Steve's painful bike experience and Elias's knowing what to do.

 While we were living in Fairspire Court our boys, Paul and Steve, befriended another young fellow, about Paul's age. This boy offered to give a bike ride to Steve. On the back of our bikes there was often a carrier on which one could fasten his school satchel or case. It made quite a nice carrier for a passenger too. Well, suddenly we heard a real horrified scream from Steve. I and Elias ran to the window and we saw Steve sitting in the pavement with a lot of blood streaming from his foot. Without a second's hesitation Elias said, "Call the Master (Mel), " as he tore downstairs and picked Steve up holding the deep cut on Steve's foot closed. He rushed upstairs and went directly to the bathroom where he filled  the handbasin  with water, all the time holding the wound closed. Mel rushed home and we tore up to the hospital where they cleansed his foot and sewed it up with several stitches (I think it was seven) and the doctor said that it had missed the tendon by a hair's breadth, which would have meant the loss to movement to his foot. What had happened was that Steve's foot was caught in the spokes of the boy's bike.  When we left Bulawayo to go to Southern Africa Bible School we had to tell Elias that we couldn't take him with us, but I gave him a wonderful reference and he, very soon, was hired to a responsible job with the Municipality. I tell you all this to illustrate what a treasure we found when we hired Elias. When we got home from the hospital Elias was still there, even though it was long passed his knock-off time!! What a Gentleman!!

More about Our Hillside Membership

  When we moved our membership to the Hillside Church of Christ we first moved into a small condo but after a couple of months we moved next door into a very nice apartment in Fairspire  Court. Deb had been getting ready to fly to the USA in order to attend Harding University in Searcy Arkansas. Her interest was aroused by Bro. Shewmaker who was an alumnus, and highly regarded the institution.  The time came for her to leave we all drove out to the Bulawayo Airport. When the call came for the passengers to board we watched her leave the terminal to get on the plane. We were all standing on the verandah upstairs watching them. She did not turn around once — I think she was trying not to cry, just as we were. We waited there until the plane took off with our beloved daughter going away with very little chance of seeing her again for several years — actually it was about 11 years!! But more about that a little later.

 We had a very real black gentleman working for us, cooking our meals and keeping our home clean. This was because I was spending so much time teaching. He was a youngish married man and was really more suited, mentally, to be holding a white man's job, but, sadly the colour bar was still in place at this time. His name was Elias. We tried to convert him but he was a very staunch member in the Dutch Reformed Church. I asked our black preacher to speak to him, but he was unsuccessful also. Anyway Elias loved  our children, and they loved him. While our kids were small I made all their clothes and I had an old Jones Treadle Machine. When I bought myself an electric machine I asked Elias if he would like my old and he was beside himself with joy, so I started giving him pieces of material and he proudly showed me the dresses he made for his little girl. You would have thought he had had sewing lessons, but, no, he worked it out for himself. One day Norman Flynn, a friend who worked for a clothing factory, gave me a fair-sized piece of suiting fabric which I gave to Elias. A few days later he came to work and said, "Madam, do you remember this material you gave me?" He had taken a pair of his worn-out pants apart and used the pieces as a pattern and made himself a perfect pair of trousers, even with the fly made correctly, and he was proudly wearing them to work. I was astonished. More later.

"Intelligent Chatter" and Eye Glasses

When Steve was two years old he was not yet speaking, but only, very intelligently, baby chattering. This highly amused Reg Kidwell, our very good friend, who would hold him up in his arms and Steve would start pointing at things, especially on the ceiling, and would chatter endlessly. Well, a short time later I noticed that Steve seemed to be squinting and I took him to the doctor who confidently stated, "No, I don't think so, his flat baby nose makes it appear so." Not long after that Steve was sickening for something and was running a raised temperature and I noticed that his left eye was moving significantly slower than his right eye — so back to the doctor we went. This time the doc agreed with me and sent us immediately to the eye specialist who had rooms in the same medical block.

He told us that there was a worrying difference and set up some exercises for his eyes, and after treating him for several weeks he prescribed glasses for the little guy. We took the scrip to the same person who always made our glasses. When the glasses were ready we took Steve to have them fitted. The practitioner sat him on the counter and put the glasses on him. Steve sat there, as good as gold, but his little eyes filled with tears, and very soon there were little pools lying in the bottom of the specs.  I took the glasses off and cleaned them and put them back on, talking soothingly to him as I did so. And this time he accepted them. Only once did he pull them off in a temper — I don't know why, but from then on he never tried to see without them. A whole new world had opened up to him — and almost immediately he began to speak fluently (for a two year old). Prior to our discovery of his eye problem he would bring picture books to his Daddy to show him all the interesting things in them. We found out later that young children who are extremely interested in picture books often have an eye problem.

I also remember a time when Paul had a birthday party out in the back yard, and we sat Steve in his high-chair. We put his goodies in his plate and he had the time of his life mixing them all together into one sticky mess, which he proceeded to eat with great enjoyment — much to the amusement of Paul's young guests.