Once upon a time I sold paint

WE HAD our offices painted out last week, an event that reminded me that my very first job back in February 1969 was as a paint salesman. Yep, if you’d come into Adams departmental store in Eshowe back in February 1969, and asked for a bucket of PVA, or a can of pink primer or zinc chromate to prime a new window frame, then I would have been the bloke who served you; me or my
boss, a bloke called Keith Busby, who had protruding eyes and a moustache like a wire brush.
Yep, PVA, gloss, matt and eggshell, Polyfilla, sandpaper and scrapers, turps and thinners, undercoats and primers, and rollers and brushes. Still today I can tell you if a paint brush is of good quality or if the hairs are going to fall out.
Oupa, what’s a departmental store?
My girl, a departmental store was a big shop which stocked virtually everything you needed under one roof, but instead of having one long row of tills like a supermarket there was a separate till for each department, and separate staff in each department and,
an odd concept nowadays, the staff were there to actually assist the customers. Can I help you, sir? and how can I help you, madam? were real enquiries, and staff didn’t just stand around picking their teeth and scratching their nuts. Staff was there to serve.
The paint department was also the electrical department. This was, I dunno, sort of domestic electrical; if you were building a house and needed stuff for the wiring thereof, then you went to the builders-ware department. Me and ol’ Keith, we sold stove fuses, light bulbs (screw-in and bayonet), fluorescent tubes, solder, flex and cable, plugs, all sorts of small electrical stuff that you’d need round the house, and if you wanted a new element for your iron, toaster or kettle we could supply and fit it too.

Yep, in them days, my child, if your kettle, iron or toaster conked in, then you got it repaired by me if you came to Adams in Eshowe. You didn’t chuck it away, you fixed it. No, I didn’t have a wireman’s licence, and it never occurred to me then that I needed one. Keith Busby showed me how to do it, and I did it, and to my knowledge I never killed anyone with a dodgy repair job. Having said that, I have to tell you that I still do not understand why the wires in an electrical cable are coloured green, blue and brown – earth, neutral and live.
Green, I partly understand, you know, green equals grass equals soil, earth, dirt, earth, but then why not say green equals grass when clearly very few samples of earth are actually green. Slime infested earth might be, like something you find above an
overflowing septic tank. But surely it would have made more sense to say the earth wire should be brown like dirt, that is, earth.
But no, they made brown the live wire, and call me unimaginative if you will, but to me brown is perhaps the least liveliest colour of them all. You don’t think of brown sparks flying, do you? The only time you can connect brown with any sort of danger is when
the “brown stuff” is about to hit the fan for some reason.
I think I read somewhere that the live wire is not red, as one might expect, red meaning danger etc, because red/green colour blind people would confuse the live and earth wire. This is why, as I understand it, the earth wire is now green with a yellow stripe so that it cannot be confused with the brown. And blue for the neutral wire? I just don’t get it.
Anyway, selling paints and electrical stuff was my very first job, and also it was the department that sold LP records…

Grandpa, what’s an LP record?
My child, an LP was a Long Playing record, a flat vinyl disc that you played on a turntable with a needle, called a stylus, and speakers with woofers and tweeters. And ol’ Keith Busby left the ordering of the records to me because I was younger, and if it
was up to him we would have stocked nothing but the albums of Jim Reeves, Gert Potgieter, Four Jacks and a Jill and the endless series of Springbok Hits (remember them?).
You can call me a sentimental old fool if you like, but notwithstanding Keith Busby’s preferred selection, the early 1970s I reckon was the Golden Age of popular music. I still have the records I ordered and bought back then, and I would still rather listen to them than to any of the mindlessly repetitive nonsense that passes for music today. You still had to be able to actually play an instrument in the 1970s.
I don’t in any way regret that I did not spend the years since 1969 doing other things other than sell paints and electrical goods at Adams in Eshowe. But nor do I regret the time I did spend doing that. I mean, I met my first wife there in Adams – she was in the toys and wool department.

And old Keith? He ran away with a chick who was working across the sales floor in the haberdashery department.
Oupa, what’s haberdashery?
Stone me! My girl, haberdashery is…