Ruminations from the father

Me old man has written a little story or two hisself about his misspent youth as a ducktail biker in SA so i thought i'd post it here chapter by chapter... Enjoy people

Bert’s Snooker Club, Jules Street, Braamfontein and all that


Chapter 1-Rock and Roll is here to stay.

1958 was drawing to a close and Elvis Presley (a singer of Rock and Roll songs, known as the King) was at his peak. I was almost in Matric and, in the height of summer, was reveling in my new found freedom in the form of my 50cc Pegaso Sport autocycle. I’d discovered bikes, girls and Rock and Roll all at the same time and, driven by the corrupting lyrics of Rock music, lyrics like
Some people like to rock,
Some people like to roll,
Moving and a-grooving
Just to satisfy my soul,
Let’s have a party ooooooh
Let’s have a party
or “Holding hands in the movies”, we were liberated by the weekends and our 50cc bonies.
Released from school on Friday afternoons, we rushed home, tore off our school uniforms and donned our joller clothes along with our joller personalities. The Ducktail ethic was based on the clothes and attitude, anything else that arose from the basics was a bonus. It wasn’t compulsory to have a bike to be a ducktail but it added credibility to the image. A breker on the bus didn’t have quite same impact as one cruising along on his Bonneville, no matter how bad he was.
Typical joller gear was a white shirt with the collar turned up and sleeves rolled up to mid forearm, charcoal stovepipe rammies with 12” bottoms (getting into them involved some weird contortions), red and white candy striped socks and black Jarman brogues with steel heel tips. These tips could cause some embarrassing moments by skidding on concrete but they really sounded lekker, jolling down the drag, ek se. More affluent duckies added a black leather lummie and wraparound dark glasses to complete the menacing appearance that was mandatory for the bike riders.
The girls wore their hair shoulder length or in pony tails, adding round top dresses with wide skirts and miles of frilly petticoats ending just below the knee. Wide leather belts and flat court shoes or stiletto heels were the required accessories for daytime jolling. Add white gloves and matching handbag and you were ready for the night.
An alternative to the wide skirt was blue denim stovepipe jeans, sometimes rolled up at the ankle or pedal pushers, tight jeans cut off mid calf. Any cherrie who wore an ankle bracelet was condemned as being really wild! As for wearing high heels with jeans, well, that was a one-way ticket to hell.
We all congregated at the Town Hall Café in the middle of Boksburg, bought a Coke and watched the babes coming and going. One Coke a week was all I could afford, my ten bob a month (1 rand) pocket money had to pay for petrol, scopes, books and anything else I needed. I’d bought the bike by working at a chemist on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings which really cramped my style, but life without the Pegaso would have been completely different and unthinkable.
The Pegaso was a fifty cc four stroke Italian moped, but I had the Sport model which looked like a proper motorcycle although it had pedals, one of which unlocked and turned through 180 degrees so that they were in line with each other to be used as footrests. Alternatively, you could use the pillion footrests set quite far back. The clutch and gearchange were operated as a unit on the left hand handlebar and didn’t need a foot to change gear. With feet on the pillion footrests and hands gripping the clip-on handlebars, the rider had a real boy racer look, much sought after by those keen on becoming the next Geoff Duke or Jannie Stander.
My iron was black with white side panels on the tank and was the only four-stroke fifty available. It had pushrod operated valves and could do an indicated 45 to 50 miles per hour, make what you will of that (I was a lot skinnier then).
Other auties around then were the robust Mosquito Garelli, the Itom sport and Super Competizione, the super quick but fragile Maserati Competizione, Ducati, Parilla and Mondial. We had even heard about a Sterzi lurking somewhere although none of us ever saw it. The quickest (and most expensive) of the lot, were the Teutonic looking Kreidlers and Zundapps with the slowest being the step-through DKW’s and Victorias or Vickies as they were called. All of these were two-strokes at the beginning of their development and could all reach approximately the same top speed.
By mid-evening about ten or so bikes would have arrived and we’d decide to go for a burn. Imagine ten large teenagers droning down Commissioner Street at 40 miles per hour, flat out on the tanks, followed by a haze of blue smoke and the disapproving gaze of the squares and oldies on the pavement. Boy, were we wild, a real threat to society as we knew it. Ten minutes later we were back at the café, sixpence (5 cents) in the jukebox, listening to Buddy Holly with “Not fade Away”, the driving Do Diddley rhythm fuelling the passing of time into the weekend.
Weekend plans were formulated around the café tables as we decided what we were going to do on SATURDAY! Some of the guys would have fixed up dates with girls but for my mate Ed and myself (both Pegaso mounted), Saturday night meant Speedway racing at Wembley Stadium in Booysens. We planned to spend the day in Johies and, in the evening, cruise on down to Wembley.
Going to Johies was a big trek in the fifties. With no motorways, it was stop streets, robots and speed limits all the way. Ed lived in Solheim and I left home at 8-30am (I lived in the mine houses near Boksburg Station). The route went past the ERPM mine offices, up Manager’s hill and on to the circle at La Conga Roadhouse, round the circle, over the main Pretoria railway line to Elandsfontein and left to Primrose. On down Beaconsfield Avenue and then right up the hill to Sunnyridge (where the Avril Elizabeth Home is) to arrive at my mate’s house at 9 o’clock.
We left his house at 9-30 and filled up with petrol at the Shell garage at the bottom of the hill where Union Tiles is now. I put in 2/6d petrol a week (R0.25). This filled the tank with about 2 gallons (9l) of petrol and it lasted me the whole week. I went to school in Germiston and did about 320 miles a week in all (petrol was about R0-15/gallon).
The route to Johies went two ways, through Bedford View or through Primrose and Germiston. Going through Primrose meant riding through Stanhope Dip to the top of Jules Street, followed by the long drag down “Julsies”. Dodging the cars down Jules Street had the added attraction of tram lines. The Pegaso’s tyres were marginally wider than bicycle tyres and getting caught in the tram lines presented a real hazard which could easily bring the rider down. The hazard was made even more exciting when it rained. No one wore helmets or goggles so riding in the rain, which felt like riding through a shower of 6mm ball bearings, tended to blur the vision and make the tram lines act like strips of ice.
After riding for what felt like hours down Jules Street, we rode into Jeppe and down the hill on Commissioner Street past the movie houses which on longer exist, His Majesty’s, which was also a theatre, The Empire and The Coliseum. We’d park outside the CNA, check the magazines and walk around town until it was time to head down Booysens Road to Wembley Stadium for the stock car and speedway racing.
We came into the stadium at dusk. Bright lights lit up the grey cinder oval and a metallic voice read the program of the night’s entertainment over the PA system, competing with the excited buzz of the spectators. In the background we could hear the stock cars warming up, a muted rumble punctuated by the roar of unsilenced American vee-eight engines filling the warm highveld air.
The stock cars came on first, battered American vee-eight engined bangers driven by Boet Eekhout, Doug Serrurier, Clive Brooker and a bunch of drivers intent on getting their cars to the finish first no matter who they had to crash out of the way. The races were ten laps of the 500m track so the leaders were soon amongst the tail enders, barging their way through, their big vee-eights roaring, bodies grinding, sparks and cinders filling the air.
After the stock cars had had their races, the track was watered and raked level for the speedway boys. I’ve been watching speedway for 45 years now and I still feel the hairs on the back of my neck bristle when the riders roll onto the track, rev the motors for a few seconds and blast off straight at the first bend. It seems impossible that they won’t ride straight into the wall. Naught to eighty miles an hour in less than forty meters and out comes the back wheel, a huge rooster tail of cinders spraying five meters into the air behind them and they’re round the bend, 500cc singles crackling through the megaphone as they head for the next bend, pure magic. I’m sure the Romans would have given up watching lions and gladiators if they’d had speedway. Pure motorcycle racing at its most basic, 50 horsepower driving a 200 pound motorcycle without brakes-I still can’t believe it works. Speedway is compulsory viewing for anyone who calls him or herself a motorcyclist.
After the racing we left the stadium with Jerry Lee Lewis pumping out ‘A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” over the PA system to where our bikes were parked. The Pegasos had a lock mounted on the swing arm which extended a pin into the rear wheel spokes but we seldom used them. If you forgot to unlock it, it would bend the spokes as you rolled the bike off the centre stand.
Ahead of us lay a one and a half hour ride through the warm highveld night, up Booysens Road, Commissioner Street and back down Julsies, past the Doll’s House roadhouse and on through Sunnyridge to Ed’s place. It would be quite late by the time I got home to Boksburg but tomorrow was Sunday and I could sleep late.