DAY 6 - WARM BEER, LOUSY FOOD
Day six found me in Ficksburg as I curved around Lesotho on my trip through the eastern Free State. Ficksburg sits prettily on a plain dotted with weirdly shaped mesas and buttes. Some of them look like crooked fingers pointing skywards, and others like huge ant cones.
Ficksburg is known as the 'Cherry Town' because - logically enough - it lies in the heart of he cherry growing area. The town is immaculate, with well tended gardens and sparkling cop cars and splendid correctional faciltities. Smart little duplexes that served as old age homes perched without fences right on the street. I saw a black female warden sitting on a plastic chair beside a stop sign, outside a prison that looked like a well kept school. She was chatting to her mate while a crew of male prisoners in green overalls weeded the grass on the kerb.
On the other side of the fence, inside the prison, more prisoners were tending a fine looking vegetable patch in the morning sun. Just up the road sharp eyed grannies with blue hair tottered out of their duplexes and chatted in the moring sun. Did the prisoners cut their lawns? I drove past the duplexes again and I was able to look right into their fussy rooms through unparanoid windows.
Gradually, as I cruised around the town, I became aware that cops were everwhere. They glided around in lovingly polished blue and white cars, with batteries of lights on their roofs that a Texan sherrif would be proud of. I saw two of them standing outside Checkers. They exuded rock like dependability behind tear-drop Ray Bans, which accentuated their square chins and immaculately trimmed snors; their khaki uniforms were beautifully pressed, with razor sharp creases ironed into them; and their shoes were a thing of beauty, shimmering in the sun with the sort of lustre that only torching them with a lighter at a vital stage in the polishing process can achieve.
By this time I was starting to look a little road soiled, and I sensed eyes sliding behind the Ray-Bans. So I took my leave, only to have a similar very experience in the next attractive town, Ladybrand. I was given hope though, by a small sign outside a pub as I drove out of Ficksburg. It said, Warm Beer, Lousy Food.
Ficksburg is known as the 'Cherry Town' because - logically enough - it lies in the heart of he cherry growing area. The town is immaculate, with well tended gardens and sparkling cop cars and splendid correctional faciltities. Smart little duplexes that served as old age homes perched without fences right on the street. I saw a black female warden sitting on a plastic chair beside a stop sign, outside a prison that looked like a well kept school. She was chatting to her mate while a crew of male prisoners in green overalls weeded the grass on the kerb.
On the other side of the fence, inside the prison, more prisoners were tending a fine looking vegetable patch in the morning sun. Just up the road sharp eyed grannies with blue hair tottered out of their duplexes and chatted in the moring sun. Did the prisoners cut their lawns? I drove past the duplexes again and I was able to look right into their fussy rooms through unparanoid windows.
Gradually, as I cruised around the town, I became aware that cops were everwhere. They glided around in lovingly polished blue and white cars, with batteries of lights on their roofs that a Texan sherrif would be proud of. I saw two of them standing outside Checkers. They exuded rock like dependability behind tear-drop Ray Bans, which accentuated their square chins and immaculately trimmed snors; their khaki uniforms were beautifully pressed, with razor sharp creases ironed into them; and their shoes were a thing of beauty, shimmering in the sun with the sort of lustre that only torching them with a lighter at a vital stage in the polishing process can achieve.
By this time I was starting to look a little road soiled, and I sensed eyes sliding behind the Ray-Bans. So I took my leave, only to have a similar very experience in the next attractive town, Ladybrand. I was given hope though, by a small sign outside a pub as I drove out of Ficksburg. It said, Warm Beer, Lousy Food.
posted by Krisstoffel at 10:17 AM
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