The rich history of small towns never fails to amaze me. And indeed its people.
During my schoolboy days, I was a regular visitor to erstwhile Warmbaths for Christmas.
It has always melted my heart to see how people in the town went about their lives.
There were the waiters at Brown’s Hotel and Warmbaths Hotel, in their colourful uniforms, hair with a side parting (read: a younger Nelson Mandela), and pegs tugged at the trousers’ ankles, riding shiny bicycles over the railway line, into downtown.
These men were held in high esteem, for serving tourists at a hotel was one of the better jobs, comparable, say, to the milkman.
Allow me to protect the identity of one Uncle Steven (not his real name), who happened to be one of the many waiters pedalling his way from the township to work at one of the hotels.
Uncle Steven was a perfect gentleman, pinstripe suits, red and blue ballpoint pens tucked into his breast pocket.
The man lived in a room sublet to him by my granny, and because he brought all the leftover cuisine from the hotel dining tables, I tend to spend time with him on his off-day.
One day I found Uncle Steven staring at a note pad and pen lying on his small table, smiling and blushing, for whatever reason.
The man then shyly asked if I could read and write, to which I nodded to the affirmative. He could not read or write himself, he confessed.
He asked me if I could write a letter on his behalf, addressed to one Aunt Selina (not her real name).
And so he started dictating what needed to be said, to the woman with the dimples in the cheeks.
Choking from emotion, Uncle Steven poured out how he loved Aunt Selina, begging that she accept his courting, and ultimately his hand in marriage.
Wide-eyed, and not understanding the deep meaning of it all, I continued writing, until at the end a tearful Uncle Steven dictated it would be oh so kind of Aunt Selina, to respond to his proposal in writing.
Thereafter I had the task of running to Aunt Selina’s family house a street away, to deliver the letter overflowing with emotion and love.
Indeed I found Aunt Selina sweeping the forecourt, dressed in her favourite pinafore, her hair braided into a tapestry.
Nervously she took the letter from me, turned it in her fingers, before blushingly asking that I read the contents for her, for Aunt Selina could not read nor write.
