(Author: Maurice Skikne, Vol. 72, No. 3, Chanukah 2017)
Jack – or ‘Jeck’ as my maternal Bobba called him – was tall and bordering on slim, black as the proverbial Ace of Spades. Hair already streaked with grey, no one knew his age, nor did he himself know it. Jeck was Bobba’s Man Friday, almost part of the family. Being the general factotum, he literally ran the house, cleaning and keeping it tidy. He was also the gardener, planting f lowers and vegetables and watering almost daily in the summers.
Jeck was a Zulu, born and bred in Natal. In later years, he told me how as a youngster he had migrated to Johannesburg to earn big money. Somehow, my Bobba engaged him and they went on to make up a great team. When I was barely a month old, my parents came to stay at Bobba and Zaida as boarders until they could afford their own home. They had just established their own business in Power Street, Brakpan, using their wedding present money as starter capital. As was common with recent Jewish immigrants (as was my Dad), it was an African trading store, functioning as an eating house and selling various basic commodities to the black laborers on the mines.
Bobba ran a little gesheft (business) in the back yard. There, she bred chickens and sold eggs as well as making cottage cheese. Of course Jeck ‘managed’ the poultry, which also included geese and turkeys, each type in separate fowl runs. Bobba and Zaida spoke English quite well, having arrived well before the outbreak of World War I. They had been married in Dusatos, Lithuania. Zaida also spoke a fairly f luent IsiZulu, which he needed in order to converse with his customers. Their home was largely a happy one, with their offspring (two boys, two girls) always having suitors hanging about.
Being the first-born, I was fussed over and spoilt by doting aunts and uncles. By ten months, I was walking and talking a while later, a boisterous tyke who was continuously getting under everyone’s feet. Jeck became my mentor, teaching me how to sweep the f loors (with an old broom), and to tend to the livestock in the back yard. In addition to the poultry, Bobba also owned two cows, which Jeck would drive out to graze in the nearby veld, each day. Somehow in those days (circa 1930s), one was allowed to keep two cows in the fringes of the town, provided one kept them stabled and fed. They provided the fresh milk, and basis for making white cottage cheese for ourselves each day. Jeck was very capable of milking them, and as I grew up he taught me the technique.
There was another technique I learned from Jeck, namely the removal of freshly laid eggs from under the hens. There is a particular way of doing this, entailing using one arm to lift up the hen while reaching with the other to collect that newly-laid eggs. It did not take long to learn this method but it required speed if one was not to receive a peck from the layer. Collecting geese and turkey eggs was not easy because, being much larger birds they required strength to lift them. One also had to beware of their sheer aggression. Bobba had taught Jeck (whom I now began to call Baba = Father) the process of curdling the milk to make cottage cheese. This was accomplished by collecting the curdles into linen f lour bags and stringing the bags on a line to allow all the water to drip out. As they solidified, the curdles fermented into cheese. These, as well lots of eggs, were sold by my Grannie to a list of ready neighbors.
Brakpan homes seldom had electric stoves. In our home, a coal stove in the kitchen was used to cook, bake and heat water for washing and keeping it going was another of Jeck’s tasks. Coal was cheap then. It was mined in the nearby collieries and distributed once weekly by an elderly Yid, who also delivered kindling wood. Being newly established, Brakpan also did not boast water-borne sewage, so the toilets were outside and the sewage collected daily by municipal employees. It was only during World War II that the conversion to a waterborne system was devised and installed.
Bobba ran a kosher home, although it was difficult in those times. Fridays were devoted to cooking Tsolent and baking pleated Challes as well as Bulkes for Shabbosim. My personal treat each Friday was to make and roll some of the dough using a board and rolling pin, like Bobba did and then loading them into the oven. My reward – a hot Bulke, to be eaten once cooled down. Jeck, being the factotum, had learned how to do some of these tasks. Removal from the oven was one of them, utilizing a spatula and laying the bread on wooden boards and covering them.
During his leisure time, Jeck attended to his own little enterprises. These were entertaining female and male friends in his ‘Kyaiah’, which stood proudly in the backyard. Attired in a grey shirt and baggy, well-worn grey trousers, and never wearing shoes, summer or winter, he would go about his tasks. It was only when the dead of winter dictated it that he would don a cardigan, knitted by one of his female friends. But he also made two products, snuff and rolled cigarettes, which he sold to neighboring servants. At night, they would descend en masse and African music would blare from his room, played on windup gramophones on wax records (of which he had a largish collection). Jeck had three gramophones, of which the newest was highly treasured and used only on rare occasions like public holidays.
Manufacturing snuff (called ‘gwai’) was a special technique. Once a week, Jeck would repair to the nearby African medicine shop and buy his supply of dried tobacco leaf bundles as base material. Snuff was made with broken-up tobacco leaf and ash from the stove, mixed together in a cast iron pestle and mortar and stamped until the mixture reached the correct consistency. This powder, slightly dampened with water, was then loaded into an old biscuit tin. Each customer would bring his own little tin, and loaded up. I was never sure just how the pricing worked but many times witnessed the sales.
Making cigarettes required another special technique. Here, the leaf tobacco was dampened and broken by hand into finer pieces. Precut squares of brown paper were then laid out. A small pinch of tobacco was placed in the middle of the paper and rolled into a tube, the edge licked to stick it down. Such a tube was called a ‘zoll’. O n c e lit it exuded very strong smoke and usually elicited a coughing spasm on the first puff. Early on Jeck, would not allow me to test the zoll until I was around eight years old. Then one all but exploded on lighting up!
Jeck had somehow learned to read, but could not write. I picked up speaking IsiZulu from an early age and could converse pretty well by the time I began nursery school. This has stood me in good stead all my life, even to the extent of teaching students at university and purchasing in various businesses. It has also made me respect and like the black people in this land of ours. Jeck also taught me how to sing simple Zulu songs, now long forgotten, and even how to curse and swear in that tongue! Whenever he walked down to the local Greek café, I walked with Jeck and always felt safe in his presence. When my brother Cyril was born, I accidently swallowed a piece of cake with an almond attached at his bris mila, which caused acute appendicitis. On my recovery, Jeck presented me with one of his older gramophones and a few wax records! Very proudly I learnt to operate it and my father saw to its repair and supply of needles, the latter requiring replacement after playing both sides of a record.
Jack was very patient with me, going over various tasks until they were mastered. But my participation largely ended when I began at kindergarten at age four. Jeck would walk me there, just two blocks away, and come fetch me at 12:30. Even so, the two of us drifted apart, with Jeck doing his daily tasks while I became more involved with my beloved Aunt Gerty, who despite being a school-girl herself introduced me to concepts like learning to read and write. Such activities prepared me for formal school.
Jack eventually left after Bobba passed away in 1950 and the homestead was sold up, retiring to his home in Natal. Unfortunately, to my lasting regret, we lost track of him over time. I am nevertheless eternally grateful for his care and teaching, as well as for introducing me to the fascinating IsiZulu language. Almost seventy-nine years later, I can still recall those halcyon days spending time with that fine, caring man.
Maurice Skikne, a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs, has for many years been a student mentor and consultant at Johannesburg universities. He is chairman of the Jewish Genealogical Society of South Africa. A review of his recently-published book The Social History of the Brakpan Jewish Community will appear in a forthcoming issue of Jewish Affairs.
