PARK LANE MANSIONS

It was a sad day for Jo'burg, then.

Particularly for the many, many who, over the years, lived in, with, or even for, Park Lane Mansions.

I have heard their sorrow, their anger, their protest. Even those who knew Park Lane only by word of mouth were sad.

Park Lane Mansions bred many legends. There was comfort and joy, pathos, great suffering and great humour. There were tragedies. There was incredible fun.

"Pipe" Lane (after dagga pipes), "Mandrax" Heights (after those deadly, notorious sleeping tablets which are either crushed, mixed with dagga and smoked in glass bottle necks; or simply swallowed for a rave), Park Lane, depending on how you saw or experienced the place, was a beautiful, tree-shadowed "debauched –monastary” of a building reeking of seventy odd years; and ages and ages.

It cornered crazy Empire Road and peaceful Park Lane, which winds by the Brenthurst Clinic and up, curving past the Sunnyside Hotel to the Wilds.

In a sense, Park Lane Mansions was exactly like the Wilds. With the same extra-ordinary powers of light and darkness, stone and tree and openness.

And seething with living things and vibrancy. Flowing with life.

Sadly now, the walls have been felled; the rubble unceremoniously carted away.

The rich roots have been dug out by the grave - diggers of development.

The past has been pocketed by the pimps of progress; to be replaced and rejuvenated by some lifeless, modern piece of shit called contemporary.

But ah, Park Lane Mansions lives on. In the hearts, souls and memories of many. There it can never be felled, dug out or replaced.

I cannot tell the whole story from experience.

My memories are of a mere fifteen months or so. But, gathering the harvest of tales told by those before me, passed from mouth to mouth, I can sow in hearts and minds a small understanding of what there was. Of what had been destroyed.

Park Lane Mansions had a soul. A beautiful profile. A mystical demure.

I would like to say that it was the people - permanent, transient; settled, squatting - who provided this soul, who created this profile and this demure.

Truly it was the people. And Park Lane "Herself"

Recalling Park Lane with her majesty and her mystery, and considering the grandeur of her past, she must often have wondered about the types who filled her, taking shelter or refuge in her warm, once-sumptuous confines.

I doubt she ever turned her nose up at any of these. She was a real Lady.

There were a few entrances to Park Lane; though only one was official. Brown, sturdy, convent-type benches against high white walls, on a white tiled floor,(the guy in No 34 used the decorated oak "Tenant" Name and Number board for firewood one cold July night),and a cagey, gleaming brass "Jack -the -Ripper" lift.

A broad, solid white marble staircase with wooden balustrades led the way up to the second floor.

There was an elegant, gentle air of welcome.

There were quite a few exits too.

Had you lived or visited there you would have seen the Black Maria's roaring into and out of the grounds from all directions, most nights of the week, with loads of cops, black and white; some riding cowboy on the running boards; others jumping the iron fences bordering parts of the complex.

And you'd have wondered where all the cleaners had gone.

The cops took away lots of folk who couldn't move fast enough…drunks, prostitutes, the elderly; and the unfortunate innocents who just happened to pop in for a visit without their Reference Books.

Since time immemorial the cops had been trying to bust up that shebeen down at the bottom of the property in the old, dilapidated servants quarters by the waterway and the long grass. Right there on the outskirts of Hillbrow and Parktown. And just a whistle away from Clarendon Circle Police Station.

From time to time, Park Lane also attracted scores of other policemen…the plainclothes types. But for different reasons.

(One of which caused me to spend a long weekend in a crowded cell at John Vorster Square).

Don't get the wrong impression. Park Lane was a respectable place, really.

The sweet old lady who lived in the apartment next door to me - she maintained two farms in the country - remembered the tea parties, the Mayoral do's, the old stables, the first cars, the tennis courts, the elegance.

She could never leave. Because, she said, Park Lane never lost "her" elegance.

The Caretaker spoke broken English and she was fat with a fatter daughter whom she dragged along by her arm all over the place, to whichever apartment she went to.

She complained constantly about this and that. But nobody took any notice of her; nobody cared. She was difficult to understand, so it was best to ignore her. Because, anyway, she never listened to OUR problems, never listened to our pleas, threats or demands for hot water in winter especially.

But we helped ourselves to the coal supplies, for every apartment had a fireplace.

Many a winter's night was heard the sounds of coal being hauled from it's heap in the coal shed; and the stealthy scurrying of footsteps along the cracked, concrete corridors.

I admit to my footsteps echoing prominently and happily along with the others on those nocturnal adventures.