life in South Africa and what do you get .... Chaos!

When attending a Government School in Jo'burg you had to live in a certain radius of the school to attend it, with Primary Schools the radius was of course smaller as the schools were smaller, with High School this opened up to a wider radius.  So whereas in Primary School most of the kids came from Linmeyer, The Hill, Oakdene and the closer areas of Rosettenville - in High School because there were so few English speaking High Schools, this extended as far as South Hills, Regents Park, Rosettenville proper, all of The Hill and other areas too.  So lets say kids from about 6 different Primary Schools Highveld, Rewlatch, Regents Park, Rosettenville Primary, Townsview Primary, South Hills Primary attending 1 High School - of course not everyone would have gone to Hill, there were those fortunate enough to be sent to Private schools, but either way it was a lot of kids.

Depending on what additional subjects you chose going into High School, depended on what class you would end up in.  I chose "Art" and "Accountancy" as additional subjects and was put in "6G" with Ms Harvey as my main teacher. 

There weren't many Highveld Students in my Standard 6 class in High School, but then again there were so many students, I don't really remember who was in my class.  I do remember it was a very unruly bunch and if you couldn't beat them you had to join them.   There were a number of students who were repeating the year that were in our class.

"What I remember from Standard 6 in 1977"

Spending a lot of time in Detention, sometimes with the whole class and sometimes just me, the prefects seem to pick on the Std 6's and you were then sent to the library for an hours detention, and instead of being allowed to do your homework you had to either write out lines, or write stupid essays about "the inside of a ping pong ball" which had to be no less than 1000 words.

Joanne Botha and Luis San Emeterio - Joanne and Luis were dating and I only found that out because I fancied Luis and used to annoy him to try and get his attention.  I soon became good friends with both of them.  Luis was so talented, he played the Guitar and the drums and could sing like an Angel.  I remember staying after school one day while he played and sang "Charlie" which was a hit by Rabbitt  at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D77djVZdUHc - Sadly Joanne and Luis were killed in 1979 in a car accident, but that is a whole other story.

Our class teacher was very brave teaching us about contraception when very few of us even knew about the facts of life at that stage.

Being sent to the principals office for dropping a "stink bomb" on the corridor and remembering how Fino took the blame for me. 

Going on my first chaperoned date with Malcolm Messias, we went to a restaurant in Hilbrow, he was also my first real kiss - after leaving school and starting to work he took me out for lunch to tell me he was Gay!  Was a bit shocked but I was never into him so never really mattered.  God rest his soul.

Going down to the rugby field after school to watch a fight between C and Ingrid, but by the time we arrived, fight was over and C was washing out blood from under her nails.  And all over a BOY!!!  Ingrid came out worse with a dislocated back and scratches, and it was the last day of school! *Cat Fight* - C is so embarrassed about it would not tell anyone and pretends her past did not exist, hates being reminded of anything - hey get over it, it's part of your character if you can look back and laugh about it!

That story reminded me of my other BFF Morag, we knew each other from the age of 3, lived in the same street and saw each other at least 6 days of the week.  What a wonderful soul she was, I though my parents were strict until I met hers.  I do miss Morag so much, sadly she passed away in 1991.

Teachers - Oh wow, Mr Liversage what a hunk!  (Sadly he too has passed on) - he was the industrial Arts teacher, most of us girls wished we could do Industrial Arts but alas it was not to be.  Although I do remember one period that the teacher was off sick and when that happened you had to go to a substitute class, the girls were sent to one place and the boys to another, but I went with the boys!  I was not very popular with the girls after that, but it was because Nemo and I were working on something.

To be continued ...