100) Petrogen
Cecilia and Derrick, Jonny’s sister and brother-in-law had moved from Witbank to live in a town called Springbok, in the Eastern Cape. Derrick told Jonny about a product called Petrogen that he had started to sell to the mining companies in that area. Derrick wanted Jonny to move to Springbok to help him with the promotion and sale of the product. As Jonny was not having a great deal of luck finding work in Natal he went to Springbok for a week to see what Derrick had to offer. Neither of us were keen to move but it would have been good to have been close to Ces and Derrick again. It was arranged that Jonny would fly to Cape Town and Derrick would collect him there and drive him up to Springbok.
Jonny did not like the idea of me being on my own for a week but as I had just started work I could not go. Anyway someone needed to look after Muffin and I did not like the idea of leaving the house unattended. Ken Thompson lent us a gun for my protection but fortunately I had no need to use it. I did not even take it out of its box. When I went to the airport to collect him after a week away I was amazed that Jonny had decided that a move to Springbok was not right for us, I had been so sure that he would want to go. Jonny did not think we should move but he was very interested in Petrogen and wanted to find out if he could get an agency to sell it in Natal. Petrogen is an industrial cutting system like oxy-acetylene; cutting that uses oxygen and petrol to cut steel instead of oxygen and acetylene. It is a system that was imported from America and although the initial equipment was pricey the running costs were much lower than oxyacetylene and it was more efficient. We contacted the man who was the South African agent for Petrogen, Ian Skinner, in Johannesburg and he agreed to allow us to be his agent in Natal. Jonny bought a Petrogen kit so that he could do demonstrations and set about doing demonstrations all over the place. He went to railway workshops, scrap yards, demolition companies, sugar mills, salvage companies, quarries, anyone and everyone that he thought might like to buy a Petrogen cutting torch. He worked very hard at it and did have considerable success. In fact at one time he was selling more torches than Ian Skinner was but it was not easy selling. It was a new idea in South Africa and people did not like the idea of change. There were many safety concerns about the petrol being dangerous when in fact acetylene is a far more volatile product than petrol. One of the very strong advantages of Petrogen is that it can cut through a number of metal plates that are stacked one on top of the other. Once when Jonny was doing a demonstration on board a ship he was showing how his system could cut through two steel plates, one on top of the other. He had placed them on the floor to do the demo and started the torch. The torch cut easily through the steel and he was so engrossed in what he was doing he did not noticed that he had gone through the two pieces of steel and was about to make a large incision in the metal deck of the ship. No damage was actually done but we did laugh at the thought of him cutting the ship in two. We wondered if that would have impressed the prospective customer or not.
It was getting to the end of the year and although I did not want to leave Fred and Merle in the lurch I also did not want to be working there when Jonathan and Sian arrived to stay with us. My Mom had decided to come for Christmas too so we were expecting a full house. There was not much interest shown in Time Step Alley until the agent brought a young woman around to see the shop. She was coincidently from Witbank. She was a young widow; her husband had died in a motor accident not very long before. She was now dating a young man that Dominic knew in Witbank. She had a meeting with Fred and he told me that she might like me to stay on in the shop, as she was not keen to spend all her time there. I told Fred I did not want to carry on and it turned out that her mother lived in Hillcrest and the plan was that when she could not be there her mother would take over. After the sale went through the shop was closed for about a month for alterations. When she reopened it, all the dancing stock was gone and it was just a jewellery shop. It was well decorated and had attractive stock but I could not understand why she bought the shop, it would have been easier and cheaper just to look for an empty shop and start up there. I called in when I was passing and introduced myself to the mother. She was a friendly middle-aged lady she told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want to run the shop for her daughter and so she had better hurry up and move from Witbank and take up her duties. Eventually the new owner came to run her shop but was not there long and was called back to Witbank on ‘business’. Her mother was called on again but this time she worked with even less enthusiasm. For a while the shop would be open for an hour or two a day, at irregular times so no one knew when to expect to find it open. It was not long before it closed down all together. I was later told that the young widow had received a large insurance payout for her husband’s accident and not having much business experience had not known how to go about running a shop. It seemed such a pity, as she must have lost a great deal of money.
At about this time Dominic was sitting his trade test. He passed his exams but was then told that Highveld Steel did not have a position for him as a qualified artisan so he planned to come and visit us over the Christmas holidays, the house was getting fuller and fuller. The first to arrive were Jonathan and Sian. They flew into Johannesburg and went to visit Jonny’s brother Don in Pretoria first. The plan was that they would borrow the old Datsun van that Don had leant to Jonny quite a few years ago. The van had been old then and not very reliable but Don had done some work on it so it was running well. The long run was too much for the old dear though and it started overheating at about Howick and Jonny and I had to go and tow them in. So we met our future daughter-in-law beside the highway with a broken down vehicle.
Don had first leant Jonny the van when Jonny had been working in South Africa before the boys and I had left Zimbabwe so that would have been in 1983 and it was pretty old then. We had borrowed it and returned it a few times in between that but here we were in 1990 borrowing it once again. It was useful to have a van but we seemed to have pushed it and pulled it and mended it so many times. Many years later Jonathan mentioned how many times the old van had appeared in our photographs and so I started looking for it and he was right. There was the old bakkie in the background of so many of the snaps. Sometimes you could just see a small corner of it right in the back or sometimes all the family were gathered around it. And once it had a photo all to its self. Like an old family retainer, part of the family but not given a lot of thought.
Jonny did not like the idea of me being on my own for a week but as I had just started work I could not go. Anyway someone needed to look after Muffin and I did not like the idea of leaving the house unattended. Ken Thompson lent us a gun for my protection but fortunately I had no need to use it. I did not even take it out of its box. When I went to the airport to collect him after a week away I was amazed that Jonny had decided that a move to Springbok was not right for us, I had been so sure that he would want to go. Jonny did not think we should move but he was very interested in Petrogen and wanted to find out if he could get an agency to sell it in Natal. Petrogen is an industrial cutting system like oxy-acetylene; cutting that uses oxygen and petrol to cut steel instead of oxygen and acetylene. It is a system that was imported from America and although the initial equipment was pricey the running costs were much lower than oxyacetylene and it was more efficient. We contacted the man who was the South African agent for Petrogen, Ian Skinner, in Johannesburg and he agreed to allow us to be his agent in Natal. Jonny bought a Petrogen kit so that he could do demonstrations and set about doing demonstrations all over the place. He went to railway workshops, scrap yards, demolition companies, sugar mills, salvage companies, quarries, anyone and everyone that he thought might like to buy a Petrogen cutting torch. He worked very hard at it and did have considerable success. In fact at one time he was selling more torches than Ian Skinner was but it was not easy selling. It was a new idea in South Africa and people did not like the idea of change. There were many safety concerns about the petrol being dangerous when in fact acetylene is a far more volatile product than petrol. One of the very strong advantages of Petrogen is that it can cut through a number of metal plates that are stacked one on top of the other. Once when Jonny was doing a demonstration on board a ship he was showing how his system could cut through two steel plates, one on top of the other. He had placed them on the floor to do the demo and started the torch. The torch cut easily through the steel and he was so engrossed in what he was doing he did not noticed that he had gone through the two pieces of steel and was about to make a large incision in the metal deck of the ship. No damage was actually done but we did laugh at the thought of him cutting the ship in two. We wondered if that would have impressed the prospective customer or not.
It was getting to the end of the year and although I did not want to leave Fred and Merle in the lurch I also did not want to be working there when Jonathan and Sian arrived to stay with us. My Mom had decided to come for Christmas too so we were expecting a full house. There was not much interest shown in Time Step Alley until the agent brought a young woman around to see the shop. She was coincidently from Witbank. She was a young widow; her husband had died in a motor accident not very long before. She was now dating a young man that Dominic knew in Witbank. She had a meeting with Fred and he told me that she might like me to stay on in the shop, as she was not keen to spend all her time there. I told Fred I did not want to carry on and it turned out that her mother lived in Hillcrest and the plan was that when she could not be there her mother would take over. After the sale went through the shop was closed for about a month for alterations. When she reopened it, all the dancing stock was gone and it was just a jewellery shop. It was well decorated and had attractive stock but I could not understand why she bought the shop, it would have been easier and cheaper just to look for an empty shop and start up there. I called in when I was passing and introduced myself to the mother. She was a friendly middle-aged lady she told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want to run the shop for her daughter and so she had better hurry up and move from Witbank and take up her duties. Eventually the new owner came to run her shop but was not there long and was called back to Witbank on ‘business’. Her mother was called on again but this time she worked with even less enthusiasm. For a while the shop would be open for an hour or two a day, at irregular times so no one knew when to expect to find it open. It was not long before it closed down all together. I was later told that the young widow had received a large insurance payout for her husband’s accident and not having much business experience had not known how to go about running a shop. It seemed such a pity, as she must have lost a great deal of money.
At about this time Dominic was sitting his trade test. He passed his exams but was then told that Highveld Steel did not have a position for him as a qualified artisan so he planned to come and visit us over the Christmas holidays, the house was getting fuller and fuller. The first to arrive were Jonathan and Sian. They flew into Johannesburg and went to visit Jonny’s brother Don in Pretoria first. The plan was that they would borrow the old Datsun van that Don had leant to Jonny quite a few years ago. The van had been old then and not very reliable but Don had done some work on it so it was running well. The long run was too much for the old dear though and it started overheating at about Howick and Jonny and I had to go and tow them in. So we met our future daughter-in-law beside the highway with a broken down vehicle.
Don had first leant Jonny the van when Jonny had been working in South Africa before the boys and I had left Zimbabwe so that would have been in 1983 and it was pretty old then. We had borrowed it and returned it a few times in between that but here we were in 1990 borrowing it once again. It was useful to have a van but we seemed to have pushed it and pulled it and mended it so many times. Many years later Jonathan mentioned how many times the old van had appeared in our photographs and so I started looking for it and he was right. There was the old bakkie in the background of so many of the snaps. Sometimes you could just see a small corner of it right in the back or sometimes all the family were gathered around it. And once it had a photo all to its self. Like an old family retainer, part of the family but not given a lot of thought.
A photo all to its self
posted by MC at
10:41 pm
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