Twenty Year Touchpoints

In 1989 I left apartheid South Africa and spent much of the next year travelling Europe. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 at which time I was somewhere between Turkey and Italy. I was heading for Berlin and on December 4 I hitch-hiked from Stuttgart to Mannheim, heading for Bonn where I was going to be staying with Dr. Marcella Rietschel (a Research Fellow at the Institute of Human Genetics, University of Bonn) who I had met in Istanbul in October. This is a recent picture of her:



It was freezing cold and snowing out on the road, and by the time I reached Mannheim, I had had enough and headed to the Hauptbahnhof. After a cup of steaming coffee, I bought a ticket to Bonn, boarded the milk-train and continued the journey north.

It was now evening and I was deeply engrossed in my book when the train stopped at a local siding south of Frankfurt I looked up lazily, and saw the name of the place - Zeppelinheim. Zeppelinheim? ZEPPELINHEIM! I knew someone who lived there! Who, I could not remember, but I definitely knew someone there. Snap decision - frantically I packed my stuff, grabbed by bags and jumped off the train. Just in time. So there I was, in the snow in the middle of "nowhere", with no place to go! There was basically nothing at this railway siding, other than a prefab bar, and so that's where I headed. Over a beer, I flipped through my address book in an attempt to figure out who I knew in Zeppelinheim! Oh shit! Sure, I had an address in Zeppelinheim, but it was for the parents of Ulrike Cowan, the girlfriend of my best friend in South Africa, Hartmut von der Ohe. I had never met them, and they had no idea who I was! But I was committed - I was cold and the train was long-gone.



I fed the public phone in the humid, prefab bar, got Johan Cowan on the line and explained the situation. Amazingly, Johan was incredibly welcoming, drove down to the railway siding to pick me up, and insisted I stay for a couple of nights! Mr. and Mrs. Cowan were incredibly gracious - they set up a bed for me in the basement, wined and dined me, and took me shopping in Neu-Isenburg. I also had the opportunity to go into Frankfurt where I got to see Debbie Harry (and Chris Stein) in concert from the front row of a venue called Batschkapp. A wonderful (and eventful) concert, but that's another story!



But probably the highlight of my couple of days in Zeppelinheim was meeting Ulrike's sister, Kati. It's 20 years later and we're still in touch, so I guess that says something. The picture below was take in the basement at Vogelring on the night of December 6, 1989 as I packed up to leave for Bonn the next morning. The following week she was admitted to hospital to have her appendix removed...and there she contracted measles! How do I remember this stuff?? Anyway, it was a restful two days after a crazy couple of months on the road. But East Germany, Berlin and the crumbling Wall lay ahead, and what an experience that was!



FOOTNOTE ONE - while reading the Wikipedia entry for Zeppelinheim, I noticed that it is twinned with the Borough of Dacorum in Hertfordshire. I now live in Hertfordshire, and Dacorum is a mere 15km from my front door. Serendipity.

FOOTNOTE TWO - Kati Cowan has excelled over the past 20 years and is now doing noble work with Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

FOOTNOTE THREE - Dr. Marcella Dominica Rietschel is now Professor of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg, Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. A fantastic achievement - and a long way from October 26, 1989, the Ümit Restaurant in Istanbul, a backpack of blood samples, a little food and way too many drinks!



Holy Darwin - I've travelled an interesting road, crossing paths with some amazing individuals in the process :-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Pautz Sprouts Afrikaans

As I have repeated ad nauseum, my late father, Beaudry Glen Pautz, was a naturally gifted writer who made a living from his command of the English language. However, although he lived his entire life in multi-cultural, multi-lingual South Africa, he never confidently mastered a second language. Sure, he could understand and communicate in Afrikaans - the language of authority and government of the day – but I had never found anything written by him in Afrikaans. Until recently.

Well, I hope it was written by him – it’s in his handwriting, but could have been transcribed from somewhere else. However, knowing his sense of humour, and his talent for penning bawdy limericks in the “seaside postcard” style, I’d like to think that these are his! I found these two humorous pieces of unpolished prose jotted on a piece of cardboard among some of Beau’s stuff at my mother’s house in Pretoria in 2008. Difficult to say when they date from, but as they are written in ballpoint pen, and as my father moved into a more Afrikaans speaking work environment in 1965, I would guess that these pieces come from the late-60’s. If you speak Afrikaans (or Flemish), please enjoy...


__________________________________________________________

Daar was gebore ‘n man – Jan Magiel,
Die enigste man met ‘n kurktrekker piel.
Hy het gesoek in die noord, suid, wes en oos,
Vir ‘n vrou met dieselfde tiepe van doos.
En toe hy haar vind, slaan hy dood neer op die daad,
Want die vrou het gehad ‘n linksom draad.
__________________________________________________________

Daar was ‘n man van Australieë,
Hy’t sy gat geverf soos ‘n daliah.
Die kleur was mooi, die patron was pragtig,
Maar die geur, O my God allemagtig.
__________________________________________________________



Ja swaer...good to see he had a sense of humour in a couple of languages :-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Postscript: On Kruger Day (October 10, 2009) my mate, Schalk Vorster, sent me a link to the strange vintage corkscrew image above (French c.1900), as well as an English poem that could have served as the inspiration for the Afrikaans effort:

Here lies the bones of screwy Rick
Cursed at death with a corkscrew dick
Spent his life in a futile hunt
To find a girl with a corkscrew cunt
He found that girl, but now he is dead
The no account bitch had a left-hand thread.

In a bar long since closed in Greensburg, PA

Cuffs Of Gold

"Kill me" I said to my partner,
"Take my freedom away from thee".
Home of my own - financial bond,
May destroy my soul that's so free.

"So where to" I ask myself,
"Do I want to go down there".
Near to the fear - societies weight,
That compels me this cross to bare.



"Don't worry" they all try to tell me,
"With children you'll never be sorry"!
Strife of my life - ball and chain,
As much fun as a garbage lorry.

"Paint walls" my mother instructs me,
"You're worse than a cockroach that crawls".
Thrill of my drill - domestic bliss,
The end of my bachelor jôls.



"No guts" my devil mocks me,
"You're the joke of a thousand buts".
Weak and too meek - a spineless shit,
Without any real nuts.

"Do it" my angel soothes me,
"Drag yourself out of the pit".
Sign of the time - growing up,
Oxycute emotional zits.



"It's done" we sigh with relief,
"We actually had some fun"!
Smile down the aisle - keep the pose,
We sprinted that final run.

"Good luck" they all wish us,
"She'll keep you out of the muck".
Love of my life - Débra Pautz,
Forever stay my "Buck" ;-)



Psyching myself up to propose, convincing myself up to get married, and then revelling in the event!

Having lived through my parents volatile union, I was totally anti-marriage by the time I met my future wife in early 1983. I started writing this 12 years into our relationship when the "So, what's next?" thoughts began invading my consciousness, and I started experiencing family and peer pressure to conform. A few boozy counselling sessions with Hartmut von der Ohe gave me focus, and Débra and I married in our 13th year together. Soon thereafter, I relocated to the Czech Republic and we spent our first year together on opposite sides of the planet!

I finished this piece on a frozen bus, in the deep snow on the road from Brno to Prague. My company did not have company cars back then, and I could not afford one, so I had caught a lift (in a Škoda 120) to Brno where I spent the day working at a campus recruiting event. The old run-down bus was the only way I had to travel the 210km back home, it was the worst winter in 75 years, I was feeling pretty miserable and was really missing Debs.

Penned on May 5, 1994 & December 9, 1994 (in Pretoria, South Africa) and on December 8, 1995 (on a cold bus from Brno to Prague, Czech Republic).

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

1975 CBC Pretoria Std. 7 Timetable

This it my Standard 7 (9th Grade) school timetable from 1975. I was at Mount Edmund, Christian Brothers' College (CBC), Pretoria, South Africa where zealots of the cult of Jesus worked hard at trying to wash my brain! If I remember correctly, school started at 08h00 and wrapped up at 14h00. Classes were 40 minutes long and the breaks were 20 minutes each.



The fifth period every day was CD - Christian Doctrine (read Christian Indoctrination). There I was exposed to the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepaphically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Yes - it all made perfect sense to me ;-)

From the age of 13 through 18 (1973 - 1978) I worked Saturdays at Jix Hobbies - South Africa's oldest hobby shop. When I started I made two Rand a morning - that's a whopping £0.16 / US$0.27 / €0.18 at today's rates! That job screwed up my teenage social life, but as my folks were not flush with cash, it was something I had to do. Back in those days the shop was on Van Der Walt Street, one shop up from the corner of Pretorius Street. I was a counter hand, shelf packer and duster. And, believe me, it was an endless battle against 50 years of accumulated filth! Looking back now, I do wish I'd bought up all the old 40's, 50's and 60's Dinky Toys and Corgi toy cars that no one wanted in the 1970's! They would have been excellent investments.



Flying. After work at Jix I would regulary trek out to Pretoria Radio Flyers airfield at Zwavelpoort, east of the city, where I would revel in the customers writing off their expensive toys :-) Due to urban creep, the club was forced to relocate in 2001 and is now in Rietvallei.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

CBC Pretoria Bus Passes 1974-1975

I was schooled at the Loreto Convent, Pretoria (age 6-8) and Mount Edmund, Christian Brothers' College (CBC), Pretoria (age 9-17). In Standard 6 and Standard 7 my folks gave up on the school commute, and I had to ride the old college school bus from Lynnwood Manor to Silverton. It was an antiquated green and white Bedford, and not my favourite mode of transport! As we were probably the final stop on the route, all seats were usually taken, by the time I boarded, and I generally stood up front, next to the driver - a middle-age, balding and mostly sweaty Afrikaner. I was there on that fateful day when the bus got a front wheel puncture going down the hill close to the CSIR entrance. We went off the road and into the bush, and miraculously the bus didn't roll. I have the full story written up in an essay somewhere, but need to dig up that old textbook in my archive! Anyway, here are the bus passes from 1974 and 1975.



Here are the backs of the bus passes from 1974 and 1975. They are signed by the school Secretary, Mrs. Tudhope. She, her son John and daugter Avril stayed at the Cambray flats, close to my parent's place in Lynnwood Manor. I had a secret, long distance crush on Avril back in those days. I think she went to school in Lyttleton and wonder what ever happened to her?



In 1976 I blew my savings on a 50cc motorcycle, and my world changed forever! The wall in the background to the left of the attached photo is more or less where we used to catch the college bus in the morning.



Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

New York - September 11, 2001

New York - September 11, 2001

Many will know John Chatterton from his excellent History Channel series Deep Sea Detectives. He is also one of the guys I rode through West Bengal and Bhutan with back in October 1999. A small group of us on that trip got on so well, that we rode together again, doing Northern Thailand (including the "Golden Triangle") over Christmas 2001.

Debra and I were privileged to attend John and Carla's wedding in Nan, Thailand in 2002 and to have visited with them when they still stayed in New Jersey. On that occasion (in 2000, if I'm not mistaken), he lent me his Harley and we spent a fine weekend riding, eating, drinking and socialising. You can read more about the man on his website - including his dives on the Titanic and his discovery of the German submarine U-869.

On September 11, 2001, after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, I reached out to John (who I knew was working in New York) to find out if he was okay. This is his harrowing first-hand account of the catastrophy sent to me and Terry Clark, Managing Director of The Classic MotorCycle Magazine in the UK, who also rode Bhutan and Thailand with us. I posted it to my old website (with his permission) when I received it on September 14, 2001. Today is the eighth anniversary of 9/11 and so I though it would be appropriate to repost it to my blog.


Terry & Chris and Mark & Deb,

As of Tuesday, I was the diving supervisor for a commercial company doing bulkhead remediation work underneath the World Financial Center in New York City for the Battery Park City Authority. Parts of Battery Park City are built over the waters of the Hudson River, specifically over the train tunnels. The current phase of the job required that we dive from (two) access openings (5' x 10') adjacent to West St. and then out to a distance of about 900 ft to the west and under the WFC. The two access openings were directly across the street from WTC Tower #1, one across from the south face of the building and one from the north face. Behind us was World Financial Center. On Tuesday, inside the access and under the WFC itself, I had 4 tenders in two boats, about 500 feet in, and then 4 divers in at varying distances up to 400 feet beyond the remote tender's station. I had 3 men on the surface at the access opening.

I was going to put my wet suit on to make an inspection dive and take some measurements, but stopped to make a phone call in the office trailer. As I was talking, I heard a whoosh then an explosion, then a larger explosion. I opened the door of the trailer and stepped out to see the fireball coming out of the south side of Tower #1. To avoid the falling debris, I ran back into the trailer. As the debris stopped falling, I ran along West St. to the north access where my men were working. Along the way I passed innocent injured and dead caught unaware by the falling debris. Under the WFC, the divers were unaware of any problem, other than "a gust of wind". One of my topside men actually saw the plane hit the Tower. We hurriedly got all of the men out of the access and on the surface as quickly as possible, and completed the head count just as the second plane struck the south side of Tower #2. We evacuated the area towards the water (we ran like hell), and from a reasonably safe distance I saw both towers collapse, first Tower 2 then Tower 1. Just as the ensuing dust and debris clouds from Tower #1 were closing in, I was evacuated from the bulkhead by boat to New Jersey. The evacuation was very civilized, women, children, and the elderly being loaded first.

Yesterday, I returned to my former worksite. The damage is far more than you can ever comprehend from watching it on the small screen. I am certain that more buildings will collapse, or have to be torn down. Paper, small debris and dust are everywhere. The large debris is like a mountain range, and the rescuers like little ants. Hundreds of rescuers have already died in the original collapse, and the very dangerous rescue work continues without much conversation. Just the occasional nod of acknowledgement or necessary communication. No one says "good morning". Many of the rescuers are volunteers from New York's construction trades and they are working without pay. Some are police and firemen from neighboring areas.

As for my job, the car I left behind has just plain disappeared, like our crane, and a bunch of other equipment. Some pumps and compressors are still there, crushed and burned. Of the 4 trailers on site, I can only find the remains of two. My engineer's trailer was used as a command post by the Fire Department. When Tower 2 collapsed, the trailer and everyone in it was crushed. New York's top 4 firefighters were killed there. When the planes hit the buildings, they cut off possible escape for the people on the floors above. No one on the upper floors could possibly have survived. Some of the remains of these poor people have been recovered from where my job site was. The death toll will be thousands of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, friends, firefighters, and policemen. We are a long, long way from resolution.

Right now in New York, we are sad and tired. Later, I assume we will be very angry.

Thanks for the kind thoughts.

John Chatterton

PS - Carla is stuck in Buenos Aires. Hopefully she will fly home tomorrow.


John posted me some of his photographs on October 1, 2001 (all photos © John Chatterton):

"My Job Site Pre Construction"


"After My Jobsite 9-13"


"My Job Site Fenced In"


"Looking at Tower 1 from Jobsite"


See more of John's 9/11 photos on his Facebook page.

Thanks again for sharing John. Thinking of you guys and hope to see you both soon.

Regards, MAlfaRK ©

Two Rivers

SA WINS GOLD MEDAL AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Yes, it’s true! But the headline dates back to 1975!

My late father, Beaudry Glen Pautz (known to all as Beau) was a passionate aviator, and a writer and raconteur by profession. He started his career in journalism at the King William’s Town Mercury in the late 1940’s and 50’s and moved on the East London Daily Dispatch in the 1950’s and 60’s. His contemporaries there included Donald Woods, Allister Sparks, John Dewar, et al. From the mid-60’s through the end of the 80’s he was Press Officer and ultimately Head of Public Relations for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa. As a key member of the Information and Research Services (IRS) he became a respected science writer…and not a “sign writer” as quoted in an obituary (in a South African newspaper that shall remain nameless) following his untimely death in 1990.

In the 1970’s and 80’s my father became deeply involved in film and video production for the CSIR, establishing a small audio-visual studio on the campus in Pretoria East. Beau was a gifted wordsmith who became immersed in all aspects of film-making – script writing, filming, directing, editing, producing, soundtracks and commentary.

On some of his most notable documentaries he collaborated with Hugh Whysall and Duane Rogers of Killarney Film Studios (the team responsible for those great Gunston “surfing” commercials) and in 1975 the three of them produced a documentary for the CSIR called "Two Rivers". It concentrated on two South African rivers – one polluted and one clean - and predicted the environmental problems that South Africa and the world would face in the final quarter of the century, and beyond. Incredibly, it foreshadowed Al Gore’s Nobel Prize winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, by 31 years!

"Two Rivers" was entered in a film festival in Venice in 1975 and went on to win the Gold Medal for documentaries! I still have the medal (at least, I thought so - for the life of me, I can't find it)...



I only remember seeing the documentary twice – once at the Christian Brothers College in Pretoria where I went to school and a second time before the main feature film at a cinema called The Oscar in Sunnyside, Pretoria in 1976 or 1977. The version we had for the school screening was on 16mm film, and I remember the overwhelming sense of pride in my father’s creation…and how my partially brain-dead teenage friends really didn’t give a damn! In recent years I searched the internet in an effort to find out more about the documentary (and to possibly get a copy of it on DVD), but found absolutely nothing about the film.

However, as I also worked at the CSIR between 1985 and the early 1990’s, I knew how the place worked and was certain that there would be a copy of the movie in the library or in the archive. So, I contacted my father’s successor in Public Relations who put me in touch with Ms. Annette Joubert, an Archivist with CSIR Information Services. Annette did some great detective work and eventually managed to trace the film as well as the Diploma di Medaglia d'Oro in the CSIR archives!



This was a great breakthrough, and Annette went out of her way to facilitate the migration of the film to DVD (using the same facility in Pretoria used by the National Audiovisual Archives), and arranging for colour copies of the diploma. I put up cash, but Annette must take credit for doing all the work and for delivering the final product to my mom’s place in Lynnwood Manor.

It’s interesting to note that the Diploma from Venice is attributed to Hugh Whysall who, in the film, is credited as Writer & Director. And rightfully so. My father, Beau Pautz, was the Associate Producer, and he retained the gold medal that I inherited following his death.

It pains me that this award winning movie is never mentioned in the annals of SA film history, has probably never been shown on television in South Africa, and that (in this era of environmental awareness) it has not been given the credit that it is clearly due as an early attempt to alert people to global warming more than 30 years before “An Inconvenient Truth”. As far as I am concerned, in the South African context the achievement of “Two Rivers” should rank up there with Charlize Theron’s Oscar and Gavin Hood’s blockbuster movies! It has been all but forgotten and that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this blog. Perhaps I’ll send the link to Al Gore at climatecrisis.net and to the environmental programmes 50/50 and Veldfocus on South African television to see if they want to give it some exposure.

Here’s a photo of Beau working in his studio at the CSIR in late August 1979:



I miss my father – he was a complex and fascinating man, and a great role model. But his written, audio and visual works live on. I have been researching my family history for almost three decades now, and the rediscovery of this film is certainly one of the crown jewels in my family history collection! I am proud to have resurected “Two Rivers” and am pleased to finally be able to give credit where credit is due. So here it is for your viewing pleasure. The old film has acquired tones of sepia with age, and the style and commentary is typical of the seventies, but the message remains a good one...



My late father's 15 minutes of fame - decades ahead of its time!

MARK LYNDON PAUTZ ©

Waiting for the Revolution (1960)

My father, Beaudry Glen Pautz (know to all as Beau), was a journalist, raconteur and writer all his life. In the 1950's and 60's he worked as a reporter on the Daily Dispatch, an important regional newspaper based in the harbour city of East London in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. His colleagues and friends were and interesting bunch and, if you have the time, please read David Denison's look back to the days when he joined the newspaper in the 1950's. My father is mentioned in the article.

In 1959, Beau and my mother followed one of his colleagues to London where they both worked on Fleet Street and got to travel Europe. my To cut a long story short, Donald Woods, my father and my mom (then heavily pregnant with me) returned from the UK soon after the Sharpeville massacre to report on the country's descent into revolution. My father was sure that the writing was finally on the wall for the Apartheid regime, and that the people were about to rise up in a wave of liberation. Sadly for him, that took another 35 years to reach fruition, and he died before South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. Luckily he did live long enough to witness Nelson Mandela's release.



I was visiting my mother in South Africa in August 2009 and came across this wonderful photograph. Taken towards the end of 1960 (or early the following year), it shows my father interviewing an amaXhosa gentleman enshawled in a blanket and wearing traditional headgear. I have no idea of the context, or what story my father was pursuing, but I think it's a really cool shot.

See more photographs from the old days in the old country in this set on Flickr.

Cheers MAlfaRK ©