The doorbell (it was really a buzzer) did go again and summoned Mum to the counter. The shelves were well stacked with packets or boxes of cigarettes such as Golden Fiction, Le Khedive the oval shaped Egyptian cigarette with its golden tip, Miss Blanche, Roxy with the blue and white flag, the yellow and blue packets of North State, the tanned cover of Wings and Chief Whip which as the advertisement proclaimed, was on everyone’s lips. Many folk however believed in rolling their own van Nelle shag tobacco, often using a nifty roller band and a packet of Rizzla paper and ‘Bob is your uncle’. A fag was born.
One individual who passed through our orange-coated, heavy metal door was Ms. De Jager-Meesterbroek, always well wrapped in leather, from her toes to her head. She had left her motorcycle with its sidecar on the nature strip, heralding her arrival with a loud drone from the exhaust and a deep voiced ‘goeie morgen’.
Not a common sight and a woman smoking cigars was even more novel. True to her name and mode of transport, she enjoyed puffing on her just acquired ‘Ritmeesters’. She was a blunt speaking customer, in the mould of the Two Fat Ladies on that 1998 ABC cooking program on channel 2.
It happened at times the buzzer was not heard or the stride to the shop was delayed, when five kids and some steaming cooking pots asked for attention. The waiting customer could be heard calling ‘VOLLUK’ (people), making Mum rushing to the shop, all apologetic. Unfortunately it sometimes happened that Mum (Moe or Moesje) as we called her, arrived in the shop too late to serve a fleeing shoplifter with some of her venom, ‘schorrimorrie’ riff-raff. It might not have been the ciggies at all that were taken; it could have been some of those tantalizing Tjoklat chocolate bars that went missing, unpaid for.