The fantasy’s of childhood
The huge tall building on Abercorn St….. Bulawayo’s tallest. I remember it well.
Some years ago, my friend and I, one day, during school holidays, walked into town from where we lived in Westgate, the railway suburb on the SW side of Bulawayo, previously known as Kopiesite. We both carried a hessian sack on each shoulder, full of empty beer and coke bottles.
We walked from the bottom of Westgate, past the new signal box, onto the railway embankment towards Bulawayo Station ; just as you could in those days ; past the Asbestos cement factory, across the network of railway tracks ; which, at the time, was an active marshalling yard, where a big double ended 14th class Garret shunting engine steamed back and forth, pushing and pulling rolling stock, shunting them from track to track.
The engine on that day stopped and started with a screech. Brake shoes made of Iron, clamping massive steel wheels caused a deafening screech when the engine stopped…….then moments later, started again with yet another screech. The driving wheels of the lumbering machine spinning on steel rail track, in concert with huge clanking beams connecting the wheels to the reciprocating pistons. The noise of hissing steam and repetitious puffing black smoke sounded like a Dinosaur after a long pursuit of a challenging prey. The great iron machine accelerating down the track…. then…. shortly thereafter……braked again to a dead stop. It was a noise ridden place but a captivating sight at that young tender age, to watch for a few moments, the great steam driven engine do its noise deafening thing.
We walked across the tracks, staying between the wagons to remain out of sight just in case someone might ask where we were going and what was in the sacks. We were, after all, only eight years old but not uncommon then, to see small children, unescorted, even in the most dangerous of places.
Our destination that day, as on many days that I recall ….Lambs Bottle Store on 13th Ave.
The proceeds from those empties on that day would be enough to see the “Durango Kid” at the Palace Bioscope, on Abercorn St. just across the road and down the street a bit from that huge iconic landmark…… ‘Bradlows Building’.
Before the flick began at 2 o’clock that day, we stood outside the bioscope patiently waiting, when our eyes and minds curiously wondered over to the huge building across and down the street.
We wondered what it would be like to go to the very top, of what we thought had to be the highest building in the world. No building could ever be higher than Bradlows, all 10 stories of it…….until they built the African life building a few years later. That was 14 stories.
We imagined it would be just like being in an aero plane, from the top of that building. We looked at each other, knowing it was still an hour before the flick began, an endless hour, as hours were in those days, when we were not much more than ‘two bricks and a pee-pot high’!! ……… So that’s what we did, we climbed the endless stairway all the way to the top of Bradlows Building.
As we entered the building that day, there in front of us, right at the entrance, was a strange looking object which at my young age I’d never seen before. I’d never been in a lift that I could recall. To me it looked like a rectangular cluster of black diamond shaped bars. It was the folding entrance to the lift cage that carried people to each floor in the building. It even went right up to the tenth floor, to the very top of the building, right at the top of the sky. At least this is what we thought.
However….. standing there in front of this strange object, as if a guardian to the heavens, way up in the sky, was the lift man.
He stood there immaculately dressed in a navy blue uniform, a cap on his head with its brim perfectly flat, its black polished peak like a sergeant majors spit polished boots. He stood at the lift gates, eyeing us suspiciously, as if knowing what was going on in our devious little heads.
Without another thought, we made a ‘b’ line to the nearby stairway and disappeared up to the first floor as fast as we could.
A long climb it was to the top, but I remember how captivated I was by the view when we reached the top. I’d never been anywhere that high before and to see the surrounds of Bulawayo from up there…..it – was – an amazing sight !
Equally amazing was all the stuff we found on the flat roof of the building. Piles of rejected junk… old furniture, wooden boxes, empty jam bottles …..then ….we saw it!!! like a pot of gold!!!! We could not believe our eyes!!!! Right in a corner next to the entrance, to what must have been an electrical room… there in a wooden crate underneath a piece of cardboard were nine empty beer bottles that still had their Sable labels on them. Empty Sable beer bottles that were there for the pickings. If we could stuff those in our shirts and get down those stairs back to Lambes bottle store before the flick started, we could watch the “kid” and eat a Flakey at the same time….the thought was ecstasy. That’s what we did !!
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Bradlows Building was also headquarters to the iconic sports shop; Alick Stuarts!!
The shop with an endless supply of fishing equipment, hockey sticks, football boots, bows and arrows and bicycles. You could even buy a real gun there….if you were old enough.
There could never be another sports shop anywhere in the world with as much cool stuff as Alick Stuarts.
I remember the poster in the window advertising Phillips bicycles. The black bloke, not a white bloke, peddling like hell with a grin on his face and full of confidence that he could go faster on his Phillips bike than the big black maned lion on his tail in hot pursuit.
That poster eventually became iconic in southern Africa.
Always as a model in my mind, when I occasionally think of the tallest well known buildings of the world. Bradlows building is always there, as if embedded in the depths of my mind.
M.A.D.
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