It was close to our house, only about 7 miles. One got there by following Main Reef Rd in a South Westerly direction. The lake was on the way to Randfontein, another 10 miles or so further on.
We could have walked, but no one ever considered that option in those days of being pampered white children in South Africa. Walking 7 miles for my daily exercise and pleasure is nothing these days. "When I read stories that describe how far people walked daily for mundane chores like fetching water from the well, I'm shocked by the fact that we would only go to that lovely warm water place, where we had so much fun when Ma or Pa would take us in the car."
After passing under the railway bridge, with the yellow dirt of the mine dump looming up on the left, the road curved to the right past the Krugersdorp station. The enormous grey building you see on the left is the abattoir. I heard the mournful lowing of the cattle waiting to be slaughtered by Rev. Poswell, the ritual slaughterer.
My father had a Jewish ritual slaughterer's license from Lithuania. I even saw his beautiful but scary knife, with a broad silver blade and an ivory handle, hidden under his clothes in his bedroom. He never used it; it was his fallback career if he couldn't make a living in South Africa by any other means.
He made a living eventually selling timber and second-hand building materials from a shop in Burgershoop.
He was always on the lookout for things to sell, and to this end, he went to sales, where various goods were piled in lots. He visited the sale a day before to see what he wanted to buy. On the day of the sale, businessmen in suits and sports jackets stood around in bunches, looking at the pile of wares to be sold and talking among themselves as they perused the goods. They would decide on a price they were prepared to pay, and one would be chosen to do the bidding. When the auctioneer reached their price, they bought, and the goods would be shared among the group.
Such a bidding group was known as a syndicate. The syndicate bought at the lowest possible price by reducing the number of buyers. Of course, the auctioneer or the company selling the goods were aware of this ruse, and they would play their own tricks. They'd plant a fictitious buyer to bid against the syndicate and push the price. The syndicate would make the fictitious buyer an attractive offer to join them, preventing him from bidding against them. They'd pay a high price when they did not attract the outside buyer. There were gas masks and books on flying an aeroplane in the pile, and the whole pile was auctioned off as a job lot. The buyers needed help to sift through the pile to pick and choose.
The auctioneer would start shouting, "What bids do I hear for this pile of wonderful goods? Give me your bids; this pile has some valuable things." The thing excited the buyers like my father and his business partners. One of the syndicates consisted of my dad and his brothers-in-law, Uncle Louis, who had a similar kind of store in Germiston, and Uncle Ruby, whose store was in Springs.
There were some outsiders, but most of the syndicate were family members.
One of the lots contained a mysterious yellow canvas bag, which nobody wanted. Still, it was part of a job lot; my father ended up with the sack in his share of the lot and loaded it onto his truck.
To our great joy, the object in the bag was a dinghy. This life raft had been on an aeroplane, or the dinghy came from a warship, a safety measure in case the ship sank. The men could escape death by sailing away in the dinghy. There were some markings like EK 47 in thick black letters, and I often wondered what they meant but never found out. For us, it was just a way of having fun.
Once, there was even a whole aeroplane. Another time, a beautiful leather-bound 20-volume set of the world's most outstanding books turned up. I'd lie for hours paging through those volumes, encountering the world's greatest literary works.
My father always had his children in mind when choosing which items to acquire from these lots, not only his business. It was no accident that he came to be the owner of that part of the job lot containing things which would promote his children's education or pleasure. The most fantastic item in one of the lots was a ten-wheel military vehicle known as a half-track troop carrier. We had no end of fun imagining ourselves as drivers and gunners in the 2nd WW vehicle in the yard of my father's store.
The yellow inflatable dinghy served us well in our fun on Robinson Lake. The thing was made out of reinforced rubber and was huge. At least 10 kids could jump in and play, pushing each other into the warm water as we floated around the lake. Other kids would swim, splashing like crazy to catch up to us, holding their breath underwater and overturning the thing, tumbling the inhabitants laughing into the water.
The water was almost hot in some places and cold in others. The lake was about 6 feet deep, and a wooden jetty stretched out from the shore from which you could dive.
The lake lay at the foot of a heap of yellow sand known as a mine dump, which consisted of yellow dirt, the leftover of the gold extraction process. The water was warm because it was also left over after extracting the gold.
The mine was one of several in our area. This one was known as West Rand Consolidated Mines, one of the wealthiest gold-producing mines in the world. We, kids, were oblivious to the riches amongst where we were splashing.
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