The Klerksdorp Kulture Klub

THE KLERKSDORP CHRONICLES

by Tom Dennen

Illustration: an “Out of Place Object” : a picture of one of the mysterious three billion year old Klerksdorp Spheres

This story is about the Klerksdorp Kultur Klub – the KKK, (“No Relation”), a journal of how two young gentlemen spent a year creating small meaningless memes in a small, meaningless society in a small, meaningless town in a small, meaningless country in a largely meaningless continent called Africa.

PREFACE:

It's only after writing this down as a combined exercise in satire and a year out of my life that I've realised that the Klerksdorp Spheres had been taken seriously when they were first found in the mines around Klerksdorp (that they still are a subject of serious debate is evident when you Google them HERE.

Or watch the video HERE

Well, this story is about how they really came about - and these are some of the things the media said about them at the time:

“An examination of these Out Of Place Singularities (OOPS) indicates that they and their grooves lack any indication of being artificial.”

“They are just another example of how concretions have been mistaken for intelligently designed and manufactured objects like cricket balls.”

(See also http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/05/11/20000-year-old-spiral-shaped-metal-object-found-in-russia/ )

“The miss-identification of natural objects as the by-products of "intelligent design" is an important lesson that needs to be learned by conspiracy theorists and many other fringe group members.”

“The Klerksdorp Kultur Klub – the KKK, (“No Relation”), I wrote, was just such a group. This is a journal of how two young people spent a year creating small meaningless memes … you get the picture. Here's what some people think 'memes' are...

BASIC “HOW-TO' MEME CONSTRUCTION: BACKGROUND

The word “Meme” probably began its work in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins defined the meme as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”

I could be wrong, but memeticists vary in their definitions of meme.

Here's mine:

A meme could be any concept (true or false) expressed as an idea, behavior pattern or style that spreads from person to person within a culture naturally, by design or a little of both.

If it spreads quickly Netizens refer to it as like, 'going viral'.

The speed of the spread of the virus could be related to the Rensselaer '10% Tipping Point' concept, which holds that once ten percent of any group of like-minded people hold an idea to be unshakable, the other 90% follow as fast as wildfire, which is why design is much more fun than waiting for Nature...

CHAPTER ONE

Back in the apartheid years, South Africa was a strange place as living there could have its issues which some of us are still trying to put right. I began putting it right in Klerksdorp, but first we must find a way to get us all to that memorable place and some of the the fundamentals of amateur meme creation (it may take a page or two, but hang in...)

I was of course not part of that apartheid thing. No one was. Ask anyone – like in Germany, no-one really 'knew'.

Today I live far away from 'Klek's Drop', in Durban-By-the-Sea in KwaZulu-Natal in a mythical country called South Africa, where among other things I was a Lifeguard for a while at the Durban Surf Lifesaving (World Champions) Club although I was never a champion, more of a fundraiser.

But I tried to be good at that even so because life saving clubs are great social levelers: they cannot afford phonies or fakes or stuffed shirts or bullshitters because when a beautiful girl is in trouble in the water there is only one solution and it cannot be sidestepped by money or status or any other form of elevation above sea level.

(There's s short story about DSLSC at the end of this story).

TWO

CLOSING IN ON KLERKSDORP

But long before I lived in Durban, I lived in Johannesburg but had to spend some 'quality time' in a faraway place called Klerksdorp working to improve and expand the family business: a Chicken Fast food and Toasted Sandwich chain loosely based on the KFC model in that we borrowed and used the slogan “Finger Lickin' Good” until they came to South Africa and had to buy it back from us since they forgot to register it in such a remote place.

Back then I was just a youngster with a couple of terminal semesters in business management sent to do a 'Lee Iaccoca' turnaround on the smallest branch of the business in existence - a Pickin’ Chicken Roadhouse franchise in Klerksdorp or ‘Klek's Drop’, as the locals pronounced it, and I immediately treated everyone pretty much according to what was inside their skin I thought fairly, not being part of the local political landscape, already a meme-buster, me.

I was the eldest son, educated by my father ‘at great expense’ as he would often say to his peers, “to carry on the Family Business if he doesn’t ‘Become A Doctor’. Or 'Become A Lawyer', the epitome of the Victorian Judeo-Christian Middle Class work ethic meme as if 'becoming' was still a Roman laying-on-of-hands by Medieval monks.

“That place is losing money, Tommy,” my Dad said to me, “get down there and kick ass until it starts making some. ”Okay Daddy-o! (This was in 1964, hey?)

So the first thing I did was find out who was running the place.

Well, it was running well enough to have three Fah-Fee runners coming by every day and a Monday evening crap-shoot out the back. It was also not making money because of the number of chickens that went over the back wall al frikkin' frozen freshco under the cover of the crap-shoot...

My reconnaissance done, my plan was easy enough – I cleaned out my staff at the crap shoot (my university years were subsidized by this and some other games of 'chance') and from that day they were all about a month in arrears with their wages so they quickly understood the reason I made sure that profit was written into the very top of the overhead column and became the last 'overhead' touched.

I explained carefully what an overhead was and that their wages were at the very bottom of this list (the first expendable to be 'touched'), and so the back-door chicken run became a thing of the past.
After any amount of military time you understand that It’s never the Brass, the officers, the theorists, it’s the Line Managers, the Sergeants at the front who make things tick, and I quickly found the master sergeant of my mess: In the esteemed hierarchy of my new-found staff of twenty-seven Tswana Warriors (two shifts) was a gentleman his peers called ‘The Toasted Elephant’, (toasted sandwiches being the main fare of that little place).

TE was a very large manager-type person. He was in fact a forty-two year old short-order chef quite happily reigning at the top of what was now the ‘Chef's Ladder', Front-of-House and Chef de Cuisine’ at Pickin’ Chicken; the apex, the man whose initials I had etched into the faux silver flatware trays (after I became acquainted with the man who did such things in Klek's Drop) that were hung onto the local patrons’ car windows (Afrikaner farmers mostly) and had embroidered on the washroom towels by a young lady who did such things, among others.

This old Tswana – well, maybe twenty years older than I was - had the vision with which I 'turned around' this little business. He had already imbued the whole of the Klek's Drop Pickin’ Chickin roadhouse with his personality, all he needed was a short course in my new economic meme which he now had.

He conceived the “Really Big” Mixed Grill marketing idea and on top of that he was an excellent personnel manager: it seems that the staff thought I was gay up there in my flat above the roadhouse with grass and incense and the I Ching’s narrow Yarrow stalks and no woman (I was pining for the-girl-I-should-have-married, my wonderful French Voulez-Vouz, my University of Southern Maine particle physics lady partner in crime) and they must have had some feelings for me (pity perhaps?) because one day TE and the whole staff ceremonially organized ‘Chunky Charlie’ for me and offered him up like a neophyte apprentice on his First Day:

”Charlie’s 'n vrou,” they told me and I couldn’t understand why they were offering me Charlie’s wife especially since she wasn't even there so I ignored the whole thing and went back to my pining.

Yes, I did wake up later.

So on the surface everything looked good – an excellent menu and a happy staff completely on my side, if a little ambitious for my welfare as wage dispenser. And now that they were only slightly burdened with debt, which is the Capitalist Way, they were all mine.

(Lending them as much as they want is one way, but I prefer dice to interest gouging. At least with my way they can believe they have a chance).

All we needed was more customers, which would complete the formula for making a small or at least tidy fortune in my first venture. It didn’t take long to figure out what was wrong: the Klek's Drop road population was mainly farmers - Big, Afrikaans farmers whose diet was usually made up of much larger portions of whatever they ate elsewhere than what Pickin’ Chicken actually served.

Not Good.

Good Food does not equal Big Food. Nor of course does Big Food equal Good Food: Small Food's another thing: imagine offering 'Slim' Vlakkies du Plessis a touch of Nouvelle Cuisine to the strains of the Three Tenors?

Pickin’ Chicken was modeled on Kentucky Fried with a thing called ‘portion control’ in place which limited the amount of each portion sold as well as helping with inventory and such things, which made for burgers the size of today’s Wimps. Very Small Ones, 'ek sê' a teaspoon of cafe-au-lait to a large Boer farmer. So I did one thing. I listened to the Toasted Elephant who suggested that, on the food side, we double the size of the burgers so the meat hung out over the side of the (already large) roll and introduce a huge mixed grill: three hundred grams of rump, two fat German bratwurst, heaps of French Fries, sun dried tomatoes (my contribution), two eggs over once and a couple other T E-type things. After all, it was his idea because, well, okay, the Toasted Elephant actually knew Afrikaans farmers a lot better than I did and after a little subtle advertising, we suddenly had a good 'klomp' of new customers!

FOUR

ADVERTISING WORKS

It seems that no honkies had listened to the Toasted Elephant up until my tenure and his was such a good idea I thought that I had better start setting other precedents around there right away if the job was going to get done 'properly' or people would wonder who was actually running the show and I could find myself in hot sauce with the local meme police.

Pickin’ Chicken's 'Klek's Drop' branch, like the rest of the business, did not advertise so I had to set about finding someone who could create 'Afrikaans Farmer-targeted' advertising for me and find one I did: Morris Louring who was smallish wiry man, a typically Jewish-looking Jew with black hair, a small Freudian-style beard (and only slightly bent nose) and a glint of evil humor in his eyes. He never actually wrung his hands but it was now and again somehow implied in the atmosphere around him.

“I am the black sheep of the Katzen Louring family,” he told me - he was a very funny man which is something I enjoy in people because to me it means they are alive and aware. He made his crust by etching silver trophies so well that he was in demand all over the country, including by a local roadhouse in his near future.

This was his 'main business' but for joy and edification, he created photographic 'head sheets' (modeling and advertising portfolios) for the local wannabe model meisies while I eventually served by hanging up their clothes, adding videos to the head sheets and keeping quiet.

When I asked him how he had endured the town for so long (even twenty years of photographing girls is a form of repetitious redundancy) he told me that he had been using his imagination to create a fictitious history for “Klek's Drop” that was outside of the tourist brochures. I immediately understood this to be the construction of a meme that he was talking about. Listening to his story was my downfall.

Among many other things I have done for this town (he told me) besides reminding people that Desmond Tutu was born here, I have created the myth that Klerksdorp is by its very nature the Gateway to Cape Town and that it is also the center of a very specific controversy in the world of paleontology: Many years ago when I became the family outcast, Klerksdorp was the furthest place away from South African civilization they could find into which I could be banished, and all I had to work with was my imagination and the pretensions of the local leaders.

Stuffed shirts are easy to fool, Morris said, gleefully, but the scientific community at large is even easier being stuffed with more inflated pomposity than mere politicians.

Now this had completely captured my attention and I demanded a full explanation, not realizing that it could very well have been my ruin: I could not have cared less about pretentious people, there are enough of them after all in the groves of academe (from which I had recently escaped with I thought enough theory to tackle the world, small bits at a time). But a contrived scientific controversy was unique in my experience - up to then limited to that small roadhouse gambling concern, and therefore valuable as an area of further learning.

It was quite simple, continued Morris, there are some very old rocks in this part of the tectonosphere, and no matter what you do with them, they remain just as old when you are finished with them.

Like a face lift on an old lady? I offered. After 'the procedure' (as an operation is called today) is over, her face is unlined and perhaps even as beautiful as it once was, but underneath she's still a sixty-seven-year-old spinster who may not be as nice as she now looks.

Exactly, said Morris, except that in this case, the lady is more like several billion years old.

Well, this was business, I thought, this careful choosing of the people who are going to do your advertising, so I bought another round (there were only three other people in the pub plus Mavie the barmaid) and decided to hear Morris out.

As I said, Morris continued, it was very simple. I cannot fashion jewelery and so I was not all that valuable to my family's business. The best I could do was load the stone polishing machine. When I arrived in Klerksdorp it was nothing more, and I quote, than “A city founded in 1837 when the Voortrekkers settled on the banks of theSchoonspruit, which flows through the town and is one of the oldest European settlements of the former province of Transvaal” so dull that it is still considered one of the safest towns in the nation.

In August 1886, Morris went on, gold was discovered in the Klerksdorp district as well as on the Reef. As a consequence, thousands of fortune-seekers descended on the small village turning it into a town with 70 taverns and even a stock exchange of its own, which gives you an indication of its innate gullibility, but the gold fever didn't last and was only revived “by large mining companies” in 1932, causing the town to undergo an economic revival, which accelerated after World WarTwo, by which time I had arrived looking for things to do.

FIVE

THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MEME

And all I did, said Morris with a sincere look, was change a few old rocks, or, as you would say, gave them a face-lift by the simple expedient of cutting them into small pieces of a similar size and processing them in my stone-polishing machine.

I then went around 'salting the mines' so to speak.

Well, continued Morris, they came out of the machine very nicely polished, but of course still a few billion years old.

Let me quote, he continued, reading from a magazine he had pulled from his briefcase, "Over the past several decades, South African miners have found hundreds of metallic spheres, at least one of which has three parallel grooves running around its equator. The spheres are of two types, one of solid bluish metal with white flecks, and another which is a hollow ball filled with a white spongy center.

“...some of the spheres are housed the Klerksdorp museum...” (kept, really, said Morris, aside, it's an old prison, but it offers a passable Peach Mampoer and Soet Blits liqueurs).

He continued from the magazine: 'The spheres are a complete mystery. They look man-made, yet at the time in Earth's history when they came to rest in this rock no intelligent life existed. They're nothing like I have ever seen before''.”

I added the grooves, said Morris, to make them look like miniature cricket balls just to give them a semblance of artifice.

But just listen to what some of these self-important 'scientists' have had to say about my balls:

“We wrote to Roelf Marx for further information about the spheres. He replied in a letter dated September 12, 1984: 'There is nothing scientific published about the globes, but the facts are: They are found in pyrophyllite, which is mined near the little town of Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal. This pyrophyllite (Al2Si4O10(OH)2) is a quite soft secondary mineral with a count of only 3 on the Mohs' scale and was formed by sedimentation about 2.8 billion years ago. On the other hand the globes, which have a fibrous structure on the inside with a shell around it, are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel.'

Good Lord! I exclaimed, they took it in!

Well, said Morris, the are actually several billion years old. But they took it even further, he added, pulling another scientific magazine from his briefcase, and read this to me (and Mavie, who had surreptitiously joined our little group with two more pints of lager and one-for-yourself):

'The Klerksdorp Stones, which are found in rock scientists say are billions of years old, and which rotate on their axes, captured the attention of Mr. John Hund of Pietersburg fifteen years ago....

“While playing with the stone on a very flat surface at a restaurant one day, Hund realized it was very well balanced. He took it to the California Space Institute at the University of California to have tests done to determine just how well balanced it was. "It turned out that the balance is so fine, it exceeded the limit of their measuring technology and these are the guys who make gyro compasses for NASA.

“The stone is balanced to within one-hundred thousandths of an inch from absolute perfection," explains Hund. Nobody knows what these stones are.

One NASA scientist reportedly told Hund that they do not have the technology to create anything as finely balanced as this. He said the only way that either nature or human technology could create something so finely balanced would be in zero gravity."

That must have been one hell of a stone polishing machine, I offered.

There are techniques involved, Morris replied, and read on:

“As there usually is when it comes to OOP artifacts,” (Morris looked up here, “Out Of Place Singularities” I call them, he said, “OOPS”) “there is some controversy over the Klerksdorp Spheres. Most skeptics bash Cremo on his supposed source (a Weekly World article), rather than address the object itself and conveniently ignore the fact they were mentioned a great deal earlier than Cremo's 1993 book. For example:

Barritt, D., 1982, The Riddle of the cosmic cannon-balls: Scope Magazine. (June 11, 1982)
Pope C. and B. Cairncross 1988. "Cosmic Cannonballs a geologic explanation: A View. no. 1., pp. 5-6. Association for the Rational Investigation of the Paranormal (ARIP)
Nel, LT., H. Jacobs, J.T. Allen and G.R. Bozzoli 1937. Wonderstone. Geological Survey of South Africa Bulletin no. 8.

For a good counter-argument, see the Wikipedia article on the Klerksdorp Spheres. In summary, the main arguments against them are:

Some geologists who have studied these objects argue that the objects are not manufactured, but are rather the result of natural processes.
Not all are perfectly spherical, and some have varying shapes. (Yet there do exist some that are perfectly spherical with the fore-mentioned unusual balance.)
What NASA reportedly said is being contested.
What Mr Marx stated regarding their "perfect" balance was misquoted, although he still argues they are enigmas.

There's more, said Morris. I got bored, though, when they failed to see the resemblance to cricket balls. But just sit through any South African winter these days and you'll see what kind of a meme a real expert like Al Gore can create with scientific dumbo-jumbo.

SIX

IS ADVERTING A MEME-CREATION TOOL?

Now. You say you need some advertising, said Morris.

Yes, I replied, we need something imaginative as you can see from my manager's brief and from your stone story, you certainly have that.

So Morris, with a genuine though not very large advertising account, went to work:

For my advertising campaign he ‘re-created’ so as to avoid any copyright problems, a drawing from Mad Magazine that depicted a knight in tattered armor with a buckled lance, bent shoes and a swaybacked horse. A seriously enough Don Martin deluxe 'copy' that we schemed he would never sue us over it even if he did actually get hold of the Klerksdorp Herald because it was such a good rendering.

These were still, I think, part of the sanction years when South Africans thought it quite clever to ‘borrow’ ideas and such. You see, we were then into the ‘re-creation’ of concepts which we considered quite different than to steal directly from the Art Directors' Annual and I can talk now that any possible statute of limitations on comic book image theft must have expired.

The headline asked the traveling farmer, all other people of Klek's Drop and environs to “Come In For A Dragon Burger and a Free Coke!” And ‘strue as God, Njannies, they did! “Large Mixed Grills Now Available!” and the job was done and dusted – I'd done my work. That was it! Well, TE was the co-author, so I made him The Boss: The business was turned around nine months ahead of my deadline with profits to show for it (and a good nine months ahead of the annual audit!) and virtually running itself with TE in charge, so I was free to play. How? What does one do with boredom in a provincial town? Well, Morris had some very intriguing, interesting and as it turned out, possibly quite dangerous answers, which I should have anticipated.

SEVEN

THE KLERKSDORP KULTURE KLUB (KKK, no relation)

Klek's Drop at that time was mostly a rural society with a very peri-urban anxiety in the middle: it knew zip from big city life. But the ‘Main Manne’ - the Mayor and his cronies - thought that they were important VIP's for no discernible reason. In fact they thought themselves so important that they formally initiated a goal-oriented destination for their cultural aspirations that they innocently called The Klerksdorp Kulture Klub - The KKK, (hence the No Relation).

Oh, yes! Remember now that I was young and free, partially educated, unmarried and had six to nine months before any auditors came sniffing around (so long as monthly profits kept coming in). So I hired a 'manager' to look after the day-to-day running of the business side of things. The Toasted Elephant was the real boss, but you had to keep up appearances in those days.

The new 'manager' was an impeccable Safari Suit with knee socks and comb combo, a well-mannered retired Afrikaner miner twice my age (and size) who insisted on calling me ‘Meneer Dennen’ thus keeping a huge social distance which I admired so much that I even dropped my day job at the roadhouse to join up with Morris and plot cultural extensions for the KKK (and take pictures of pretty girls) almost full time.

An so Morris and I became co-conspirators. Not against, exactly, not really (as our justifiable detractors might claim) but more toward an educational bend for the Klerksdorp Kulture Klub, one might say positioning ourselves as the off-stage spiritual advisers and developers of the KKK's 'invisible aura' (again, no historical or direct relation) steering it around the sometimes slippery cultural corners of life in the VIP lane.

Now the KKK (no relation whatsoever) were all Afrikaners, mostly Broederbonders or 'white brotherhood' members, Morris assured me, very stuck-up stuffed shirts, “and so need the occasional reminder” of what was actually inside those shirts, although at the time I didn’t have enough information to ask what he meant by ‘reminder”.

“These people,” Morris reminded me, unprompted, “banned the ANC’s N'kosi sikele i'afrika, because it was in a foreign language, a language they did not generally speak!

And what does the phrase N'kosi sikele i'afrika mean?” I asked.

“God Bless Africa.”

Treason!

The ‘Klub’ consisted of the Mayor, some parliamentarian Mini-Star of Justice or other, the Fire Chief, The inimitable (and sometimes semi-unwilling participant) Postmaster General and other local dignitaries (their wives and the odd brace or three of discreet au pair ladies (or mocha mistresses if you take the stuffing out) who expressed a delight in chamber music, one of the few intellectual and classical pursuits anyone can indulge in without actually having to seriously understand it like one is supposed to do with wine-tasting, which is anyway mostly about the language of vanity, like golf.

And this is how Morris introduced me to the idea of 'educating' the so-called stuffed shirts of the KKK:

The Chief of the Fire Department had Made an Announcement - I think it was the Chief of the Fire Department, although it may have been the Chief of Police, I can’t remember at this late stage of my life, their shirts were equally stuffed with large egos.

Anyway, whoever it was, he was a keen golfer and made out that he was quite proficient at

the game and took it seriously, although excellent sources informed us that he was in fact

a more serious hacker.

So when he - loudly - announced the fact that he was going to take his annual leave in

Scotland, Morris decided that his holiday should be a memorable one, even though he

would unfortunately not be able to attend that month’s KKK ad lib concert featuring a performance, which we had not yet planned, of a Russian Ballet Solo from the local Hairdressing Salon

I have to confess at this point that I was never the perpetrator. Morris thought these

things up. I just wrote the copy while taking pictures of the local meisies. Morris did the

designing. I am just very good at confessing. Ask the CIA.

This particular design arrived in the form of a letterhead from the Royal Tar lair Golf

Club, Mac duff, Banff shire, Scotland, inviting the Chief to play in a tournament at said

Club.

There has been much debate as to the origins of the game of ‘gowf’ (Game On, Women – or Ladies – Forbidden) and, in some cases, how it was originally played. But one thing is certain - the game of golf as we know it was born in Scotland.

And the Chief knew this.

We dropped the invitation (with all duly prescribed postmarks and proper Scottish

stamps, care of the Klek's Drop Post-Master General (who could play passable golf) into the Chief’s postbox and left it at that.

So did he.

Klek's Drop was, in those days, a sleepy town although the tourist brochures would claim otherwise. The future Nobel prizewinner Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born there in 1931 but this was understandably not during my tenure. Nor was Tutu a main feature of the tourist brochures in the apartheid meme seventies when Morris and myself and two other conspirators, Hennie The Hairdresser and Jannie The Burroughs Mechanical Machine Mender and Chief Salesman, were trying to earn a crust there. Gold and some hotels I think were featured in the literature. The Kulture Klub’s monthly meetings did not feature in any brochure because brochures had to be planned a long time before their contents became reality unless they were already built on the ground there, so the meetings were in fact ad lib and therefore open to change.

EIGHT

THE PLOT SICKENS

Morris, being the evil genius that he is, decided that we should first attempt to measure the intelligence of the KKK members.

“How do we do that?” I asked. He told me that he felt, after hearing a story from me about Harvard University’s practice of sending itinerant musicologists and folklore collectors into the field, that the KKK should be exposed to such a person as it would add culture and class to its image. I am a great lover of jazz and folk music and at some stage during our long, philosophical conversations of an evening in the Klek's Drop Hotel Upstairs Ladies Bar, I had indeed told Morris about the fact that Harvard University has, over some six or seven decades, sent out students to record famous or otherwise locally well-known personalities who were practitioners of provincial humor, folk and other ethnic music and anecdotal history - “Ah heerd y’all hadda shoot yer dog ‘tother day, Samuel. Was he Mad?”

“Waal, he warn’t too damned pleased about it, Jonathan.”

There is famous Caedmon label recording of Blues musician Huddie J. Leadbetter (known as Leadbelly) compiled by a Harvard musicologist that is nothing more than a thumpin’ foot and a few songs acapella - he didn’t have his guitar with him at the time of the recording - a foot thumping on the floor and a lengthy argument with his wife (who we can’t hear because the musicologist was only interested in Leadbelly and kept the mike away from his woman) which consisted of Leadbelly’s immortal words, “Why don’t you just leave me alone?” a non-sequitur to his entire life, I believe, a large part of which was spent in gaol.

So, armed with this very specific intelligence, Morris approached the KKK and told them all about the Harvard musicology project (including the Leadbelly bit for veracity) and then let it slip that he had been told that an actual Harvard musicologist was in South Africa and was traveling to Johannesburg from Cape Town “toward the end of the month”, around the time when the Kultur Klub met. He told them - with a straight face, of course - that the man might “possibly” be passing through Klek's Drop. In effect, Morris told them, he actually had to pass through the town because of a cultural belief system, one of our more consistent memes, that we were also busy constructing in the Klek's Drop background: the myth that Klerksdorp was ‘The Gateway to Cape Town”.

You must understand that during the preparation for all this subterfuge, I believed that we were fundamentally lying. And, ex-Catholic conservative that I had recently been, I thought that this would more than likely get us into an argument if not a war with the local genteel, let

alone give us a permanent view into the portals of Hell, which would be the entrance to the Klek's Drop hoosegow or 'tronk'. I told Morris that we were just pretending to ourselves that we could create the technology that would have to be produced to achieve anything like the Weapons of Mass Persuasion needed to go along with the KKK’s self-indulgences and their

acceptance of the Harvard musicologist’s actual existence.