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Morris Hirsch need not to have worried about finding temporary employment. Times had changed from the unemployment he faced on graduation two years before.
The Medical Association Locum Agency directed him into Dr. Palmer's prestigious office in Lister Medical Buildings in Jeppe Street, central Johannesburg.
He was instructed on the conduct of Palmer's practice during his absence for the next month. The practice had an elite clientele, served from the posh city rooms. But it also served, in a basic prefab surgery, every day, the Geldenhuis mining community, ten miles to the east. While this was interesting, it proved a time consuming nuisance, with calls for house visits soon after he had just returned to the city or gone home.
This practice offered Morris his first exposure to urban private practice. He had a wide spectrum of patients and excellent facilities for operating at the old Kensington Sanatorium, a comprehensive Catholic Nursing Home.
The real perks were occupation of Palmer's Parktown double-storey mansion and the use of his smart Jaguar motor car. With three guineas a day and all found, Morris was in clover. He was happy, after all, to have the army career deferred. He had the home to himself.
But his peace and quiet and a window was shattered one night. In trepidation, he hesitated between phoning the police and taking a strategic stance with a carving knife.
It was Palmer's attractive blonde daughter, returning unexpectedly from Capetown, who was equally surprised to encounter Morris. Soon after, Palmer's son arrived, also a university student, with a coterie of inebriated friends. The relieved hilarity of the occasion called for a celebration with a raid on the liquor cabinet and a midnight snack.
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.
References:
Excerpt from Dr. Morris Isaac Hirsch's Unpublished Memoirs. Hirsch Archives.
Photo Reference: https://jocks.co.za/about-tsra/the-view-parktown/?srsltid=AfmBOor-A6EmA4Zp34jwN73mqWSS19gT7FQ642OZ4hXGOvK-S1ofG4Y_