Kevin Mattison

Harry and the automobile

Before sailboats were cars for Harry. He used them to travel, rejoice in the natural beauty of an open roof and of course to scare his passengers. Harry went through a number of his own life cycles when it came to cars and here are a few of the stories. As a teenager the mixture of harry, hormones and automobiles was a poor one. I never did get the specifics but there have always been the grumblings of having rolled a few. When he met my mom he was at that stage a new accountant with a reasonable income and a bright shiny MG TD. He always talked fondly of the car, and my mom recounts a story where she was allowed to drive it, solo that is, and on passing a golf course was hit by a stray golf ball. She swears that she drove the car over a bridge, parked it and only then passed out for fear of damaging Harry’s pride and joy. Harry as the yuppie in Toronto.

After their wedding, a broken down motorcar redetermined their honeymoon. It was hastily reorganized to go on a roadtrip to New Orleans. On the way, he “accidentially” lost the wedding ring on the second night of marriage. As a couple, they enjoyed rallying driving together on the frozen roads of Ontario in winter. For some reason he felt safer with my mom driving than him (actually I have an inkling) and again there are stories of them driving, backwards, at 60 mph, downhill, in winter, through stop signs. But the big trip was a drive in the MG from Toronto through the prairies and across hundreds of miles of dirt roads to Juneau in Alaska during the sixties. The open roads held appeal, and shortly thereafter they sold all their possessions, including the MG, to travel overland through Africa.

They arrived in Johannesburg as the new DINKS (dual income no kids) and Harry signed on with IBM to sell computers, and the first car that I remember – the gorgeous british racing green triumph spitfire. In fact I was even named after Stirling Moss, the best British racing driver ever produced.

A well planned move to Cape Town, another kid and Harry moved from being a DINK to a SITKOM (single income two kids oppressive mortgage). The second kid was in fact a nightmare for the spitfire. Not only was it difficult to travel with two kids in an extremely limited backseat, but Sam, with all her two year old cognitive reasoning, had the idea that the spitfire would run better on sugar. A couple of cupful’s later, and the spitfire was no more the charging chariot of a traffic policeman’s nightmare, but rather a work in progress that didn't really progress.

Harry’s career moved to Southern Life and a company car - a Red Alpha Romeo. It was source of a lot of fun and speeding tickets. But the golden handcuff of the car was not enough to keep Harry in line with a corporate, to be respectful of authority or someone else’s views. The corporate career was over, with only a slight regret at the loss of the car. If for only a second, this was the one time that Harry and mom looked at returning back to Canada, but through Paul Sulcas, Harry joined the academic ranks where the work environment was more amenable to Harry’s way of operating.

Many sacrifices for the family, which combined with a public servants salary, would normally alter ones taste for exotic vehicles. Not so with Harry. He had a solution. A motorbike. I was the only child to be dropped off on the back of a motorbike at school, but at least it was a timely way of delivering me, the buddying young student. Harry quickly mastered weaving through traffic, pulling wheelies and ventured on to teach a few of his mates how to ride. Particularly after a braai with a few beers. Not good. One friend wound up the accelerator, let it snap, wheeled across Mohr Road and through the fence of a neighbor. Another forget to ask how to operate the brake and spent the afternoon driving around the block while the braai went on in the back garden.

After a while there were more traditional forms of transport back in the family. Forever the explorer, Harry took our family travelling through the country, often putting in a multi day national park hikes on top. Soutpansberg, Tsitsikama, Drakensberg, Swellendam and the First River Canyon. But there was always a somewhat unreliable chariot involved, which resulted in unplanned weekends spent in Harrismith or Calvinia waiting for an new alternator to be trucked in or for a scrap yard to open for us to dig a spare part that would enable us to limp home.

The hiking trip to the Fish River Canyon went according to plan until we emerged from the 5 day hike to find the young gun who dropped us off at the top of the canyon and was meant to deliver the purple Volkswagen (not Harry’s car) to the finish, had tried his hand at rally driving. Unfortunately the car was rolled, the windscreen pushed out and a somewhat difficult drive faced Harry and Jill back from Ais-Ais to Cape Town in the middle of winter in the newly minted convertible.

Harry certainly didn't want to keep the exhilaration of the wheel to himself. He taught me to drive a number of years before the recommended age (that is what laws are really for aren't they?). By the age of 12 I was very comfortable driving, which turned in handy during a hiking trail in Swellendam that went wrong. Two adults, me and a number of juniors caught in a snowstorm. The cars were 100km away. What permutation allows one adult to get two cars and another adult to look after the kids?

It was an exhilarating sensation being a young teenager, driving the car unassisted and following your father through a mountain pass while it was snowing. In Harry’s mind (and I wasn't arguing), it would be perfectly justifiable to any enquiring official.

Harry was so impressed by my Canadian driving ability and living up to the middle name, that he was quick to lend me a car at the mention of a potential date plus R10 for a burger and soda. Not bad when you are sixteen!

While Harry was done with the corporate life, my mom entered it and soon came home with her first company car – an Alpha Rome. Harry was delighted. One of my last road trips with Harry was driving Sam up to boarding school in PE in mom’s company car to see if we could set a new land speed record.

I left thereafter to travel the world and the road trips moved abroad. We had a wonderful trip from Toronto through Quebec to Nova Scotia and back to Toronto. Of particular delight was that I was now of drinking age so we could mix the travel with another favourite pastime.

In the early nineties Harry attended an academic event in Germany, and I flew over and we spent about 10 days driving through many parts of Europe including Yugoslavia before the war. I inflicted my passion, skiing, on him, ending with Harry being face down, in powder and grumbling this is not funny at the end of a full day. In retaliation we drove back through Venice and then the Bremmer pass from Italy to Austria. Harry was in his element. A mountain pass, snow and black ice, a passenger to scare and it had only been 25 years since he had last driven on snow. Despite normally rather large nerves, I coaxed him to stop the car, got out and then tried hitchhiking the rest of the pass. Eventually he promised to drive at a more modest speed – which was still well above any speed a rationale person who consider suitable for the conditions!

He lost all credibility for driving in winter conditions when on another trip to Canada, he borrowed my car to take Janey and Niki down to Boston. He returned the car in one piece and disappeared back to South Africa. A few days later a major winter storm hit Toronto. I was driving on a highway. Hit the washer fluid lever to spray the grunge off the windscreen, when I discovered (at 120km/h and -30 degreees celcius) that Harry had thoughtfully replaced the windscreen fluid with water – that instantly froze onto the windscreen.

Despite all his highjinks he had only a few run-ins with the law. He always seemed to have his famous guardian angel (fulltime work that) looking after him. The only real experience I can remember was in Toronto where he had been out with Trussie, drinking beer followed up in a Tim Hortons restaurant eating donuts and drinking coffee. On his way back to his parents flat, 4am by now, the cops pulled him over. He promised that he was a card-carrying member of the Salvation Army and that he had drunk more coffee than Molsons Canadian, and somehow managed to convince them to follow him home while remaining at the wheel. All successful.

Of course the role of the automobile changed as sailing emerged on his new list of passions. Toyota’s were great for carting diesel and sails backwards and forwards, and even better demanded no maintenance. The sources of his adventures shifted from the land to the romance of the sea, but still very much about the freedom of being on the edge, the fun of going to strange places, meeting new people (castle in hand) and of course not everything going quite to plan.