The demise of padkos.

Where did the practice of preparing food for road trips die to? More importantly, what brought about its death?

When I drive home for Christmas, there is a spring about an hour away (now that the road to Lusikisiki is tarred) from home where my dad used to wash his car when we went to Kokstad for December shopping. He always paid a visit to the dealership he bought his cars from, and said he wanted them to see that the car was in a good condition. Either didn’t want white salesmen to look down on him for driving a dirty car, or wanted to show them that blacks could take care of cars. I suspect the latter.

It used to take us about two and a half hours through muddy terrain to get to this spring and we had a set routine when we got there. Dad and the three lads would wash the car, and mom and my sister would whip out the flask with coffee, sandwiches and cold chicken. Then we would continue on our way to Kokstad to do groceries and buy the gifts that Father Christmas would give us.

I really used to enjoy those trips, as well as the ones across the Transkei to my mother’s home. For those who do not know Transkei, there are no service stations along the way, and the food in the ones in town is below par. Except for a place that was called Golden Egg in Mthatha. You thus had no option but to make your own food for the road. This December I drove the same route to Kokstad en route to Mount Frere with my mom and I asked her why she didn’t bring food along. She laughed and said that the trips now take less than half the time, and the cars are faster. A five hour trip then can now be done in less than two hours.

I think from a rural point of view she is right. Roads used to be gravel, more like mud actually, back in the day and you spent half the day driving from one end of the Transkei to the other. People in the Republic have had tarred roads forever, but you don’t see an X5 parked in the middle of nowhere and people munching sandwiches and the like. I think two things are to blame here: airlines and service stations.

Lets be honest, very few people these days would drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Its just too long, and probably costs the same as flying there. A huge number of people that used to drive long distances now simply fly and hire when they arrive at their destination. What about the ones that cannot afford to fly?

These guys now make use of the convenience stores at the filling stations along the country’s major routes. Eating while traveling is no longer cool, especially parking under some mimosa tree in the Free State and having a roadside lunch. It’s better to stop at the filling station and order a hamburger or Dagwood and watch the world go by.

With GPS things have moved a notch up. It can actually tell you the nearest restaurants and you simply get their number through directory enquiries, and then your food is ready when you get there. No time wasted.