Super Moo, Snowballs and Tripe

I REMEMBER the empty Kentucky bucket wrapped in crinkly plastic and displayed on top of the panelite kitchen dresser.

My mother angled it in such a way that Colonel Saunders' smiling face and bowtie was right in your sights as you came through the half door into the kitchen. 

I can't quite remember when my father got us that treat. It might have been the Christmas of 1974 and thanks to his thirteenth cheque.

I was telling the story the other day at the country club when Roy piped up: "Y'all was lucky. We were so poor we had to go Kentucky to lick other people's fingers."

He has clearly come a long way if the single malt measured in four fingers at the bar is anything to go by.

Our golf conversation slipped to growing up in poverty.

Trevor who tees off with a Ping driver confessed:  "Don't talk about poor. For Christmas I never got any toys. If I wasn't a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with." T

he picture was not a pleasant one but we laughed ourselves silly. Indian men can be loud, really loud, especially when someone else is buying the drinks.

"What y'all going on about? We were so poor I couldn't even pay attention in class," our old school friend Seelan groaned.

He routinely fell asleep at his desk. The delightful English mistress at Glenover once tapped him on the shoulder with a ruler: "What's wrong, boy? You delivering papers?"

The mention of newspapers got us going on another 45th cutting.

There's the story that the older a man gets the further he walked to school as a boy. (Add no shoes for some masala ).

In our case it was about waking up in the wee hours for the paper job.

"Two o'clock morning I waked up ekse. My ma used to make black tea for me, ekse. No sugar, no milk we had ekse. We were so poor I had to wipe the gravy from the last night curry pot with the crust bread for breakfast."

Nevermind that Anand did his paper round in a London Fog and Medicus.

"That's nothing ekse, I was inserting while you was still dossing," added Kulla for extra measure. "At least you had chow by the pozi, we had to scoffle for a snowball and Super Moo to keep us going whole night."

As far as I recall Kulla did the inserting at the then Argus Group only once. He was a lazy lad who would slip an extra insert into the Sunday Tribune just to get through his pile quickly.

Needless to say he was fired after the first night. Redemption came when Poobal Uncle organising the district boys jobs took him on for the paper rounds.

His route was Mobeni Heights where the well-to-do housewives left empty milk bottles on the doorstep with tokens in them.

If he came across quart, steri and orange juice or milkshake bottles in a row, he helped himself to one token. He reasoned that the rich people would not go hungry if the delivery came up one short.

We were all complicit in the crime. When the paper boys came back from their rounds, they found us sitting on the mori ready to claim the booty.

The tokens were tipped from their heavy duty grey jute bags. They were exchanged for orange juice and chocolate milkshake when the milk cart came round.

Once Morgan even stole a puppy from the kind lady who left him a peanut butter sandwich on the doorstep.

"Hawu ekse, next day we took Tipsy back home." And of course there was the one time when one of the Mobeni Heights kids "lost" his chopper bicycle.

Another crime where we were willing accomplices. As soon as the bike arrived in the district we took turns riding it up and down the road. Raymond made the mistake of a longer route to show it off around Bangladesh Market.

He was spotted by Standard Six, the police constable who made a sport out of pinching schoolboys' ears and other tender bits.

Aunty Somebody had opened a charge at Bayview Police Station. The bike was confiscated and Raymond did a good job of running away.

All fell silent as the waiter tottered into the Mount Edgecombe clubhouse with an overflowing tray. No fried chicken in foam buckets or the curry bread of the poors.

The lads are now into Prawns Szechuan and gourmet portions of tripe and gram dhall. Kiru Naidoo is a teller of long, short and tall stories.

Catch him on 0829408163 or find his books on www.madeindurban.co.za

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