Because I love you so

Our local town was a tiny dorp with half a dozen gravel roads running through it.  At one end, as in almost all Free State towns, was a gigantic Dutch Reformed church, which made a huge statement as one approached the town.

The co-operative store or c0-0p as it was known, together with the hotel, were the main meeting places for the local farmers.  There were also one or two general dealers, a cafe and a small pharmacy, where the same Christmas cards were sold year after year.  Unfortunately, two cards out of each pack had to be discarded, as the verse inside ended with the words "because I love you so"  My mother accidentally sent one to our Doctor, much to her embarrassment.  I think she kind of fancied him, but not quite to that extent!

The Benders owned a haberdashery store, which sold materials, wools and other related items.  Mr. and Mrs. Bender were what is known as "Blourokkies"  All the women wore blue dresses and black stockings, and had their hair scraped back into tight buns.  The other thing which singled them out as being different, was the fact that they didn't believe in doctors.  Mr. Bender developed cancer of the lip, which quickly spread.  Eventually he began to wear a scarf around his mouth to cover up the disfigurement.  As a child, I would gaze intently at him in the hope that the scarf would fall down, so I could see what his face looked like underneath it.  I enjoyed the macabre.  Mrs. Bender seemed to do all the work, while Mr. Bender just sat there reading his bible.  I often wondered how he endured the pain and whether his belief system stayed in tact.

The Post Office was another place of great interest.  We rented post box number 6, which meant that we were one of the first farmers in the district to own a post box.  The Post Mistress, a Miss Wilde, was a rather masculine woman with a short back and sides hairstyle.  She was one of the few English speaking people in town, and so grabbed every opportunity to engage my mother in long conversations.  Apart from her work, her secondary occupation seemed to be collecting and pasting into a scrapbook, pictures of the Royal family, interspersed with pictures of all the local murders, of which there were quite a few I can tell you.  So poor old Queen Elizabeth had to share a page with Jack the Ripper, or the equivalent thereof.  Her favourite non-royal family story was the one where the new bank manager, after having been stabbed in the femoral artery, bled to death on the front steps of Standard Bank.  She proudly showed us pictures from every angle of the blood stained steps.

We all thought that Miss. Wilde was a bit suspect until one day she announced her impending marriage.  Apparently, she had been attending the funeral of one of the towns folk, when the grieving widower spied her through his tear-stained fingers.  He later told her that the reason he fell in love with her, was the fact that she had lovely clean white shoes.  The moral of the story being, never judge a book by it's hairstyle.