South African expatriate, Douglas Tidy, reflects on the past from his home
in New Orleans, USA.
The wind blows from Lake Pontchartrain in vain attempt to cool a day that could be Durban's. The warm gust that could have come from Port Elizabeth, the Windy City further down the coast ... but it's not the same. New Orleans is a city of never-ending wonders and it never sleeps. Mardi
Gras is a one-off marvel rivalled only by Rio, and possibly by Cape Town's
Coon Carnival
A part of the French Quarter could have been lifted straight from Donkin Hill in Port Elizabeth, where lived the same settlers fleeing an oppressive Europe ... but it's not the same. No smell of dust off the arid barren Karroo and the endless Free State flatlands, no wafted smell of sugar cane in the evening air on the Stanger road. Sugar cane for sure is here ... but it's not the same. The traffic in Jo'burg is bad but at least everybody tries to drive on the left. Here everyone drives on the right (wrong!) side of the road, and everyone, but I, has an 'automobile'. No bilingual 'Hoe Links', and an English that isn't; 'Hey, man where y'at? I'm just goin' cross the neutral ground to make groceries' -- American English 'as she is spoke' ... but it's not the same. Lion and Castle in tins can be found but no draft or bottles. No biltong, no boerewors, and, can you imagine, no rugby, no cricket, ... no, it's not the same. No SAAFA lunches, no Border duty, no reunion dinners at Wanderers. A
dinner of 'Quiet Birdmen' once a month, and a breakfast of Ancient Aviators
on Saturdays
No drunken AWB to stop the car and ask what a white man is doing with a coloured woman. No separate seats on the bus, no separate toilets (all called 'bathrooms' but none with a bath), no hotels barred to non-whites ... no, it's not the same. No barbed wire, security gates, guard dogs, and security guards in New Orleans. Only 300 murders a year not every weekend ... no, it's not the same. Yet when the sun dips over the lake behind the trees one remembers Cape Town and the early dawn chorus of doves in the trees in the old Northern Transvaal. Old days gone forever. No, it's not the same. Born in 1923, Douglas Tidy was 18 years old when he joined the Royal Air Force (that being the minimum age to serve). Defective eyesight ended his career as a tyro pilot and he spent the rest of the war as a wireless operator having flown on his first twin-engined aircraft in 1941. He served in the UK, Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Masirah Island, and Aden before return to the UK in 1945 and demobilisation in 1946. He was a housemaster at Rendcomb College in Gloucestershire until he went to Oxford University in 1948 to complete an Honours Degree in English. After a Colonial Service course he went to Northern Nigeria as a District Officer until 1960. He was the British Broadcasting Corporation West African Programme Organizer until 1962 when he returned to the RAF, retiring as a Squadron Leader in 1966. After the next 25 years in South Africa, managing country clubs and acting as curator of aviation at the Museum of Military History he retired from the South African Air Force (CF) as a Major. He married Yvonne Assam, from Port Elizabeth, in 1985 and left South
Africa in 1990 to join his sons in New Orleans in the USA. Another other
son and daughter remain in South Africa in Johannesburg and Mpumalanga.
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