A Good Sport?
Morris Hirsch had quite a good eye for ball games, and he enjoyed boxing, swimming, tennis, table tennis and soccer. He was happy to attend the inter-varsity events, cheer and join in the singing.
Morris Hirsch had quite a good eye for ball games, and he enjoyed boxing, swimming, tennis, table tennis and soccer. He was happy to attend the inter-varsity events, cheer and join in the singing.
His boxing career came to an abrupt end in his second year. A current swatting buddy, Henry Stein, hardened in the platteland (Afrikaans rural South Africa) knocked him out with a perfectly timed uppercut to the point of his jaw. He felt pleasently levitated before falling flat on his face which he couldn't remember. He had not minded previous cut lips that were stitched even without any local anesthetic, or bruises and black eyes. He was used to that in his primary school days.
His only claim to sporting achievement was to captain Professor Gordon Grant's Gynae 'firm's' tennis team in his final year. It was the Prof's swansong year. He had delivered Morris as well as taught him to manage his first complicated obstetric case at the same Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital.
Their team won the inter-firm competition and celebrated the victory at his prestigious home. But the beer Morris consumed induced a miserable bout of nausea on our return home. The driver had to stop while he regurgitated the lot in a street gutter. He was never able to face beer again. He shunned all alcohol until he went into the army. He also found smoking intolerable until faced with the even more unpleasant sensory assault of postmortems in his third year. Later, in the army he became very addicted in-spite of his antipathies and its aggravation of his migraines.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
Excerpt from Dr. Morris Isaac Hirsch's Memoirs: Hirsch Archives.
Photo reference: Yeoville swimming pool: DlTEqOOWsAAD6tV.jpeg