THE EARTHRISE DIARY Late Spring 2014

THE EARTHRISE DIARY (LATE SPRING 2014)

DON DIESPECKER

© Text, Don Diespecker 2014; guest writers retain ©.

We went to St Johns Royal Latin School in Buckingham and travelled by train the four and a half miles from Padbury Station. Our first train journey was a bit uncomfortable and all the new boys had to be “racked” either by other RLS boys or by the Brackley boys who attended school a few stations further on. Although we struggled desperately we were no match for a compartment full of bigger boys and spent the journey up on the luggage rack—much as we resented it. However, this did not happen again and having been initiated ourselves we, like all boys, took a delight in “racking” any new boy who travelled by the London and North Western Railway between Padbury and Buckingham.

Durbyn Charles Diespecker: “Bear Fat” (unpublished MS, 1950)

I remember, away back in 1908 when I was wandering along the Dallas Road beach near the Dallas Hotel [Victoria, B.C.] an Indian fisherman beached his canoe and offered to sell a large salmon—15 lbs I imagine—and the price was twenty-five cents. In those days with the exchange rate of $4.86 to the pound Sterling, this would have been one shilling. The offer was accepted and the whole family, Mother, Dad, Denny, Louis, Jean, Gertie and myself had a real good meal. I suppose a fish the same size in London would have cost anything up to a fiver.

Durbyn Charles Diespecker: “Bear Fat”(unpublished MS, 1950)

[In Turkey] A novel is read by three, four, sometimes up to eight people. Novels are not personal items; they are to be shared. They are also to be loved or hated. We either adore or condemn our writers and poets, often for reasons that have little to do with the quality of their writing…

…I meet readers who have quotes or images from my novels tattooed on their bodies. Sometimes they bring me homemade cookies, borek or dolma. Sometimes they give me earrings, paintings or paper flowers or send me handmade necklaces, bracelets and rosaries from remote schools, prisons or women’s shelters. These are the times when you know that the stories you produce in your lonely cocoon reach out to people you have never known before and make lifelong connections.

Elif Shafak: “In the Turkish Tunnel” Literary Review (April 2014)

WEDDING AT HOUGHAM—Our quiet little village presented an unusual appearance of cheerfulness on Tuesday last, on the occasion of the wedding of Mr. Henry Peake, of Dover, with Miss Carly, of Folkestone-road. The cortêge of the happy party consisted of six carriages and pair, supplied by Mr Petts, each carriage drawn by grey horses, presenting altogether a very neat and pretty turn out. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the whole party repaired to the Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, to partake of an elegant dèjuener, whence the bride and bridegroom set out for a short visit to France.

THE DOVER CHRONICLE AND KENT AND SUSSEX ADVERTISER, SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1860.                        

What is, is.

Frederick (‘Fritz’) Perls: numerous of his Gestalt therapy writings.

                                                                    

CHARIVARI

This issue/edition of the Diary places a larger than usual emphasis on the history of our (greater) family and associated families. “Band of Brothers” was written for younger members of our family, particularly those with interests in writing and writing about family history. The file (now published in this edition of the Diary) may be of some interest too, to some Diary readers and it includes a short biography of my father, Durbyn (1896-1977).  The correct reference, for readers wishing to download or to refer to this document is: (2014) Don Diespecker: Band of Brothers 20140902. The Earthrise Diary: Late Spring 2014.

More such files will be included in future Diary postings: extracts taken from Durbyn Diespecker’s “Bear Fat” MSS may also be included.

October 14 2014. Yesterday a stormy-looking morning followed a stormy night but obligingly allowed a bright sunny morning on the run to Coffs. When I returned home yesterday the first irises had open. It was close or muggy (as my mother Grace might have said fifty years ago), phrases I’ve always remembered as probably originating in her Scots family and South African family. It wasn’t that hot but it was certainly oppressive in the garden.

I notice many small new flowers in the yet to be mowed lawn: tiny red ones, pale blue clovers, some minute yellow flowers on grass-like stems not previously seen here (probably brought down to Earthrise by the February 2013 high flood. Winter lawns left to snooze well into spring often reveal themselves as lawn gardens of small ‘weeds’ (it follows that if we don’t mow until it’s really necessary we may see flora that otherwise are guillotined by the first harsh mows of early spring).  Later in the afternoon there is an electrical storm and finally rain at night. I’m getting nervous about inflicting mowing on this newly flood-gifted lawn garden… The yesterday, today and tomorrow bush that began flowering a week ago has added a new burst of white and blue blooms.

Now as I walk through the drying gardens and glance down at the meagre river the weather seems unwelcoming and hotter than ever. A medium sized goanna swings lazily past with scarcely a glance at me. This one often rustles through grass at speed to scramble up a tree and turning immediately away from me thus becoming ‘invisible’ or so I imagine. I admire his or her most elegant claws that allow it to hang en point like a cautious ballerina. Their claws remind me too of the equally elegant claws of the smaller water dragons. Although the dragons here are much reduced in numbers the two or three regulars are comfortably tame: they will as a matter of course bound upwards at warp speed to hang on my jeans, trusting me to not panic: I am merely an advantageous and convenient hunting platform. A larger goanna would never behave so casually and one elevating mid air would be in attack mode and bent on removing my leg for a snack with or without unnourishing jeans. Some Earthrise reptiles are less tolerant, less discriminating than others.

This hot dry spring weather is unpleasantly droughty. The grass is green enough thanks to showers earlier in the season and there are new flowers on the weeping coral tree (the blooms appear on long thin branches looking like red orchids). And some of the local birds, come to think of t, like the shrike thrush, have a sense of humour I suspect: they and I whistle from the same bird sheet. Reptiles may have their special senses of humour but I doubt it, especially the grumpiest of venomous snakes…  

October 26 2014. Without doubt, the warm weather is here again: two days of temperatures impressing Nature with 30˚ or so. Useful showers a week or so ago nicely got plants budding and flowering. Now there’s dryness and the mixed plant smells implying unbearably burdensome times for plants that do well here in the shade (until a passing critter crops them as is presently happening with my newly risen dahlia. The weeping coral tree above the meager rapids is bursting with buds; dry as dust smells mingle with the stupefying scents of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow competing with European privet (the privet is blossoming now, the blossoms looking like snow settled on the branches). These overwhelming flower scents threaten to knock out frail old scribblers tottering about in the heat or to reduce strong young humans to sniveling hay fevered wrecks… Spring here isn’t entirely a joyful occasion.    

The ripening Lomandra plants that usually are all wavy long thin leaves covering dry-looking prickly flower stalks are more openly displaying the prickles and their tiny flowers as a softer-looking feature having a pale buttery appearance and are partly composed of minute flowers. Lomandra information may be found via Google, e.g., “Lomandra longifolia commonly known as Spiny-head Mat-rush, Spiky-headed Mat-rush or Basket Grass is a perennial, rhizomatous herb found throughout eastern Australia. The leaves are 40-cm to 80-cm long and generally about 8-mm to 12-mm wide. It grows in a variety of soil types and is frost, heat and drought tolerant. This strappy leaf plant is often used on roadside plantings in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and the USA, due to its high level of drought tolerance.”

What I like about Lomandra is that it’s attractive and independent and it holds flood-prone areas together close to the riverbank.

The lawns although greening, have also a variegated crop of weeds: everything imaginable from last-gasp tropical chickweed to clovers with pale blue flowers and other plants that might be clovers with miniscule orange blooms. Mosses are struggling to recover their hold on a damper area near the roadside and each unidentified weed I pull has its own juicy reek. The lawn somewhat weeded now features masses of native violets that tend to be gifted here by floods. These are not quite herbal or carefully tended special violets but well and truly wild ones that survive mowing with stoical grace and undeterred grow new stalks and flower anew; I tread carefully lest I needlessly squash any. The first of the red roses (the plant was under meters of river last year) has bloomed for more than a week without any interference from me. The azaleas at the front gate and in the cedar grove have flowered and now are faded. I’ve planted a few more salvaged dahlias and several of those placed in September are up again, including the determined Mrs Rees and the big pale blue decorative given me years ago by Lynda Brenton. (On October 31 there are three of each of the new dahlias growing here). The dahlias leap out of the loam as best they can and demand hand watering at dusk; my benevolent inspections between sunrise and sunset are now met by the dread sounds of biting flies, their battle hymns, as I swat determinedly at them in waves of hot air. Dear Reader, picture the frail retiree tottering through waves of heat, the gardens parched and parts crackly dry and as he reels and totters he glances fearfully about him…when suddenly a bustling squadron of biters spy the human, peel off shrieking to dive on the poor wretch…for they would have fiendish sport with him… Searing spring temperatures vie with searing biting aviators.  

And if it should ever be cool again I might have the pleasure of seeing the jacarandas opening their blue flowers as they’ve been doing in Bellingen and Coffs Harbour. There is lots of colour now in the Valley.

More safely indoors I’ve been reading parts of an old English broadsheet (see epigraph above) not least because it was printed in 1860 (when it cost only three pence) but also because Cornelius Carly et al are prominent among my ancestors and also particularly because of the beauty of the prose. Though 1860 wasn’t all that long ago the few lines reporting the Peake--Carly wedding (above) might have been written by Jane Austen (1775-1818) whose opening sentences in novels were so remarkably informative. The Advertiser’s Editorial composed at Dover on May 19 1860 is headed REVOLUTION IN ITALY and is written in a style different to that in the news columns (e.g., ‘How long Italy shall remain the debateable [sic] land of Southern Europe, and how long she is to be rent in sunder, as it were, by faction and internal strife, is yet hidden from the wondering minds of the public…’&c. In 1860 Garibaldi and his 1,000 redshirts won Sicily and Naples for the new Kingdom of Italy; Lincoln was about to become President of the US; and Charles Darwin had published Origen of Species the previous year. And in Australia and elsewhere broadsheets are now history: reduced versions of the newspapers, the tabloids, now cost A$2.50 and seem to me absurdly expensive.  

Thus I’ve been revisiting some of my family’s history and also include below some summarizing and chronological data that partly describes (in a shorthand or ready reference manner) some of the ‘greater family’ players, most of them of the late 19^th century. I mention this because such a chronology has necessarily to be compiled from myriad arrays of marriage, birth and death certificates and suchlike documents. Tracking down and accessing such certificates may take years if we don’t know exactly where to find them. A relatively short chronology that selectively summarizes many documents more easily enables finding the ones we want without having to unduly sift and sort. This will make sense if you have had the experience of frantically searching repeatedly umpteen locations for essential information.

During one of my documents searches in the NSW State Library years ago and while waiting for some books to arrive from the below ground stacks I idly examined some volumes of African history on nearby shelves. One of these books featured chronological history ‘tables’. Several column headings across the page identified particular events in different places. Dated details ‘down’ the page showed when those events occurred. I noticed a reference to the ‘Treaty of Windsor 1899’ and was puzzled because I’d not previously encountered any such Treaty and also because I was following the trail of my grandfather into and through the Second Anglo Boer War (1899-1902) and I realized I was close to something important. When I further looked into this mystery I had a series of Howard Carter Moments that far exceeded the experience (I imagined) of Howard Carter and George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon on their first seeing in 1922 the nearly intact tomb of Tutankhamun).  Adventurous historians (including family historians) will sometimes construct these chronological histories having several headings: such histories help make the time period more comprehensible. For example, my paternal grandparents migrated from the UK to Canada in 1908 and at a time more or less not much less than when the first Model T Fords began coming off new production lines in the US.

CREATIVE WRITING AND FAMILY HISTORY

REMEMBERING COWICHAN AND “THE EVERGLADES”:

AN EPISTOLARY MEMOIR

Don Diespecker and Jill Diespecker Alexander

Note: References to “Victoria” and “Victoria, BC” are to Victoria, the capital city of the Province of British Columbia (and on Vancouver Island), Canada (not to be confused with the State of Victoria or its institutions in Australia).

“The Everglades”

Somewhere along the Cowichan River lost amongst the giant firs and cedars is a little cabin called ‘The Everglades’. It is situated high on the bank with a narrow but very attractive path leading down, twisting and turning, to the pool below. This pool is very beautiful with waterlilies and bulrushes completely covering the farther end. An old wooden bridge, made out of a huge maple which had at one time fallen across the pool, extends to the other side where there is a big white stony beach. ‘Old Man River’ flows by on the other side faithful and continuous as ever. At this spot, roaring past, are the rapids and it is this lulling, constant roar that gives the whole place such a loveable air of adventure. Up on the bank a trail follows along the river for miles. It would be beautiful to go for a walk here in the early morning. On all sides are the giant trees with the sun beginning to shine through their leaves. The birds sing their good-morning tunes and the ‘cheeky’ little squirrels pretending to be annoyed would really be very glad to have your company. So at this spot on the beautiful Cowichan River the faithful little cabin sits, lonely but unforgotten, for here with ‘The Everglades’ God’s tiny little creatures live enjoying together the unexcelled beauties of Mother Nature.  

Jill Diespecker: Class Newspaper, St Ann’s Academy, (1952)

We packed the car with food and belongings including 2 inner tubes that Dad got from work and headed off out of town and over the Malahat. After what seemed like hours of driving we reached Duncan and soon turned onto the Cowichan Lake road, heading west. Then a few more miles and Dad pointed to a river which came into view on our left. ''That's the Cowichan River,” he said. I can remember feeling a surge of excitement; however, we weren't there yet. Finally after many more miles we turned into the opening of a driveway off the main road. Dad got out and opened a wooden gate. We drove through the gate, then up and over the railway tracks. We continued along a narrow dirt road winding through a forest of giant firs and cedars until there it was before us: the cabin. The cabin had been named  'The Everglades’ and was built by Dad in the late 1920's as a fishing retreat and was used in the 30's by himself and his brothers.  

Jill Diespecker Alexander: Correspondence (2011)

Introduction.

There were five brothers: Rudolph (always ‘Denny’ in the family, 1892-1948); Louis (1895-1969); Durbyn (1896-1977); Eugene (always ‘Jean’ in the family, 1898-1959) and Richard (always ‘Dick’ in the family, (1907-1973). Dick was born in England; his brothers were born in South Africa. They had careers in the Army, in mining, in commerce and industry; Dick was a trained journalist, a radio announcer and producer, a soldier, novelist and poet. Denny never married. ‘The Boys’ had all travelled and had lived in different countries: when they and their families were able to meet there were reunions in Victoria, BC and those reunions enabled the brothers to relax and to share recreation time fishing the Cowichan River in the 1920s and 1930s. Few of their writings and photographs survive.

Don Diespecker, Durbyn and Grace’s son (1929- ) and Jill Diespecker Alexander, Jean and Margaret’s daughter (1938- ), in remembering their parents, their families and their uncles, compiled this memoir from parts of our 2011 email correspondence: it represents some of our childhood memories of Cowichan, the cabin in the woods and ‘The Boys’ when they fished the glorious Cowichan River.   

Don: 1925 was, I think, the year that Durbyn, Grace and Deirdre 'returned' from South Africa to Victoria, BC. Deirdre was born in June 1921. I can't recall when the first Cowichan trips were made, maybe before 1925, because I remember Durbyn writing that they had no fishing creels and used their old Army greatcoats and stored caught fish in the capacious pockets.  

You may have better info about those early times, especially if Jean left photos or documents or some kind of history that you can access. Interesting, e.g., that 'the Bass family’ owned the first shack or cabin?  

There might be links between our separate writings and surely many books on Cowichan in libraries in BC: the history section at UBC or the University of Victoria, BC? I imagine there would be a wealth of quotable writings in such places. Also, who were the Bass family who owned the first cabin? Is there a local history society in a local library, like Cowichan? Or maybe there is a long established newspaper in the Cowichan area and it might have old materials on file, including photos. I'll also check Dick's book, Elizabeth. When we all visited Cowichan together in '91, did you or Louise or Nick take any photos? I didn't have a camera at the time. And can you remember who inspired our fathers to make the first golden journey to Cowichan? Was it your father who had the idea of building the cabin? 

I've tried to visualize what I could remember of the cabin we stayed in at Cowichan. I remember that not falling out of bed was a problem for me and that Dad placed some cardboard cartons next to the bed and filled them with bedding so that I wouldn't fall out of bed and onto the floor. I remember the kitchen part of the cabin and the stove. There were windows that looked out toward the top of the riverbank. On the walls (vertical, unpainted pine boards): paper 'outline tracings' of fish ’The Boys’ had caught. I remember seeing Durbyn trace around the outline of trout when a caught fish was laid on the paper. Later he would colour the outline with crayons or paints. There were a number of these fish pictures on the walls, made by different brothers,   

Jill: I’m not sure how much I remember of Cowichan. Your memory of the cabin is accurate. I can remember the bed I slept on in the living room and all the tracings of trout caught, too; the trail down the bank and the bridge across to the stony spit; wearing hip waders and fishing in the early morning with my Dad; the trail along the bank to the creek where we got water in buckets, Gene's [Jill’s late brother] and my daily chore. Much further on was a trail off the main leading up to Hager's cabin and much, much further was the trail leading to Bass's cabin, where our fathers all stayed and fished before Jean built “The Everglades”. Gene and I would sneak up and look in the windows feeling very daring, as there were No Trespassing signs on both properties. We never saw signs of life except maybe once or twice and then we would stay away.

In Elizabeth is mentioned a visit by The Boys to Cowichan with Elizabeth [mother of the five boys] not long before she died and how they carried her from the top of the road to the cabin. I guess in those days there was no road down.

As far as I know no one from the family went to Cowichan from the beginning of the war to our first trip in 1947. Sybil, Dick, Patty and Rik never went to my knowledge; however, maybe before I was born. They did live in Vancouver so this would probably rule out a trip to such a rustic place.  

I will ask Patty in LA about any family trips there and if she ever heard Sybil speak of Cowichan. I have no recollection of Sybil being a journalist.  

My father allowed two lawyers to use Cowichan in the winters for many years, even during the war years I think, in return for paying the taxes. They used to go up every year in the wintertime. One was named Sinclair Elliott. An issue arose over who owned the place and there was a big fuss when Dad died and Mum wanted to sell the cabin. Incidentally, Mum and Dad had their honeymoon there, as did Gene and Arlene. I’ve just found a lovely photo of my parents in their bathing suits on a raft on the river taken on their honeymoon. A noticeable string shows that it was attached to the camera!

Don: Perhaps a librarian at Cowichan might advise about sources (librarians often know about historical societies, too). Also, when I read some of Durbyn's remarks in “Bear Fat” about that time and place I'm surprised at how many historical leads there are in what he wrote.  

I well remember our all walking down the track to find the cabin in 1991. I recall that as we walked down the track (and most of the big trees had been removed so that it was bright, open and sunny) I began to recognize the track itself (now exposed to strong light rather than the deep shade of the early 30s) but only because we crossed what had been the railway line for the logging trains. I wonder why the line was removed?  

I can't imagine how that area looks now if it became in 2002, a subdivision with low-income housing! Something that surprised me in 1991 was that the footpath down to the river was still as I remembered it in the 1930s and that there was still a walkway or bridge over to the other bank. Going down that steep path from the cabin (it had a wobbly handrail when I was very small) was scary for me as a child.  And there was something sinister about the green algae that grew on the stones in the river.  

Re Margaret possibly making guest book entries: she might have kept such a book, especially if she had herself written in the details regularly. We always may be startled when unsuspected items turn up many years later. I think Durbyn mentioned in “Bear Fat” that he and Grace went to Cape Town when they married (on Rudolph's birthday, July 5 1920), Rudolph having died at Wynberg near Cape Town in May 1920 and when Denny was on his way there too from Victoria. It's difficult for me to believe that Durbyn would not have had pictures taken, he having trained as a photographer's assistant. [Rudolph Solon Diespecker, our grandfather, was always ‘Louis’ in Africa].

I hope you make some happy discoveries (photos) when you meet with Arlene and with Helen and Katie—some photos always survive somewhere.  

Jill: I did some writing when I was on holiday and thought a lot about my youth at Cowichan. I found myself being transported there—the bed in which I slept in the main room, the fish tracings on the wall, all but one being trout. The one salmon didn't count! I walked down the path to the river, over the bridge that was built partly onto a large maple that had fallen years before. Each summer the bridge had to be repaired as the river would rise and back up into the marshy area under the bridge. Dad loved all these projects: he thrived on them and with his fishing, was at his happiest. The day before we would have to leave he’d become sad and sit quietly by the river. My mother always seemed to understand and talked to us about how sad Dad felt leaving the place he loved so much.  

Don: I like what you wrote about the bridge repairs and your father. That path down to the river was troublesome for me when I was small. Those high banks seem so vulnerable to flooding and washing out. The handrail also seemed rickety and dangerous.

Jill: I found some writing I’d done in grade school, I think. I’d called it “The Everglades” and wrote it for the class newspaper. Interesting to think it was written about 60 years ago. I also found a photo of our dog Tippy that we used to take to Cowichan with us. Gene and I had put him in a deck chair on the stony spit and dressed him like a fisherman, I won't say more but will send both to you. The photo shows the river in the background.

I’ve remembered that Dad died in the early morning the day after he had been at Cowichan. Six months previously he’d had his first heart attack. He continued to have angina but went back to work of necessity after a 3-months break. After working for a few months he had a 10-days holiday and he and Mum headed for Cowichan. I arrived 5 days later to spend time with them. When I arrived I discovered that Dad had gone down to the river on the first day, as he loved to do but had a terrible time climbing back up the trail, experiencing severe chest pain. By the time I’d arrived he had resigned himself to the fact that he could not go down to the river again. It was all very sad. When the time came to leave I had to be driven to the Nanaimo ferry as I was meeting up with two other student nurses and we were heading off on a camping trip into the US. The stress of getting me to the ferry on time and the long drive back to Victoria must have been too much for his heart as he died about 3 am that morning in bed beside my mother. I couldn't be located for 2-3 days and was given the news when we reached Calgary. I flew back on my own to Victoria.   

When you mentioned your friend’s python I was suddenly transported back to a time at Cowichan when we were all inside having breakfast and we heard this indescribable sound of fear coming from outside. We all ran out toward the sound and there was a large snake trying to swallow a toad. The toad had puffed himself up and was about half in the snake's mouth. Dad got a stick and started hitting the snake that eventually let the toad go. I remember Gene and I gently gathered up the toad and made a little nest for him on the cabin deck. We nursed him back to health over the next few days until he was able to head off on his own.  

One of my favorite and fondest memories of Cowichan was of Gene and I in inner tubes floating down the river and shooting the rapids calling out to each other ''Bum's Up!'' We would carry them around our chests up the river as far as we could go and then jump in them and head downstream. Neither of us could really swim but we never encountered problems and our parents never seemed to worry about us. I must have been 8 or 9 and Gene 2 years older when we began our rapids expeditions.

Don: I was perhaps much younger than you were when you and Gene enjoyed the inner tubes in the Cowichan rapids: I remember being afraid of the water when both Dad and Deirdre were encouraging me to use a tube: I can still sense the bewilderment I felt at their encouragement because my experience of the river and the rapids was frightening. If that was part of the 1932 summer I was only 3, but it was surely later than that, so I'd have been 5 or 6 when we visited Cowichan for the 'last' time before sailing away to South Africa in the fall of 1937.   

Jill: I had a flashback of Dad repairing the bridge at Cowichan; it was always in need of repair after the high waters in the winter. He would often get into the water and work at making the bridge more secure. Most evenings after dinner we would all go for a nice long walk along the railway tracks and Dad was always on the lookout for pieces of wood and lumber that I guess fell off the trains. He would put the pieces at the side of the track and pick them up and carry on his shoulders on the way back to the cabin. These would come in handy for bridge repairing. I remember you mentioning that you and family would go for walks along the tracks too.  

Don: What you wrote about your Dad repairing the bridge reminded me of us all visiting in 1991: that little bridge, to my surprise, was still in place, so it had probably functioned effectively there since at least 1930 and even more surprising, the rickety handrail and the eroding path from river level to cabin level seemed almost unchanged and as I remembered them in the 1930s. I know how short a river the Cowichan is, from maps, but it's still surprising for me that the fragile little bridge wouldn’t have been swept away in floods or flash floods.  

Your description of you and your family walking along the railway line after dinner reminded me of our family doing exactly the same thing. I often remember those 1930s evenings and can never forget the hugeness of the logging train locomotives that we sometimes saw, and the bracken-covered banks along the tracks and the 'Oregon Grapes' that we picked to take back for dessert. I suppose they were blueberries much like the ones I buy at the supermarket here now nearly 80 years later.  

Jill: When Dad left for the war I was only a year old. I remember that when I was about two, I’d watched the family car driving away down the hill, disappearing around the corner and out of sight. I was too young to go to Cowichan. My brother, two years older than I later described the cabin and swimming in the river and catching a fish. It all sounded magical and I was jealous because I’d had to stay home.

Years later when the war ended my father came home. He returned to his old job as service manager of Jameson Motors, a dealership that sold and serviced imported British cars. After a year of work he had a week's holiday and announced that we were going to Cowichan.  

Some afterthoughts and images:

Don: the sight, sounds and smell of trout being fried in butter over a riverbank fire; the ‘fishing repository’ halfway down our basement steps (at 1129 Oxford Street, Victoria, BC) where most of the thigh boots, wellingtons and fishing gear belonging to The Boys was once stored; Durbyn encouraging me to return a sick trout in a net from a tributary where the fish had been trapped to the river (‘my first trout,’ c1932, 1934).

Jill: For many years the trains that ran along the track that went past the driveway down to the cabin were steam engines. They always stopped to fill up at the water tower. This tower was close enough that the caboose usually stopped right at our driveway. The trains would go by twice a day. Gene and I would hear the whistle in the distance and we would run as fast as we could to see the train. We usually were able to talk to the men in the caboose and we looked forward to this. I think they enjoyed us too. I remember one time they gave us the ''funnies'' from the paper and we were thrilled. Eventually much to my father's disdain the steam engines were replaced by diesel and that was the end of those happy times for 2 young children. We still went up to the track to see the Diesel whizzing by but it was never the same.  

The other memory I have is about gathering water. For many years the daily chore for my brother and me was to walk along the trail to the creek and fill our buckets. Then carry them back to the cabin. Gene and I always fought. He was older and faster and often would leave me behind. I didn't like being alone in the woods. To get back at him for this I would try to tip over his bucket and force him to go back to the creek for more water. My mother would get fed up with our constant complaining.

Then one day when my father was walking up the path from the river and was almost at the cabin he thought he saw a glistening rock just off the trail. When he looked closer he realized the rock was wet so he started digging and before long uncovered a trickle of water. Over the next 2 weeks with much digging and hard work he uncovered a spring and was able to create our very own water supply using pipes that he ran to the cabin. After that he set up a pump in the far corner of the living room and with a lot of priming we could get a flow of water to fill our buckets. This seemed like a miracle to us, as well as eliminating the hikes to the creek for water!

You remember picking Oregon grapes to make a dessert. I remember picking huckleberries that my mother would use to make a huckleberry cake!  

Epilogue:

Towards the end of the summer of 1925, Denny, Jean, Dick and I made our first trip to Cowichan River, Grace and Deirdre stayed at home with Elizabeth.  

In those days the journey was made in a Model T Ford. We had the use of a shack on the Cowichan River, owned by the Bass family whom we had known for years.

On the way the Model T broke a rear spring and Dick and I walked the last few miles to ease the load. The spring was replaced at Cowichan Lake the next day. The country from the turnoff outside Duncan to 10 miles from Cowichan Lake had been cleared of farms and houses dotted the roadside. But soon we were in the tall timber: pine, cedar and all types of conifers, the names of which I cannot remember. Much of the forest had been logged and those areas looked like battlefields.     

(Durbyn Diespecker: “Bear Fat,” c 1968)

References

Diespecker, Dick. Photograph album (summer of 1932). Rik Diespecker collection.

Diespecker, Durbyn (1968) “Bear Fat,” (the Canadian years), unpublished manuscript (Durbyn Charles Diespecker fonds, Accession 199307-01, City of Victoria Archives).

Diespecker, Dick. Elizabeth. Toronto: JM Dent & Sons (Canada) Ltd, 1950 (prose/poetry novel).

jillionalexander@gmail.com

Jill Diespecker Alexander is retired in North Vancouver, BC, after a career as a nurse and spa owner and is now writing vignettes of her fascinating life.

don883@bigpond.com

Don Diespecker is a retired senior lecturer in psychology (and a retired psychotherapist) living at Earthrise (Thora, NSW) where he writes non-fiction and fiction.

BAND OF BROTHERS

Don Diespecker

© Text, Don Diespecker 2014

A Jewish family is recorded for the village of Diespeck…in the year 1619…

Moshe N Rosenfeld (after A Eckstein)

Introduction and Preamble

This essay discusses a single page document, entirely hand-written, that has been in my collection for some years and I’m unable now to remember how I obtained it or how it came to me. The document has no title. I’m drafting this in the first week of September (spring Down Under) and I have in mind particularly those of you (perhaps my younger cousins?), those who now might be thinking of yourselves as scribblers, as fledgling writers of one kind or another. I emphasize the word writers here because I’m very interested to know who the writers were that ‘composed’ the old document in question. We don’t all have to be writers of history or to be investigative journalists or even novelists, poets, librettists or dramatists and it’s surely the story, the narrative that’s most important. I’m also suggesting that an important part of the story or the history of the old page is surely about who the different writers were who ‘composed’ it because the document wasn’t written entirely by one person. That notion may itself be unimportant until we study the different letters in particular manuscript words.  I’m interested to know who wrote most of the document because that looks to me like the most interesting part of the story of the document. Both sides of the one page have been written on.

For the record I’m Donald Douglas Diespecker (b Victoria, B.C. 1929) and usually known as ‘Don’ although I had several nicknames when I was young, including  ‘Jack’ and ‘Dies.’ My father, Durbyn Charles Diespecker (1896-1977) (aka ‘Jimmie’ and ‘Jimmy’) was the third son (no daughters) of Rudolph Solon Diespecker (1858-1920) and Ann Elizabeth Bradley Diespecker (1867-1928). My mother was Grace Kerr Singer Diespecker (1898-1974). Grace’s mother was Sarah (aka Sara) Kerr; her sister was Ellen and her brothers were George and Douglas). All of my mother’s (Singer) family were eponymous Scots (with the exception of a French ancestor, Crozier); none were Jewish. Both of my parents were born in Paul Kruger’s 19^th century South African Republic (aka the Transvaal Republic). Although I did not meet either of my paternal grandparents my sister, Deirdre (1921-1994) knew our grandmother, Elizabeth and our little family, particularly Deirdre, had a pet name for her grandmother: Mommygan. For those who may not know, most of the ‘Original Diespecker Family’ were German Jews. My great grandfather, Samson (1824-1875) was possibly the first Diespecker to ‘renounce’ his faith, become an apostate Jew, migrate to the UK and marry a Christian. Although my grandfather, Rudolph (1858-1920) was not a Jew (because his mother was a Christian), he also ‘abandoned’ the possibility of being Jewish by marrying a Christian, the Wesleyan Methodist, Ann Elizabeth Bradley (1867-1928). Some of this information is repeated below. You, the reader, will appreciate that about half of my genes (like others in the greater Family) have more or less a Christian heritage and the other half, a Jewish heritage. (I may be one of the first 20^th century Diespecker’s to happily acknowledge my Jewish heritage when, for example, my father Durbyn (1896-1977) energetically had attempted to deny his. Also, there is a small town near Neustadt in Germany named Diespeck: a number of our ancestors are buried there in the beautiful Old Jewish Cemetery on a hillside. In that cemetery there is also a special memorial section marked by a steel helmet set on a plinth that records the loyalty of locals who served in the Wehrmacht between 1914 and 1918. I sometimes wonder about that: is it a possibility that some of the Canadian Diespeckers and some of the German Diespeckers were unknowingly firing at each other across No-mans Land? We are who we each are and it feels hugely important (to me) that we know who we each are and what our back-stories might be. Diespeck is a town that once gave its name to our family: there used to be a number of Jewish families living there and subsequently elsewhere in Franconia and Bavaria (Germany) whose family name, was ‘Diespeck’ or was a variant of the old town’s name. In this day and age each family member perhaps even now might feel some possibility of acknowledging those old connections. The Mayor of Diespeck was very surprised when my eldest son, Nick Diespecker, back-packing years ago, turned up and announced himself as a Diespecker. Similarly, in 1998 a local audience in Diespeck was considerably surprised to meet more members of our family in their town (our friend, the respected scholar and historian, Ilse Vogel had arranged a meeting in the Council building that included herself, Jill Diespecker Alexander, her late brother, Gene Diespecker, and me). You will not be surprised to know that there are no longer families named Diespeck or Diespecker in Germany because they were murdered during the Holocaust. Believe me, finding our family name in Holocaust records was a chilling experience.       

I’m taking a little holiday from drafting a novel, “Success,” an intended sequel to my recent eBook, Happiness. Just between us I usually write quickly so that I can push the words out while I’m still able and also because I very much enjoy writing fiction (and at some deep and dark level I don’t want to expire in the middle of an unfinished sentence). What I’ll discuss in this piece is partly about fiction and more about non-fiction. I don’t recall who may have given me this copied single page document (and perhaps you’re the one who did, you who are now reading this?) I’ll refer to this unusual page of history as the “Bible Page Document” (or ‘the BP-doc’) if only because that’s what it looks like to me. There are some items in the BP-doc that I don’t understand and some that look like a mystery [the mystery is now solved: these pages are in the collection of my cousin, Jill Alexander. DD November 2 2014].

History, family history and associated mysteries can also be motivating. Mysteries are all very well except for example when they get in the way of family history. It’s my view that the challenge of resolving family history mysteries is that ‘the history’ becomes increasingly interesting if and when you can find the information, that evidence that helps, and also when you cannot find what you need to get the sort of result that you hope for. Paradoxical? Of course it is! Family history is exciting, also, because the researcher may be easily diverted along unexpected paths. And here I share an obvious truth: the more interesting family history is the more the researcher as writer (especially the novelist) is enabled to base fictions, for example, partly on fact.

The historically quite recent 19^th century Diespecker family begun by Rudolph (1858-1920) and Elizabeth (1867-1928) encourages me to search for the truth and sometimes to also use the truth as model, as template, as framework for novels, just as my uncle, Richard (always ‘Dick’ in the family) did in 1950 when he published the novel Elizabeth.

Some families still record some of their history in the end pages of their family Bibles: that used to be both a traditional practice and an important source of information, a procedure probably less popular these days. The document I’m writing about, the present BP-doc looks to me very much like such a page. I’ve numbered each line in serial order beginning with the corrected and initialled first entry, ‘Rudolph Solon Diespecker.’ Note that there is an anonymous scribbled addition at the very top of the page, i.e., it precedes the first line entry. If you have a copy that has faint numbers at the start of some lines those numbers were pencilled in by me: that topmost anonymous scribble looks to me like the handwriting of Denny (Elizabeth and Rudolph’s eldest son). ‘Denny’ is short for Atherden, a family name borrowed from Elizabeth’s side of the family and ‘Denny’ (always ‘Denny’ in the family) was in fact the second Rudolph: he was baptised/christened Rudolph Edmund Atherden Diespecker). And please note that Dick, the youngest in that family also had READ initials, like Denny’s initials.

In referring to the BP doc in the email that I recently sent to Rik, Louise, Jill, Nick, Carl, and Julie Craig, I incorrectly (I’ve since realised) almost certainly made a mistake in these two sentences:

“Each of the parents and their five sons has hand-written their names and the relevant information. This may be the ONLY copied document that contains the autograph handwriting of that family on one page...”  

Look closely and you may easily see that perhaps none of the five sons has written in his personal bio data: entries (in the BP doc) might first have been drafted years after the births, i.e., written by either Elizabeth or by Rudolph. See what you think. [The five son’s names are in the handwriting of their father, Rudolph. DD November 2014] 

The Entries

When I was a child in Victoria B.C. I met and knew each of my four uncles (‘Denny,’ Louis, Eugene (always ‘Jean’ in the family) and Richard (always ‘Dick’). Denny was a frequent visitor at our house. I met Louis when he visited from Shanghai in the summer of 1932 and although I was only three years old I remember him for two good reasons: he gave me a small gift that made (for me) a somewhat scary noise; and our family of four also spent time that long ago summer with Denny, Louis, Jean and Dick at several places (the beaches around Victoria and notably on the banks of the Cowichan River where the five brothers fished together {fly casting for trout in Princes Pool, e.g., near Jean’s cabin}). I also have some old b/w Kodak prints and some relevant photo-copies that Nick was enabled to copy from one of Dick’s photo albums held then I think by Patty Rhone in Los Angeles.

I, with my sister and our parents sailed from Chemainus in 1937 to South Africa and Mozambique en route to Pilgrim’s Rest, Transvaal; although we were paying passengers we each were also signed on as crew members on the 8,000 tons steamer, SS Bencleugh, a freighter (registered at Leith, Scotland) shipping lumber from B.C. to SA and Mozambique ports. Our family of four left Canada in 1937: it was the last time that Durbyn saw any of his four brothers. 

My father, Durbyn was the third of the five sons. Although the eldest son was always ‘Denny’ in the family, his ‘proper’ names were Rudolph Edmund Atherden Diespecker. He was never known to any of us as ‘Rudolph’ and obviously his preferred name derived from ‘Atherden.’ Note also that our McGregor cousins in South Africa (see The Annotated Elizabeth) included an Atherden and he was always known as ‘Den.’ The scribbled note at the top of the BP-doc was most probably added by Denny Diespecker, the ‘senior’ of the five brothers (Denny and I had some correspondence when I was a youngster in South Africa) and the handwriting looks familiar to me: that note means that Denny’s grandfather (Rudolph’s father and my great grandfather), referred to as ‘Louis D born 1824,’ was born more accurately as Samson Diespecker, the family name misspelled on his British marriage certificate. Samson was, like one of his sons, Rudolph Solon {my grandfather, Rudolph} fond of borrowing names not his. Samson was a Jew born in Aschaffenburg, Kingdom of Bavaria in 1824 who later became an apostate Jew but was nonetheless buried by his family in the Jewish Cemetery at Balls Pond Road in London, when he died in 1875 and he had migrated from Bavaria to the UK where he married a woman named Christian Warmington (her name often misspelled on certificates) at believe it or not St Martin in the Field, Trafalgar Square, London.

See? We have barely begun to glimpse a tiny bit of history and both father (Samson) and son (Rudolph Solon) have each borrowed the preferred name of ‘Louis.’ I wish I could tell you why they did that but I don’t know why. I also add that my father, Durbyn said on more than one occasion that his grandfather was ‘known as Lewis.’ Obviously and because not everybody correctly pronounces ‘Louis’ (a French name) as Lou-ee those who are otherwise inclined (some British, some American) always anglicize and pronounce the name Louis as Lewis and Lewis is a convenient name if its borrower wishes to conceal his ‘real’ name and/or his true identity.

 I imagine that the writing of this BP-doc will have begun either in South Africa (because Elizabeth married Rudolph in Durban in 1890) or perhaps in Canada and almost certainly in Victoria, BC, if in Canada at all. In signing their names on their marriage certificate it’s evident that the signatures of my grandparents indicates few similarities between the ways in which they wrote or formed particular letters, characters and words. On the other hand there’s a definite similarity between the ‘Louis Rudolph Diespecker’ signature on the 1890 marriage certificate and the original name in the first line of the BP document (prior to its having been altered and corrected). The ‘L’ (my opinion) is absolutely the same ‘L’ as the one in ‘Louis’ and in ‘London’ as in the ‘Louis’ on the 1890 certificate. That suggests strongly (to me) that it was the patriarch, Rudolph (aka ‘Louis’) who wrote the first three lines of the document, as well as lines 5,6,7 and 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, and possibly lines 30, 31, 32, 33. 

The first three lines of my grandfather’s bio data certainly seem now to me to have been written in his own hand. It looks authentic because I have a copy of his hand-written report describing ‘The Attack on Willowmore’ (1901) and the two writings look similar. It is also likely that it was Rudolph who made the alterations to his bio data in those first three lines. Notice that the name has been altered and the alterations initialled, ‘RD’ (it’s also possible and perhaps unlikely that his first son, Denny, might have corrected the names if only because both were entitled to use the abbreviated ‘RD’) (so might the ‘other’ son, Dick, who also was entitled to ‘RD’ as an abbreviated and initialled signature).

It’s also highly unlikely that Rudolph Solon Diespecker (correctly named according to his birth certificate) would have been so erratic as to have accidentally and incorrectly recorded his date of birth as ‘24^th June 1858’ when he knew perfectly well that his birthday was July 5 1858. In other words, Rudolph Solon, the head of the family, it’s chief, its patriarch when first he drafted the document, intentionally recorded a false identity (including a phony birth date). If that were so why might he have done that? The most secret part of his life, perhaps, was that following the time when he was ‘The Special Intelligence Officer’ during the Guerrilla War in 1901. Cape newspapers presumably at the ‘request’ of the Cape (i.e., British) Government ran an English language piece naming Rudolph and describing him in such a way that he was undoubtedly identified as an agent provocateur and more than likely to be targeted (and despite his full correct name, Rudolph Solon Diespecker having also been recorded in the British Army List, i.e., the ‘promulgation record’ of his promotion to Lieutenant; and at a time when he was also a member of the Field Intelligence Department).

Knowing when the first lines were written would be helpful now, but it’s beyond our knowing because there is no starting date to ‘the BP doc’ writings. Rudolph’s name (“Mr Diespecker, Intelligence Department”) was the only civilian name on the passenger list of a ship returning with military personnel to the UK a few days following the execution of Commandant Gideon Scheepers (see my eBook, The Special Intelligence Officer).

It now begins to look as though grandfather Rudolph intentionally recorded himself falsely for a reason or reasons unknown: Cdt Scheepers was highly regarded in the Boer Republics and his illegal execution helped make him a folk hero and martyr. The British forces and officials responsible for finding, capturing, framing and executing Scheepers were thereafter at risk of themselves being assassinated. I wonder, too, what Rudolph and (then) General Jan Smuts discussed when Smuts visited (post war) The Diespecker Gold Mining Company at Pilgrim’s Rest. Rudolph described the visit in friendly terms (both men had served in the Guerrilla War on opposite sides).

 My grandparents’ 1890 marriage certificate ‘incorrectly’ or perhaps ‘wrongly’ but undoubtedly intentionally indicates ‘Louis Rudolph Diespecker’. Possibly Rudolph may have expected that ‘Solon’ looked unduly foreign and might have thought he would have been nicknamed ‘Solly’ (from Solon) or some such. In fact the most famous Solon in history become known as ‘the father of democracy’ and although there was much more to his story than that, our Rudolph was not the Greek democrat Solon and the long-ago Greek democrat was not Rudolph. Who chose the name Solon for Rudolph, I wonder? Was it Mum or Dad? Also, my parents Durbyn and Grace chose July 5 1920 as their wedding day (Rudolph Solon Diespecker died at Wynberg near Cape Town, Cape Province, South Africa, May 25 1920).

No death dates were recorded on the BP doc for Jean (September 21 1959); Louis (June 16 1969); Dick (February 11 1973) or Durbyn (November 12 1977).

On Second Thoughts

 Following a more careful examination of the handwriting, I offer this interpretation: There is only a low probability that any of the first eight lines were written by my grandmother, Elizabeth, or that she also added the names and some details of her sons Rudolph Atherden, Louis Cyril, Durbyn Charles and Eugene Jules. Her handwriting was significantly different from that of Rudolph although I have no example other than her 1890 signature, ‘Ann Elizabeth Bradley.’ Her upper case ‘A’ starts with a swirl conceit and its shape is unlike the shape favoured by Rudolph who apparently wrote his upper case A in the form of a lower case ‘a,’ one looking kidney shaped rather than pyramidal with a cross bar. I’m hopeful that my cousin Rik may have examples of both of our grandparents’ handwriting; differences will perhaps then be more obvious and enable our being more confident of identifying the data writer.

Because Elizabeth was the daughter of Wesleyan Methodist parents and because the family observed traditional values, I first assumed that grandmother Elizabeth was more likely than her husband to have owned a family Bible and was also the more probable of the two parents to have drafted the BP doc. However, and the more I study the names and pertinent data of my father and his brothers, the more it seems highly probable that it was grandfather Rudolph who neatly and carefully wrote that information. It’s also my fantasy that the document was first drafted perhaps several years after Rudolph and Elizabeth married because the names and data appear so similarly in their style and form as to have been drafted onto the lined page in perhaps one sitting and that the writer also left spaces between each of those entries (for the later recording of deaths, e.g.). Considerable care was been taken to write the name and data of the fifth son, Dick (Richard Ernest Alan). That probably ‘more recently written’ data not only looks markedly different, it was naturally a quite different ‘entry’ because it was likely made in 1907 or possibly later, i.e., about nine years after the prior entry, that of Eugene Jules (always ‘Jean’). If the ‘primary entries’ were all made by Rudolph, the entry for Dick was also the last that Rudolph initiated (at this time too, arguably, Rudolph had added the two words ‘South Africa’ to the end of the preceding ‘Eugene Jules’ entry and with the same pen and ink and at the same time that he wrote Dick’s primary data. 

Subsequent ‘other’ family members (?) then completed the entries. The darker and heavier ink recording Rudolph’s death in 1920 (Line 4) was likely written by Elizabeth. The recording of Elizabeth’s death in 1928 was likely written by Denny. Whoever recorded that death will have ‘used’ a line left blank by the person who first drafted the document.

Conclusions

The original of the document that I’ve dubbed ‘the Bible Page’ might still exist and be in one of our family’s collection [The document is indeed in the collection of Jill Diespecker] (if this rings a bell for anyone reading this, can you please pass the details on?). My copy of the relevant document appears to be a relatively modern photocopy with data on both sides of the page… It now appears most likely that the Bible Page’ was begun as early as 1890 by Rudolph Solon Diespecker. If so, that document was kept up to date probably by its initiator until it was inherited or passed on. Despite uncertainty and lack of verifying information the original of the document in question is probably a unique ‘family icon’ (and it may or may not still exist somewhere).

Endnotes

The ‘Diespecker Family’ did not of course ‘begin’ with RSD and AEBD: ‘contemporary’ descendants will recall that there is a considerable history that began (‘relatively’ speaking) in the then village of Diespeck (and that one of the ‘most famous’ or ‘best known’ ancestors who took his name from the Diespeck village was the Rabbi David Ben Joel Dispeck, a Talmudic scholar and homilist; born about 1744 in Diespeck and the author of Pardes Dawid (The Garden of David) published (in Hebrew) at Sulzbach (see entry in The Jewish Encyclopedia (English text). There are numerous spelling variants in the Diespeck family names.  “A Jewish family is recorded for the village Diespeck (located in Mittelfranken, Bavaria) in the year 1619 (A Eckstein, Geschichte der Juden in Margrafentum Bayreuth, 1907, p. 33, Note 1, taking his information from Archiv d. 30 jahrigen Kriegsakten, Brandenburger Serie 245),” Moshe N Rosenfeld, (correspondence Don Diespecker/M Rosenfeld, last known address (LKA), 83 Darenth Road, London N16 6EB, UK, September 1995) describing his research (“The Diespeck Family”). See also, “The Family Dispecker from Diespeck,” [sic] a detailed record compiled (post 1945) by Meier Oppenheimer and given me by our cousin Joel Dorkham (previously Diespecker). LKA: Joel and Sarah Dorkam, Kibbutz Palmach Tsuba D.N. Harei Jehuda 90870, ISRAEL. Note that Rabbi David was thrice married (RSD and ‘our’ contemporary families are descended from the second marriage, David and Mirijam (or ‘Miriam’) Sulzbach. The first marriage was David and Rosel Schneier; the third marriage, of which Joel Dorkam is a descendant, was David and Eva Dessauer. See also recent detailed research by Ilse Vogel. LKA: Distelstrasse 2, Weipoltshausen, D-97532, Uchtelhausen, FEDERAL: REPUBLIC OF GERMANY.

I’ve enjoyed a correspondence with Prudence Nicholas, the granddaughter of Rudolph’s brother, Jules Diespecker. LKA: Prudence Nicholas, Box 2459 Parklands 2121 REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA. For those wishing to explore further I offer these further markers and signposts. Some of my cousins and other family members may have retained copies of my ‘TS Files’ (an abbreviation of ‘The Search for Elizabeth and Rudolph’). These were sent (in the 1990s) to interested correspondents via fax machine. If you have access to any of these, please note these (type) copies will progressively fade and require protection from the light. The files are the results of my 1990s and later research: they are written as summarizing essays with references and are also a partial record of our family history (from both Elizabeth Bradley’s and Rudolph’s sides of ‘our’ contemporary families in the UK, South Africa, Canada and the USA). It was necessary to have employed researchers in other countries. I found the researchers by seeking them out from relevant government departments, e.g., the Public Record Office (UK) will recommend private researchers. Similarly, there are the old Provincial Libraries and Archives in South Africa (two in Pretoria: National and also Transvaal archives; other similar archives in (the ‘old’) Natal, Cape Province, Orange Free State. The best private researchers know where to search, will provide photos of graves and all manner of archived materials, they are worth their weights in gold and they are also expensive. There are also Jewish archival materials to be found in the UK. And there is also the Internet. For example, you may find hundreds of relevant and appropriate references if you Google my name (e.g., “The Attack on Willowmore” that includes a photo with the image of Rudolph). Finally and because I often model or frame stories based on, e.g., Rudolph and/or his brother, Jules, see my Amazon/Kindle eBooks (e.g., The Annotated ‘Elizabeth’ or The Special Intelligence Officer): there are some details and descriptions of these digital books in my blog:

http://earthrisediaries.blogspot.com/

Email me if I can assist with comments or suggestions at: don883@bigpond.com

I include here bio information of my father:

DURBYN CHARLES DIESPECKER (1896-1977)    

Durbyn (always Jimmy in Pilgrim’s Rest) was born at Sabie, ZAR September 26 1896. He died in his 81^st year in Pretoria, November 12 1977.  He was the third of five sons (no daughters) of Ann Elizabeth Bradley Diespecker (b Grahamstown, CC, May 11 1867) and Rudolph Solon Diespecker (b Finsbury, London, July 5 1858). DCD was born at Sabie at a time when his father, Rudolph (then generally known as Louis Rudolph Diespecker), was employed as engineer and contractor at both Sabie and also by TGME at Pilgrim’s Rest (qv). RSD also had an office in Pretoria (and possibly one in Johannesburg). He and his young family had lived briefly in Lydenburg before moving to Sabie in 1896 (they were accompanied by Elizabeth’s cousin Jenny Luke, who helped look after the boys).

At some time during the Diamond Jubilee year of 1897 when DCD was about eight months old the family traveled to London, together with their three sons (Rudolph {always ‘Denny’}, Edmund Atherden, 1892-1948, Louis Cyril, 1895-1969, and DCD) and probably also with Jenny Luke.  The family returned to South Africa either in 1897 or 1898 and settled at Willowmore, CC, where RSD had contracted to build a branch line of railway. The fourth son, Eugene Jules (always ‘Jean’) was born at Willowmore on December 5 1898 and both DCD and EJD were baptized at All Saints Church, Willowmore, on December 31 1898.

Early in 1899 the family left Willowmore and moved to Fynnlands near Durban. [1]

DCD and his brothers were taken to England by their mother early in the Anglo-Boer War (c 1900), where they stayed with London relatives and briefly with other members of the family in Glasgow, before moving to Preshute, a house at Enfield (now a northern suburb of London). Rudolph remained in South Africa where he worked for the British Government in Natal and in Mozambique; in 1901 he became Commandant, Willowmore, CC, and later, became Commandant of Steytlerville, CC. (qv). DCDs early schooling began in England. Toward the end of the War Rudolph traveled to England from South Africa; shortly thereafter he bought Adstock House, a large country home with extensive gardens and ornamental ponds, in the village of Adstock (near Winslow), Buckinghamshire. The boys attended St Johns Royal Latin School in Buckingham until 1908 when the family, reputedly as penniless migrants, moved to British Columbia, Canada. DCDs youngest brother, Dick (Richard Ernest Allan), was born at Adstock March 11907.

DCD received no further schooling and, at age twelve, began his first job, as photographer’s assistant in Victoria, (Vancouver Island), British Columbia). His father returned to South Africa late in 1909 hoping to win the delayed final contract to complete construction of the Selati Railway (but that did not eventuate and RSD worked as a gold prospector and consultant) and DCDs mother, Elizabeth, opened a small business (selling lace) in Victoria, B C. The two elder brothers had commercial employment and the family supported itself. Elizabeth was thought to have been partly responsible for the formation of Victoria’s first troop of Boy Scouts (unverified information) and the first four sons were members.  Later, DCD together with the older boys, served in the militia. In 1914 when Rudolph’s health was failing, a decision was taken to send one of the sons to the Transvaal to assist their father. Lots were drawn between DCD and Louis and Durbyn traveled to South Africa via New Zealand and Australia.   He had sold his collection of pigeons to raise money for the passage.

Rudolph had obtained permission from TGME to mine for gold at Ross Hill; DCD joined him there in 1914. After Denny, Louis, and Jean had enlisted in the Canadian forces, Elizabeth and Dick then joined Rudolph and Durbyn at Ross Hill. DCDs first period of employment with TGME dated from August 20 1914; his earnings helped to support the family until he joined the SAHA (October 26 1918); after his discharge from the Army DCD resumed his service with TGME. He lived in the TGME Single Quarters when he was employed in the Reduction Works and he visited his family at Ross Hill, when he had free time, by walking over the mountains. He was often accompanied by his dog, Yellow Dog, and occasionally rode a horse. Many of those mountain treks were made at night. Rudolph’s health deteriorated and he was compelled to move to the coast, together with Elizabeth and Dick (c 1918). Rudolph died at Wynberg, Cape Province May 25 1920.   

DCD had met Grace Kerr Singer (b January 17 1898, Belfast, ZAR; d Durban July 17 1974) in Pilgrim’s Rest (she was employed as a clerk/typist, I think, either in a solicitor’s office, or, more probably, in the motor garage on the lower side of the main street {not in Ahler’s Garage which was on the high side of the street opposite}). She was one of four children born to Sarah McDonald Kerr Singer (1867-1932) and Leslie Drummond Singer (1869-1942).  DCD and Grace were married in the English Church (‘St Mary’s’), Pilgrim’s Rest, on July 5 1920.  Their daughter, Deirdre June, was born at Pilgrims Rest on June 25 1921 (she died in Pretoria October 15 1994). DCDs first married home was a rondawel on the high side of the main street through Pilgrim’s Rest. It was approximately opposite the path that led to Keirnander’s (sp?) house on the other side of Pilgrim’s Creek and a few meters from a disused explosives magazine (which existed in 1942).  I was shown the ruins of this small dwelling by my father in 1937-8. DCD left the TGME on March 23 1925 (?); he, Grace, and Deirdre traveled to British Columbia via Australia and New Zealand on the Orangi or Oranje (sp?) in 1925. They made their new home in Victoria where DCDs mother and his brothers, Denny and Jean also lived (Louis had moved to Shanghai, China, after WW1; Dick had completed school and college in Victoria, was trained or was training as a journalist before moving to Vancouver).     

DCD worked as a salesman of stocks, bonds, and insurances in Victoria, and during the Depression was additionally able to support his family (casual employment) from bookkeeping and accountancy. He was occasionally paid in kind, rather than in cash. When he ‘kept’ the books for a particular sawmill he would sometimes return home with a salmon, one large enough to feed the family for a week. DCD was a keen rugby union player and represented his Victoria club for some years. He was also a champion grower of dahlias and regularly exhibited prize-winning blooms at agricultural and flower shows. Photography was a life-long hobby; and trout fishing was a pastime in British Columbia (Cowichan, Vancouver Island) and later on the Blyde at Pilgrim’s Rest, and later also on rivers in Natal (e.g., the Mooi). He and his brothers shared the use of a cabin owned by Jean on the Cowichan River, Vancouver Island, and the families took their turns to vacation there. DCD was also an enthusiastic motorist; he regularly took his family on trips in British Columbia and the adjoining United States. [2]

In 1937 DCD and Grace decided to return to Pilgrim’s Rest. The family traveled from Chemainus (Vancouver Island) to Lourenço Marques on a cargo steamer (SS Bencleugh) that carried lumber to South African/Mozambique ports: each member of the family signed on as crew (DCD, Grace, and Deirdre as steward and stewardesses; Donald as cabin boy). The Scottish vessel took about eight weeks to complete the journey via the Panama Canal.

DCD was able to renew his friendship with Frank Creese (then curator at Newlands, Cape Town), and at another intermediate port, Port Elizabeth he met ‘Baas Bob’ Gardiner (TGME, Pilgrim’s Rest) (sp?) by chance in a city street. DCD was also able to again meet his cousins, Harriett (always ‘Bunty’ or ‘Buntie’) Evard-Ray (mother of Alex and Joan) and Bunty’s brother, Alex McGregor, in Durban. The family disembarked in Delagoa Bay and spent some days as the guests of Gerard and Ellen Bier (Ellen was Grace’s elder sister) before continuing the journey from Lourenço Marques by rail to Graskop and Pilgrim’s Rest via Nelspruit.

The family returned to PR in the spring of 1937 during heavy rain and flooding of the Blyde River. They stayed with Grace’s father, Leslie Singer, at his home near Joe and Maggie Franck’s house (the other neighbors were the Viljoen family). [3] When the family arrived, Leslie Singer was chiseling the inscriptions on commemorative tablets (slate? shale?) which, when completed, were cemented in place on the new Voortrekker Monument near the Joubert Bridge. [4]  

DCD, after exploring employment possibilities on the Rand, again became a shift worker in the Central Reduction Works at Pilgrim’s Rest (December 1937). Most of the houses in PR were TGME-owned (Transvaal Gold Mining Estates). During this time he and his family moved from LDS’ house to temporary accommodation in the Maeder house while the Maeder family was on oversea leave. The family then moved across the street to a semi-detached house with a large garden (the semi-detached neighbors were the Mowbrays and the more distant neighbors were the Smallbones  {Bill? and one of the Gardiner daughters?}). After one year DCD transferred to the TGME Assay Office where his colleagues were Messrs Skea (the Assayer) and Keirnander and later the young Ivor White and the young ‘Boet’ Swart also became Assay Office employees. During his four years of service in the Assay Office DCD was also responsible for taking meteorological readings, coding them, and telephoning the data through to Pretoria.  The meteorological instruments were contained within a wired enclosure outside the back gate of the Assay Office compound, close to the laboratory. DCD also made a modest collection of local minerals that he later donated to the TGME.

DCD and family later moved to what had previously been the Woods family home. It was directly below the premises of one of the Beretta family and directly above the Francks home (there was open ground between this house and the LDS house). The LDS house (not a TGME home) no longer exists: it was demolished to enable the building of an access road to the Central Reduction Works.

During the latter part of this five years residence in PR DCD reformed the local Boy Scouts group. Permission was obtained from TGME to use the old Scout premises at the Recreation Club, adjacent to the tennis courts. Regular meetings were held; DCD handed over, as Scoutmaster, to a Mr. Cass in 1942. 

Between 1937 and 1942 DCD briefly acquired prospecting rights (Op De Berg area beyond Vaalhoek and Bourkes Luck) but did not work the claims he had pegged. During WW-2 DCD was a member of the local militia (Volunteer Police Reserve/National Volunteer Reserve?) and continued to serve as a part-time member of the Union Defence Forces when the family moved to Durban (1942) where he joined a coastal defence unit (artillery) on the Bluff for weekend duties (Durban was an important port for large wartime conveys).

In Durban DCD worked primarily as an accountant (principally with the SA Meat Control Board). After retirement he continued to work part-time for the local Receiver of Revenue office in Durban. Grace died in Durban July 17 1974; her grave is at Stellawood Cemetery. Durbyn and Deirdre traveled by sea to visit Australia in 1975; Don visited Durbyn and Deirdre in SA the following year. In the last years of his life Durbyn moved to Pretoria, to be near his widowed daughter (Deirdre was twice married; her first marriage was to Alex Rose (two children, Julie and Christopher her; Deirdre’s second marriage was to onetime TGME employee, Barney Kieser {1905-1973}). [5]  

DCD always enjoyed gardening and walking: he encouraged these enthusiasms in his son to whom he also taught fly fishing and the pleasures of adventurous rambles in the mountains and hills surrounding Pilgrim’s Rest. [6]

REFERENCES

1. A baptismal certificate for DCD, copied from the Willowmore church register, is dated February 8 1899. She was not surprised when Rudolph told her they were to move again. The railway was stopped; there was more important work to do, government work, in Durban and Delagoa Bay. They were all to move to Durban, “and it may not be for long,” he warned… (Excerpt from Dick Diespecker’s Elizabeth. Toronto: Dent, 1950, p 37). Autobiographical descriptions of these early years are given in DCD’s ‘Bear Fat’, Vol. 1, (DDD collection). The family settled in a house “immediately behind Fynnlands station” in 1899 that still existed in the 1940s when DCD and I visited.

2. The MS first volume of DCDs ‘Bear Fat’ inaccurately subtitled “(1896-1908)” was deposited in the Archives and Record Division of the City of Victoria, British Columbia. The MS describes the period when DCD lived in Canada between 1925 and 1937. A typed transcript is in the collection of DDD. A second MS volume of ‘Bear Fat’, together with typed transcripts is in DDDs collection (it describes DCDs early childhood {Fynnlands, Preshute, Adstock, Buckingham and Victoria BC to 1914}).  A single-page TS, also titled ‘Bear Fat’ was presented by DCD to TGME at the time of his departure for Durban in 1942; this single page predates other ‘Bear Fat’ MSS and TSS.

3. LD Singer’s house was directly below the school; it was separated from both neighbours by open blocks of ground, and was directly above the tramline behind a high overgrown evergreen hedge (cypress/macrocarpa?).  The existing road from the Joubert Bridge, constructed for Albion trucks hauling ore from Vaalhoek to the Central Reduction Works was designed to pass close to (or perhaps through) LDSs property (he died May 12 1942).  The house was subsequently demolished. After Deirdre’s birth in 1921 the young family lived in a cottage close to the junction of the Main Street and the street that ran up to the school and on to the Mine Offices; this house (a small cottage) had rambling roses trained along the front veranda. When we left PR in 1942 the house still existed and there was then open ground between it and Guest’s Butchery. By 1942 it may have been occupied by the Cass family (who otherwise lived close by) and prior to 1942 may have been occupied by the Bullough family.

4. I’m uncertain about dates. I remember being part of the commemorative ceremony that was probably during a school vacation in 1938. I’m certain my grandfather Singer was working on the inscriptions when we arrived in Pilgrims late in 1937.

5. DCD and GKDs daughter, Deirdre, married Alex Rose in Durban c1943; Deirdre and Alex had two children: Juliet Diana (b October 11 1946, now living in Johannesburg, RSA, with her son, Iain Craig), and Christopher (b May 1 1951, now living in Perth, WA, with his wife Kerry and their two children).  Durbyn and Grace’s son, Donald Douglas (b May 14 1929) married Pamela Rozanne Murray at Kloof, Natal, in December 1952; the Australian children of that marriage are Nicholas (b October 6 1960, now living in Ottawa, Ont.,) and Carl Richard (b April 1 1964, now living in Newcastle, NSW).  A daughter, Larissa (b August 16 1971), was born to Donald (second marriage) and Julie Hollingdale; she now lives in Sydney, NSW.

6. During the latter part of our time in PR, during WW-2, my father and I used to fish for trout along the Blyde with some of DCDs friends and colleagues. The Saturday afternoon outings usually included Boysie Jones, sometimes the TGME Engineer (whose name I forget--Campbell, perhaps--he had two daughters at school when I was also a student: Pat and Fiona), and the aforementioned Woods (father of Edgar and Gwen).               DDD, January 1997

ZAR = Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (aka the Transvaal); CC = Cape Colony (later Cape Province); TGME = Transvaal Gold Mining Estates Ltd.; SAHA = South African Heavy Artillery.

Text © Don Diespecker, 2014. This document, ‘Band of Brothers,’ drafted at Earthrise, 1655 Darkood Road, Thora, NSW 2454, Australia, September 12 2014 by Dr Don Diespecker, PhD. (Postal address: PO Box 297, Bellingen, NSW 2454; E: don883@bigpond.com

MY EBOOKS

For those readers who browse for eBooks, here again are descriptions of the first of the online books: they can be found on Amazon/Kindle sites. E.g., see

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Don+Diespecker  

(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel to my two print novels (not available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço Marques. Finding Drina is written in three parts and in three different styles that also are intended homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway and Lawrence Durrell); thus this little book is also meta-fiction (novella, about 30-k words).    

(2) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian long story set at Earthrise (about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a young literary ghost from the 1920s (his girlfriend meets her, too) before a second old literary ghost, unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.  

(3) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian dystopian long story partly set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k words). A sniper meets an Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a celebrity journalist; three of them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a bloody assassination.

(4) The Selati Line is an early 20^th century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also a love story sequel to The Agreement and Lourenço Marques, lightly written and containing some magical realism. A scene-stealing child prodigy keeps the characters in order (novel, about 150-k words).   

(5) The Summer River is a dystopian novel (about 70-k words) set at Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the Australian Prime Minister and the celebrity journalist witness the murder of a guerrilla who had also been an Australian university student; they discuss how best to write an appropriate book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k words).  

(6) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine and offer likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and verse novel in which his mother is portrayed as the principal protagonist and I suggest why the book Elizabeth (published by Dick Diespecker in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir or history (non-fiction, about 24-k words).   

(7) The Overview is a short Australian novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.   

(8) Scribbles from Earthrise, is an anthology of selected essays and caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k words). Topics are: family and friends, history of the Earthrise house, the river, the forest, stream of consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.   

(9) Here and There is a selection of Home and Away essays (about 39-k words). (‘Away’ includes Cowichan (Vancouver Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year), The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan (meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.

(10) The Agreement is a novel set in Mozambique and Natal during December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an espionage yarn written around the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement (1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at the Estrela Café (about 62-k words). 

(11) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in September 1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music: Elvira Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina and her companion return with an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints. Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate (novel: about 75-k words).

(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice, about 26-k words).

(13) Happiness is a short novel set at Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent hospitalisation: she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also ‘imagines’ an extension to her own story, one about a small family living partly in the forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal protagonist is a 13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a wounded Army officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university teacher and a retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being scene-stealers in this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).

(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is part family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my late grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla War was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of the book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was a District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering that led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was wrongly framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers was never a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African Republic,) one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).

(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997 and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).

(16) The Darkwood is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant future (about 80-k words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.

(17) Bellinger; Along The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and the property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions of the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)

(18) Reflecting: an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20,300 words)

(19) Idling: is a collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction; about 35,600 words).

Thank you to my guest writer, Jill Alexander.

Best wishes to all Diary Readers from Don.             don883@bigpond.com