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- in Grahamstown the other day.
I was driving near the Rhodes campus at the time and I'd like to tell you about the shop I eventually found at which to spend my 1c for matches.
GREEN DOOR
It's quite the quaintest, old-world shop I've ever been in. It was like stepping back into the 19th century. I found it at the corner of Prince Alfred Street and South Street. Except for the name of the shop painted in simple black letters on the front wall and a few advertising boards, it looked like a simple old Settler homestead - cream walls, a green front door and green lattice-paned windows.
As I stepped across the worn threshold into the cool, dim interior I forgot all about the matches and the cigarette dangling between my fingers. My eyes became accustomed to the fragrant gloom and I seemed to smell at once all the groceries that had been stacked on those floor-to-ceiling shelves for 100 years.
I looked around, fascinated. Crammed into the shop no bigger than your living-room, were goods of every type and size and small sweets in those big, old-fashioned glass jars, bars of sharp-scented soap, tins and cans and packets of food, cakes and cooldrinks, pins and pegs and paints, spades, candles, stationery and cloth.
The main counter was worn smooth from the touch of 1,000 hands, as pallid in colour as the face of an old, old lady. Here and there knots had come out and the edges of the holes had been polished smooth. One was directly over the moneybox which slips in and out beneath the counter (no brash till to spoil the old-world atmosphere here)
The shopkeeper finished serving a customer. He dropped the coins tendered to him through the knothole - straight into the money-box. A short-cut. The shopkeeper with his thin silver hair, and his plump, smiling wife were characters straight out of Dickens. They spoke in soft tones as benefited the atmosphere in the shadowy little shop.
GRANDFATHER
They introduced themselves as Mr. & Mrs. SOUTH - Donald, 56 and May. The street outside, they told me, had been named after
Mr. SOUTH's great-grandfather. The shop itself had stood on this leafy corner for 116 years and that, too, was the age of the worn counter with its strategically placed knot-hole.
The first SOUTHs had come out with the 1820 Settlers. It was Ben SOUTH, the brother of Donald's grandfather, who built the little shop and fitted it out for the sale of flowers and seeds. Donald's father, Alan, turned it into a grocery store, and Donald took it over from him 32 years ago.
While we were talking, an old lady with silver hair and bright blue eyes, came in from the back of the shop. I was introduced to Mrs. Lillian SOUTH, Donald's mother. At 83 her memory was perfect and she told me more about the family.
BATHURST
Mrs. SOUTH was a Miss RHODES. Her grandfather, Edward RHODES was a cousin of Cecil John. Her grandmother was a Miss Hannah DELL. She was the first baby born in Bathurst and in recognition of this, Queen Victoria presented her with a plot of ground in the district. Mrs. SOUTH went to the back of the shop and brought out six plates. Made of stone china, they were heavy and elaborately decorated in sprawling floral patterns. She told me they came to South Africa with the 1820 Settlers. Her grandfather and his family were forced to flee their farm during one of the Frontier Wars. When they returned eventually to the burnt-out shell of their home, they found the plates were almost all that had survived the plundering Xhosa.
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