We left Mac along with his Fender bass, Vox amp and suitcase outside a family friend's house - they had offered to put him up - and we drove off. It was pretty hard as we had been close mates for many moons and had lived out of each other's pockets since Courtney Selous Junior School. Although Mac said he would never join another band he did and a successful band at that...the b*#+... traitor!
Our drive back to
Salisbury was not without incident. For some reason Jack, Lea and I had decided
to set off soon after we left Mac which was around midnight.
We were passing through Paarl, a town not
far from Cape Town, when calamity struck, the accelerator cable snapped. There
was no one about and it would be hours before any garage would open. What were
we to do? Simple. There’s a little lever-thingy where the accelerator cable is
fixed to the carburettor. When you put your foot hard down on the accelerator
pedal the little lever-thingy is pulled fully open by the cable. So we
ingeniously tied the little lever-thingy fully opened with a piece of string.
Credit goes to Jack for this brilliant idea...which it shames me to say I didn't think would work. But I was wrong. It did. However, as with a lot of
apparently great ideas there was a downside. In this particular case it felt like we were
driving along with our foot pushed hard down on the gas pedal the whole time. The reason it felt like that was because
effectively that's exactly what we were doing. Whenever we put our foot on the clutch to change gear the engine roared. So gear changing was left to the bare minimum, i.e. 1st
gear to 4th missing out 2nd and 3rd. The open
road was great. Perfect...and there was mile upon mile of open road between
Cape Town and Salisbury, as anyone who has travelled the route will know, so most of the time no worries. But all that changed
when we came to a town of any size. The trouble with towns of any size is they
had obstacles like ‘Stop Signs’, ‘traffic lights’ and ‘zebra crossings’. When we stopped at a red traffic light the engine would continue roaring at
full throttle to such an extent we thought it would shake itself off the
engine mountings. Drivers in cars next to us must have thought we
were challenging them to a ‘burn up’ or something. At first we tried explaining
the problem but the engine made so much racket our words were lost. When we
tried shouting over the noise we came across as being aggressive. So in the
death we just sat there with the engine screaming at full revs trying not to
meet the other driver’s gaze...all very stressful.
Why didn't we simply switch the engine off
when we came to a stop street or traffic lights and start it up again when the
lights turned green. Obvious solution,
problem solved. Not so. We had considered the ‘switching off the engine
solution’ but had promptly discarded it because the battery in the combi was
kaput. It couldn't hold a charge.
Every time we came to a Stop Sign or traffic lights we
just had to bite the bullet and sit there engine shrieking, combi shaking, like
the start of a grand prix, waiting for the lights to turn green. We ignored the smirk on the face of a guy in flashy sports car who actually thought
we wanted to 'take him on' in our beaten up combi...and waved two fingers at us
as he disappeared up the road.
And so we drove on
mile after mile over hill and vale, through town after town and city after
city. Jo’burg with its plethora of stop
signs, traffic lights, zebra crossings and one way streets was a complete
nightmare, especially when we got lost and tried to shout above
the noise of the engine for directions. Thankfully once we had managed to
negotiate our way through Jo’burg it got easier and we found ourselves travelling through less populated areas.
Eventually we made it over Beit Bridge and back into Rhodesia a distance of
1203 miles. We drove a further 169 miles to Bulawayo, Jack’s home town, where
the accelerator cable was fixed...and then another 360 miles on to Salisbury.
Salisbury
So in the death we
never became the next Beatles. In our heart of hearts I don’t suppose we ever thought we would. But I'm sure I speak for everyone, not just us five
guys in The Chequers, but all those musos who packed up their gear and dreams
in a van and hit the road in search of fame and fortune... I wouldn't have
changed a second. Not one single second.
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