Every family has well known stories of the past that are told at family gatherings when reminiscing around the fire or at the dinner table. Some are humorous, while others are more unusual which makes them unique and memorable. The following family stories are taken from the personal memories of Gary Skolmen, John Skolmen, Eddie Skolmen and Milly Skolmen.
The fire that devastated Sunset Farm
Gary Skolmen was 9 years old when a fire devastated his grandparents farm (Sunset Farm) in Thornvlei Road, Meises Halt, East London. ”I was at the neighbours farm playing with their daughter when Granny Eva phoned and told the neighbour’s wife that there was a fire and that they needed all the help they could get. We then drove to Sunset Farm, which was about 3km away.”
According to Gary, his father John Skolmen apparently started the fire. ”The rubbish was always burnt in the pits about 300 meters away from the farmhouse, on this said day John forgot to put the grid over the fire pit. Due to the wind, the burning rubbish flew out of the pit and landed on the grass.
The fire started very slowly at first but then the wind picked up and that was the end of it. Granny Eva phoned the fire department, two trucks were sent out but none of them had water in them. All possible neighbours were sought to help with the fire, but the wind was so bad very little could be done. The only option was to save what they could; the house, garages adjacent to the house, the pigsty, bottom rondavel, and a little house at the bottom of the farm where the labourer was staying were all saved with great efforts, but the rest of the farm burnt down. Grandpa Toby had 17 cows at that stage and luckily they were all saved as well.
The fire had also started to spread to the adjacent farms. In a haste, Grandpa Toby made lashers out of old tyres and this helped tremendously to curb the fire. However, some of the neighbours got hurt as the wind changed direction and the neighbour’s wife was caught unaware in the middle of a raging fire. Luckily the farmers were alerted in time and managed to stop the fire before it caused any damage to their farms.
The fire lasted about 8 hours and by 17h30 that night everything had burnt, leaving ash everywhere. It was a devastating blow as most of the crops were burnt during the fire and the heat was so intense that even the guava trees to the right of the farm were damaged.
The following day we walked around the farm and saw the devastation first-hand. The entire farm was black with ash and the scene looked terrible, but we were fortunate to have managed to save the main buildings from destruction.”
Sunset Farm was sold after Toby Skolmen passed away in 1993. Below are some pictures of the farm taken in 2017:
John K.O’s Bull
The family had barely recovered from the fire incident when a bull attacked Toby Skolmen around 3 months later.
Gary Skolmen relays the events of the day as his memory serves: ”There was a severe drought that year and the adjacent neighbour (Mr Bridger) was desperate for his cattle to get better grazing. He asked Grandpa Toby if his cattle could graze on the farm as new grass was just beginning to appear after the fire incident. Grandpa Toby agreed that some of the cattle could feed on his land. Amongst the few cattle was a huge Guernsey bull.
Grandpa Toby had grown mielies on the bottom of the farmland where the fire was stopped and they were almost ready to be harvested. One particular day while Grandpa Toby was in the mielie field the bull managed to jump the fence and started to eat the mielies. Grandpa Toby then plucked out a mielie plant and tried to herd the bull away, accidentally hitting the bull over the head. The bull, in a fit of rage, stormed at Grandpa Toby and tossed him in the air. The labourer who worked on the farm ran towards the farmhouse and informed Granny Eva of what was happening.”
The following is the account of the bull attack as told by John Skolmen: “At the time of the bull incident I was working as a coal shoveler on the steam trains in East London. I worked 18-hour shifts so when I got home I was so tired I passed out and slept during the day. On this particular day I had just fallen asleep, Dad was working in the mielie crops and the bull had attacked him.
Mom came and woke me up, slapping me through the face and saying “you better go quickly, the bull is attacking the old man and if you don’t go now it might kill him”. There was an open window, so I jumped right through the window. I just had a pair of pants on and I ran towards this bull. The bull was still pulverising and stomping the old man. I was enraged and I thought no, I better do something, so I gripped the bull by its neck and hit it between the eyes. The bull just lifted his head with a sort of expression like ”oh we’ve got competition here” and I thought to myself that I am taking a big chance here as this bull can finish me off just like that if he wanted to. The bull hit me and broke three of my ribs, I fell to the ground and I was frothing at the mouth as one of the ribs had punctured my lung and I was battling to breath. The labourer told me to stay down and there was a burrow that had been ploughed so I rolled into that.”
Gary continues the story with more details of the incident: ”Granny Eva gave John the Point 22 Long Rifle but when John arrived at the scene, the bull was over grandpa, standing almost on top of him. He couldn’t take the risk of shooting the bull as he was afraid the bull would collapse on grandpa and kill him. He ran towards the bull and tried to get the attention of the bull, however the bull was adamant not to leave Grandpa Toby, that was when John was forced to go right up to the bull and apparently hit the bull between the eyes.
The bull charged John and tossed him in the air, he fell to the ground and cracked three of his ribs. Granny Eva telephoned the neighbour and informed them that the bull had attacked Grandpa Toby. They sent the labourer over who was in charge of the cattle to get the bull away from John and Grandpa Toby. Apparently the bull threw Grandpa Toby three times and was stomping his feet onto him. The labourer arrived shortly thereafter and told John to lie still if he wants to live. He managed to get the bull away from both of them after numerous efforts. I remember Granny Eva giving me water mixed with sugar for the shock.
The neighbour arrived on Sunset Farm and they phoned the ambulance, however the ambulance got lost and John had to go to the tar road and wait for the ambulance and escort them. I remember the ambulance trying to go as far as they could but the roads were very bad and was not negotiable for the ambulance. They then had to fetch Grandpa Toby and carry him via stretcher to the Ambulance. This took plenty of time (around 45 minutes) as they had to be very careful and Grandpa Toby was then rushed to the Frere hospital.
Grandpa Toby had the following injuries: punctured lung, broken left arm, fractured spleen, a few broken ribs, broken leg, broken hip, and I think a broken back. He was very lucky that the bull did not have any horns as it might have been far worse. I am convinced that this incident took 10 years off his life, he was not the same man afterwards and for many years he battled to walk properly, forcing him to use a walking stick.
I went to see him a few times in hospital and remember him being all bandaged up and on so many machines, he could barely speak. I recovered from Glandular fever and left for JHB around March 1983, but I was sad to leave Grandpa behind.
Grandpa Toby recovered well and was sent home. Just less than a year later in February 1984, the death of Aunty Linda, his only daughter, was the final blow that traumatized Grandpa Toby’s spirit. I remember him being very saddened for many years after this happened, as it reminded him of losing his only sister at age 17, something he could also never get over and often mentioned to me.
The strange part of the story was that they shot the bull a week after the incident, it took three bullets to kill the bull and they actually phoned Granny Eva and asked if she wanted some of the meat. Granny Eva was horrified at the thought of eating the bull that caused so much pain to her family.”
According to Eddie Skolmen, ”The bull had previously attacked others on the farm and when the bull was killed the farm workers would not eat the meat as they thought it was evil.”
This fascinating story was featured on the front page of the Sunday Times/ Citizen newspaper with the title “John K.O’s Bull”. After this incident, John was given the nickname “John Bull” and it has been a well known Skolmen family story ever since.
Eddie and the aggressive Goat
It seems the Skolmen family aren’t very liked by farm animals. History repeated itself when years later Toby’s youngest son, Eddie, was attacked by a rather large aggressive goat on his farm, Eagle’s Rest, just further down the road from Sunset Farm.
“At 7:30am on a Sunday morning, December 2007 I took my daughter, Karen, to Medicross where she worked. On the way back home to Gonubie I stopped at the farm at 8am to get something. I opened up the doors to the workshop and one of the big billy goats that belonged to the person who was renting the farmhouse attacked me and head-butted me on the side of the leg. There were 14 goats on the farm and this particular goat was known to attack people, it had even previously attacked the guys wife but nothing was done about it.
I grabbed the goat by the horns and it pushed me back into the gas bottle trolley. There was oil on the floor and I slipped and my leg got hooked between the gas bottles and broke below the hip. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move. The goat wouldn’t leave me alone, so I hid behind the gas bottles with the goat antagonising me for half an hour. I couldn’t move with my leg broken, so I just had to wait behind the gas bottles because the goat was frothing at the mouth and trying to attack me again.
If the two gas bottles weren’t there then I would have been in big trouble. After half an hour the goat left me and headed towards the farmhouse and I managed to creep outside. When I exited the workshop the goat saw me and turned around and it was coming back to the bakkie. Fortunately, I had left the car door open and quickly managed to get into the bakkie by pulling myself up on the steering wheel. I drove myself 10kms to St Dominics Hospital with a broken leg and when I got there I hooted outside and a lady saw me and they brought a wheelchair out for me. Then I phoned my wife and said ‘You’ll never guess where I am’.
After x-rays were done, they found that my leg was broken just below the left side top ball socket. To repair it they made holes in the socket and put long screws into them which they attached to a long stainless steel plate.
I was bedridden for a few weeks and had to go to physiotherapy to strengthen my muscles so I could walk properly again. A few months after the incident, Wesley Kretzmann saw me walking and he said ”you are walking with a limp now just like your father did” so history truly had repeated itself in the Skolmen family. As for the goat, it was apparently killed after this incident and a few months later when I returned to the farm there were no more goats.”
To this day Eddie still gets a lot of grief about this story and people often make jokes and send him pictures of goats. Needless to say, it’s a family story that will continue to be told for generations to come 😉
An Unfortunate Ox
Eddie Skolmen had been in a few car accidents in his life, but the most unusual involved an unlucky Ox in the Transkei. This time around, the animal was the one who got hurt.
”I was on my way home to East London (EL) from Port St Johns. It was 7pm and just starting to get dark so I couldn’t see the gravel road properly. At a place called Misty Mount a large black Ox came out of nowhere and I hit it with the car (white Peugeot). I didn’t even realise I had hit it until I felt the windscreen glass on me. Luckily it was a straight road, so I just kept the steering wheel straight and didn’t go off the road. I was fortunate to not have any injuries, but the car was damaged badly so I had to hitch a ride to Umtata (20km away) where I spent the night.
The next morning I met up with my boss (Tim Neery) and we went to tow the vehicle back to EL. The locals had cut pieces of meat out of the Ox’s back legs to eat. I realised how lucky I was to hit it on the side otherwise those long horns may have come through the windscreen into me.”
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