THE CIRCLE
THIRD EDITION JUNE 2021
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The Circle June 2021 The Circle is an amateur magazine which I produce as a retirement hobby for family and friends, past clients, and fellow Midstreamers we know.
1. City of New Orleans: A tribute to a great songwriter and a great song. I suggest you play the Willie Nelson version on YouTube while you read it.
The content is designed to appeal to people over the age of 50, and retirees. I like to try writing the sort of articles that I would like to read.
2. Croque Monsieur: Don’t you love to enjoy another country’s food when you travel?
3. The siege of Kimberley: In memory of my grandmother. If you want to learn how to write, I I’ve tried to keep the story as was told, first try to write a hundred factual as possible. stories. This month I’ve improved my goal of 900 words a week, despite 4. Origins: By popular request, taking a week’s break at the Natal more background information South coast. about Sandra Coetzee, proud owner of Sandra’s Bridal This third edition of The Circle Boutique once again consists of four different stories:
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1 City of New Orleans A tribute to Steve Goodman
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Introduction Riding on the city of New Orleans Illinois Central Monday morning rail There are fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail They say that Steve Goodman (1948 – 1984) wrote only one good song, but that’s not true. He wrote a few really good songs and many average songs, but "City of New Orleans" was the song that made him famous.
Born on Chicago's North Side to a middle-class family, Goodman began writing songs as a teenager. In 1967 he spent a month performing in Greenwich Village in New York. Back in Chicago he chose to pursue his music fulltime after discovering the cause of his continuous fatigue was leukaemia.
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City of New Orleans Out on this southbound odyssey And the train pulls out of Kankakee Rolling past the houses, farms and fields Passing' towns that have no names And freight yards full of old grey men And the graveyards of rusted automobiles The City of New Orleans is an Amtrak passenger train which runs overnight between Chicago and New Orleans with a stop in Memphis, linking three of America's great music cities.
Goodman’s song was inspired by a train trip he and his wife took from Chicago to New Orleans to visit her elderly grandmother.
Today, you can ride the City of New Orleans from end to end in 19 hours, every day of the week. Cheap fares from $100 but shop around for specials.
City of New Orleans Dealing card games with the old men in the club car And it's penny a point, there ain't no one keeping score Won't ya pass that paper bag that holds that bottle You can feel the wheels grumbling through the floor In 1971, Goodman played in a Chicago bar called the Quiet Knight as the opening act for Kris Kristofferson, who once said "City of New Orleans", was "the best damn' train song I ever heard".
On September 20, 1984, Goodman died at the University of Washington Medical Centre in Seattle, Washington. He was survived by his wife and three daughters. He lived for only thirty-five years but during that time, he made an indelible mark on the music industry.
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City of New Orleans One day in a Chicago bar, Goodman met the folk singer Arlo Guthrie, and asked if he could play him a song. Guthrie agreed on condition that Goodman buy him a beer first, saying he would listen to the song for as long as it took him to drink the beer. Goodman played him "City of New Orleans". Guthrie liked it and asked to record it.
Guthrie's version was a Top-20 hit, giving Goodman the financial and artistic success he deserved. The song became an American icon, recorded by Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Chet Atkins, Lynn Anderson, and most of all Willie Nelson, whose version earned Goodman a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1985.
And the sons of Pullman porters; The sons of engineers They ride their father's magic carpet made of steel And mothers with the babes asleep Go rocking to the gentle beat And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
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City of New Orleans Night time on the City of New Orleans Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee It's halfway home and we'll be there by morning Through the Mississippi darkness rolling to the sea Although Goodman recorded several albums, none were commercially successful. But his song writing output was vast, and his live performances sold out. Bob Dylan sang backing vocals on the title track from Steve’s second album under the alias Robert Milkwood Thomas. Though he had periods of remission, Goodman knew he was living on borrowed time, and friends have said that his music reflects this. His wife Nancy, writing his obituary, said of him: “Basically, Steve was exactly who he appeared to be: an ambitious, welladjusted man from a loving, middle-class Jewish home in the Chicago suburbs, whose life and talent were directed by the physical pain and time constraints of a fatal disease which he kept at bay, at times, seemingly by willpower alone . . . Steve wanted to live as normal a life as possible, only he had to live it as fast as he could . . . He extracted meaning from the mundane.” Goodman was a fanatical follower of CTA GOES HERE the Chicago Cubs baseball team and wrote several songs which were sung by fans during games. In April 1988, some of Goodman's ashes were scattered on Wrigley Field.
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Singing good morning America, how are you Saying don't you know me I'm your native son Yes I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans And I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
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2 Croque Monsieur
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Introduction Le Croque Monsieur is a toasted sandwich made of ham, cheese, and béchamel sauce, dipped in beaten egg before grilling. La Croque Madame adds a sunny-side-up fried egg on top to resemble a lady’s beret. This staple of French cuisine is a popular lunchtime meal throughout France. But describing a Croque Monsieur as a French ham and cheese sandwich does not do it justice at all. With the right quality ingredients, and served in a boulevard café, or even in a Michelin-star restaurant, it provides a gastro experience that creates a unique memory for any visitor to France.
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Croque Monsieur Many cafes, bistros and brasseries offer the standard croque monsieur and croque madame, and regional versions can be found across France. Common variations include croque poulet that replaces the ham with grilled chicken, croque Auvergnat made with bleu d’Auvergne cheese and even croque Bolognese (also called le croque boum-boum) made with Bolognese sauce. How did this cheese sandwich become a dish on the menus of so many French eateries? One story suggests the snack was created by accident when French workers left their lunch buckets too close to a hot radiator. The heat toasted the bread and melted the cheese in their sandwiches. To make your own croque monsieur add thinly sliced ham to buttered sandwich bread and top with Emmental or Gruyere cheese. Dip in beaten egg, add a dash of béchamel sauce and a sprinkling of grated cheese, and place under a hot grill for 45 seconds.
McDonald's in France makes its own croque monsieur called Le Croque McDo. Their version consists of two slices of melted Emmental cheese and a slice of ham in a toasted sandwich.
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Another croque origin story dates back to 1901 and a Paris brasserie on the Boulevard des About the Capucines. When le chef ran out of baguettes for the Author restaurant’s sandwich of the day, he took a loaf of pain de mie (sandwich bread), sliced it, placed hamBethany and cheese between the slices and baked it to Garcia crispiness. Content Strategist, Company Name Fill the reader in on who you are and why you’re qualified to be speaking about the topic you’ve written about.
When a customer asked about the source of the ham in the sandwich, the chef pointed to the @bethanygarcia @bethanygarcia butchery across the street and replied “C’est la viande de monsieur (It’s that guy’s meat).” The word “croque” literally means “bite” in French, and voila–le croque monsieur. 2
Croque Marthinette Sunday brunch is an institution in our household and depending how we feel, we might enjoy this meal at home or at one of the many restaurants available nearby. A few weeks back we brunched at a restaurant in the theatre district and to my delight, I found Croque Monsieur among the light dishes on the menu. My wife and I shared the stories of the origins of this sandwich, and memories of other sandwiches we have enjoyed in other places. The following Sunday we decided to enjoy our brunch at home. My dear wife served up a delicious grilled ham and cheese creation on rye, garnished with fresh lettuce and tomato, and topped with a fried egg. This is “Croque Marthinette” she announced. I am truly blessed. 2
Only the French could elevate a ham and cheese sandwich into culinary art. Magnifique!
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Beziers
Beziers I encountered my first croque monsieur in Beziers, capital of the Languedoc wine country and birthplace of Resistance hero Jean Moulin, while touring on the French canals.
The Canal du Midi passes through Beziers and you can moor your boat in the basin below the town and walk up a flight of stairs to explore.
The town centre is the Avenue PaulRiquet, a leafy esplanade lined with cafes, crepes stalls, restaurants, and shops. It is named after the 17th century tax collector who lost his health and his fortune in his obsession to build the Canal du Midi, hoping to join the Atlantic with the Mediterranean.
Beziers has one of the star rugby teams in France which is a great conversation opener with the locals.
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The Beziers Feria The Béziers Feria (festival) is the biggest event of the year in the Languedoc-Roussillon region and takes place in the month of August (as it hopefully will again in 2021). A million people visit this festival of bullfighting, eating, wine tasting and music each year. There are bullfights in the arena every day (they don’t kill the bulls) and when the corrida is over the visitors take over the whole town. The party continues until dawn with bodegas, flamenco and casitas everywhere.
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3 The siege of Kimberley
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The siege of Kimberley During the siege of Kimberley, Cecil Rhodes offered to send the women and children of the town down into his De Beers Diamond Mine, to protect them from the Boer gun, Long Tom. The British in turn built a gun called Long Cecil, which Mr George Labram and the De Beers engineers made in the mine workshops.
Long Tom was very powerful and could shoot from 5 miles away, right into the centre of town. Long Tom killed soldiers and civilians, women and children, black people and white people. The British soldiers defending the town under Colonel Baden Powell used semaphore flags when they heard Long Tom fire, to warn the people to shelter in trenches.
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The siege of Kimberley After 124 days in the mine General John French led a cavalry charge through the depleted Boer lines to break the siege. Lord Roberts used his vastly greater quantities of troops and equipment to force General Piet Cronje to surrender at Paardeberg. Boer supporters in the town were sent to the concentration camp at Newton with boer women and children from outlying areas whose farms had been burnt down.
Of the 5000 prisoners, more than 500 died in the next 2 years, most of them children from the measles. The poor food and lack of medical facilities caused great bitterness and resentment among the women in the camp. The Englishwoman Emily Hobhouse visited the camp and told the women she would try to help them in the English parliament. But the British military establishment and many British citizens opposed her.
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The siege of Kimberley In June 1902 the Boers surrendered and the war was over. The schools re-opened and the children carried on with their lives. The electric trams resumed service, running from Kimberley Central to Beaconsfield and Kenilworth.
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The siege of Kimberley Rhodes asked Sir Herbert Baker to design a memorial for the people who died defending Kimberley. The memorial is made of sandstone that Rhodes sent from the Matopo Hills in Rhodesia and 27 soldiers are buried in it. Rhodes got Rudyard Kipling to write an inscription for the monument. Long Cecil sits in front of the monument, surrounded by shells from Long Tom.
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Cecil John Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape, was discredited after the Jameson Raid, and died shortly after the war. George Labram, De Beers’ chief engineer, was killed less than a week before the siege was lifted, when a Boer shell hit his room in the Grand Hotel. Lord Roberts was commander in chief of the British forces in the boer war. At the Battle of Paardeberg on 27 February 1900, Roberts forced the Boer General Piet Cronjé to surrender with some 4,000 men. General Piet Cronje, shunned by the other boer generals, was held prisoner with his wife on St Helena until the end of the war. General John French led the cavalry charge through the boer lines to end the siege. In World War 1 he commanded the British army on the Western Front . The king ordered French to resign after the British casualties in the battles of Ypres. Emily Hobhouse campaigned bravely but without much success, to improve the conditions in the camps. She was made an honorary citizen of South Africa for her humanitarian work. Sir Herbert Baker was the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, designing the Union Buildings and many other public buildings. Rudyard Kipling. English journalist, editor and novelist, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Colonel Robert Baden Powell. After the war Baden Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement modelled on those young British soldiers in Kimberley. Today there are 190,000 scouts and guides in South Africa, and over 54 million scouts and guides worldwide. Electric tram. Kimberley was the first city in Africa to have electricity and electric streetlights.
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A personal note My grandmother was one of the children who were sent down into the mines in Kimberley. I met her only once. I remember a tiny old lady dressed all in black, with long silver hair. I never met my grandfather who, I was told, drove an electric tram from Kimberley Central to Beaconsfield, six am to six pm, six days a week and happy to have the work. My grandmother ran the house. My mother was educated at Kimberley Girls High and her sister at the Diamantveld Hoer Skool, which is interesting.
My grandparents rented out rooms at the back of the house to lodgers. When my mother was 17 they had two nice young men as lodgers. My mother liked the English speaking young man and her sister liked the Afrikaans speaking one, but the men weren’t allowed to know. The two nice young men ended up marrying those two sisters. After school my mother worked as a file clerk at the deeds office and studied at night for the national diploma in secretarial skills. She took piano lessons. When I was ten years old, my family moved to Kimberley for a few years. We rented a house at number 11 Memorial Road, 300 meters from the monument, and just below the synagogue. The rabbi’s son with red hair was my friend. Sometimes we played pretend war games on Long Cecil.
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4 Origins
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Introduction Mrs Sandra Coetzee, proud owner of Sandra’s Bridal Boutique, was thinking about a quote she recently came across in a women’s magazine. The writer said the world was divided into three types of people: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the very many who wonder what happened.
Sandra tried to guess what life events had led the author, Mr Nicholas Murray Butler, to this cynical conclusion.
And yet the statement had a ring of truth, Sandra thought. If she thought back to major events in her life, she had certainly at times belonged to each of the three groups. And the logic could also apply to organisations and even entire nations.
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Origins Take for instance the Rex Trueform Clothing Company, where she started working at the age of 18.
Many Capetonians worked in the clothing industry and Rex was the industry leader. Sandra had been so proud to be part of this famous corporation which exported Rex Trueform men’s sports jackets and House of Monatic lounge suits all over the world. She loved visiting the fabric store when new shipments arrived, and watching the pattern-makers cutting through 20 layers of cloth at a time. Most of all she loved the great production halls with their lines of sewing machines, six hundred workers bent over their work busy as bees, the local radio station at full blast, the line supervisors sitting on their high stools, the production numbers chalked on the wallboard. 6
And now it’s all gone, Sandra thought sadly. When the Chinese started selling their quality sports jackets to Rex’s international customers at prices way below what Rex paid for just the base fabric, the writing was on the wall. Rex Trueform closed down just 3 years later, those skilled machinists lost their jobs, the great sewing halls declared a heritage site and turned into offices and apartments. And the owners watched it happen, and couldn’t or wouldn’t do a thing. The Chinese did it cheaper and better, and that’s what killed Rex Trueform.
On the other hand, Sandra thought, Gordon Joffe was definitely one of the few who always made things happen. That smart young man used his retrenchment money to buy a flight ticket to New York and for four days, morning to night, sat in the reception at Polo International’s headquarters on Madison Avenue, until someone agreed to see him. A week later, he flew back to Cape Town with a royalty agreement in his pocket and a licence to use the iconic designs and brand names, Polo and Ralph Lauren, on men’s and ladies’ sportswear in Southern Africa.
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Origins Sandra learnt the clothing business with Gordon at Polo Manufacturing. She spent a year as a production supervisor and another year as a sales agent. She bought sewing machines and buttons and zips and sat in on meetings with the arrogant buyers from the national retail chains. She planned and supervised a move to new factory premises. She went with Gordon to Hong Kong to buy fabric. In her 5th year, Gordon made her general manager of The Polo Ladies, a new division of the company.
And then Gordon died. One Saturday afternoon he complained to his wife of indigestion and went to lie down. She tried to wake him an hour later but he was dead. A weak heart, and into the dark night he went.
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Origins Sandra was devastated. She loved her young husband, and in a different way, she had loved and respected Gordon too. She didn’t want to carry on at Polo without him. The shareholders were appointing a new management team and she thought it was time to move on. At the age of 30, Sandra faced the challenge of what to do next. It was her time to make things happen.
To survive in the clothing industry in South Africa, Gordon always said, you had to have a unique brand or a unique product or a niche market, and preferably all three. If you tried to make standard lines like school shirts, boxer shorts or pyjamas, or any export products, the Chinese low labour rates would price you out of the market. And if not them then the Indians and the Indonesians.
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Sandra wanted to be her own boss. She thought she might open a boutique, a dress shop for adult women, not kids. Party gowns, cocktail dresses, formal wear and dresses for special occasions. Locally made to order by people who understand the contours, hopes and aspirations of South African ladies. The new mall near the Sanlam head office in Voortrekker Road was looking for tenants. One day, a customer asked Sandra to design a wedding dress for her daughter. And that’s how it all began….. 4
In closure You are encouraged to share your copy of the Circle. Please recognise that although I do research my facts and figures, I can’t guarantee that the information in my stories is always complete and totally accurate. This content is copyright. If you would like to publish any of these stories – for example on your company website or in your firm’s newsletter - please obtain my written permission. We are curious. If you know of any establishments in South Africa with Croque Monsieur on the menu, please let me know (I only know of two) and I will publish the list next month.
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Many photographs in this issue have been sourced from Unsplash.com