The Cape Times starts a new column, COUNTERPOINT, today by Professor Adam Small. It will appear fortnightly, on Fridays

IN TODAY’S story, I pay homage also to my long deceased parents. From them I learned what is worthwhile to write, and how to write it.

One’s writing, also, is probably better for not being a tepid postscript to people’s being, but designed to bring tribute to their humanity: people like our everyday selves.

History emanates not only from high places. The word may have a heavy sound, but I believe that it speaks of every kind of origin: one’s encounter with plain living, as much as one’s connectedness with realities with “name”.

Heights are never reached but from base beginnings: the mountaintop comes in sight only by way of climbing up from camp zero.

History is also not a matter of only heavy-facedness. I am convinced it can be light-hearted in substance. I have often experienced this on the Cape Flats (and elsewhere in the world): such as the content of today’s tale of three “characters”, three real people of the South Peninsula. (I have, of course, changed the names.)

The two “coloured” men and the “white” (Afrikaner) Dominee were part of the same small Dutch Reformed Mission Church congregation. R Pieters and Loeries were the closest of friends and members of the reverend Koekemoer’s small parish. Loeries – or Mister Loeries, as he was respectfully addressed – was first a deacon and later an elder in the church.

Pieters, somehow, never managed to scale and reach these heights of congregational recognition, but there was no jealousy on his part towards his friend Loeries. ( In passing, the pious mister Loeries would never take the Name of the Lord in vain. When he had need to say “Oh Jesus”, he would instead simply mutter “O Jhê”. ( Hence he was also known as mister O Jhê Loeries.)

The key to the deep friendship of Loeries and Pieters was their wild spell of drinking over the weekend. They were true boozing brothers. But they boozed only at the weekend. At any other time they were dry and sober, hard-working community and family men.

They were known for their manner and style of doing things throughout R – our down-at-heel but not totally miserable suburb.

We speak of persons like Mister Pieters and Mister Loeries as “characters”. And indeed they were the characters of R and of Dominee Koekemoer’s congregation at the time; well-known and, yes, well-loved. There was a warm intimacy about their relationship with the townspeople.

And Dominee Koekemoer himself was a character.

Loeries and Pieters were at their drinking hammer and tongs on Saturday (beginning Friday evening, in fact), and were stark drunk by nightfall. On Sundays, however, week after week, they faithfully attended church, soberly – taking part in the prayers and worship as they also did on Wednesdays at Dominee Koekemoer’s prayer meetings. I saw them there when I attended the prayer hour myself (at my father’s bidding!).

When Pieters and Loeries on Saturday had shot their bolt, this is what happened ( to which the townspeople attested). The two had to get to their respective homes sooner or later, and to bed!

So, when they happened to be at Loeries’s place, he would wager that it was far too dangerous for his friend to risk himself alone on the roads of R on a Saturday night.

He therefore accompanied Pieters, the two of them stumbling down the roads of R (flatteringly called avenues), lined with Port Jackson bush, and over the sandy hills. When they reached Pieters’s