The Making of a Dreamer

Chapter 1: The Making of a Dreamer

In the sprawling farmlands outside Johannesburg, South Africa, where the red earth stretched endlessly toward distant kopjes and the afternoon sun painted the veld in shades of gold, a boy named Gaylord Reginald Parks was born into a world that would never quite contain his imagination. The year was 1970, and South Africa was a nation fractured by apartheid's rigid divisions, though on his family's modest farm, young Gay's universe consisted of simpler things: the lowing of cattle at dawn, the smell of his mother's cooking wafting from the kitchen window, and the static-filled broadcasts that crackled from their old radio.

His parents were simple farming folk, their hands permanently stained by soil and their hearts rooted in the land they worked. They had chosen his names—Gaylord and Reginald—following the British colonial naming conventions that still held sway among their generation, never imagining how those formal appellations would sit upon their son in a world so different from their own. "Gaylord," derived from Old French meaning "high-spirited" or "noble," seemed fitting for a child whose eyes held an uncommon brightness, whose imagination refused the boundaries of the farm's fences.

From his earliest memories, Gay was captivated by something that existed worlds away from the South African countryside. American radio programs and Western novels, discovered in the dusty corners of the old library and heard crackling through their family radio on distant shortwave broadcasts, opened a window into the American West that blazed across his imagination like a revelation. While other children played with toy cars or kicked footballs in the dust, Gay constructed elaborate fantasies around cowboys and cattle drives, ranches that stretched beyond the horizon, and men who lived by codes of honor beneath endless skies.

The disconnect between his environment and his dreams was profound. Here he was, surrounded by African wildlife and endless savanna, yet his heart yearned for the mythology of Wyoming and Montana, for places he had never seen but knew intimately from countless hours absorbed in Western novels and radio dramas. He would practice drawing quick like the gunslingers he admired, using his finger as a pistol and facing down imaginary outlaws behind the chicken coop. His parents watched with bemused affection as their son galloped around the property on an imaginary horse, calling out to cattle that bore no resemblance to the Texas longhorns of his fantasies.

The irony was not lost on the adults who observed him. Here was a child living the agricultural life that formed the backbone of the American frontier experience, yet he remained utterly convinced that real ranch life existed somewhere else, in a country he had never visited. His father would shake his head watching Gay attempt to lasso the farm's chickens, muttering about American radio shows and their strange influence on children's minds.

He practiced the distinctive drawl he heard in the radio dramas, though his South African accent made the attempt sound peculiar to anyone who overheard. By his early years, Gay had constructed an entire alternate identity around his obsession. His parents, initially charmed by their son's unusual interest, began to worry as his fantasy life seemed to eclipse his engagement with their actual world.

When Gay was just nine years old, the outside world intruded upon their rural sanctuary with devastating force. The anti-apartheid struggle had intensified, bringing violence and persecution that reached even their quiet farming community. What had once seemed like distant troubles reported on the radio now arrived at their doorstep with terrifying immediacy. Neighbors disappeared in the night, and stories circulated of families torn apart by the escalating conflict.

The first sign of real danger came on a sweltering February morning when Gay's father discovered their cattle had been scattered across the veld, their fence lines cut and several head missing entirely. Painted on the side of their barn, in crude red letters that looked like dried blood in the harsh sunlight, were words that chilled Gay's parents to the bone: "no whites."

Gay's parents tried to shield him from the growing threats, but the fear was impossible to hide. His father began carrying a rifle when he went to check the livestock, and his mother started closing the curtains before sunset, something she had never done in all the years Gay could remember. The family radio, which had once provided entertainment and connection to the outside world, now delivered only grim news of farm attacks, families murdered in their beds, and entire communities fleeing their farms.

The violence escalated with each passing week. One night, Gay was awakened by the sound of gunshots echoing across the veld, followed by the distant glow of flames on the horizon. Their nearest neighbors had been attacked. By morning, word spread through the scattered farming community that the old farmer had been killed defending his property, his wife beaten unconscious, and their farmhouse burned to the ground. The message was clear: white farmers were no longer safe on the land their families had worked for generations.

Gay watched his parents age years in the span of weeks. His father's shoulders, once straight and proud, began to sag under the weight of constant vigilance. His mother jumped at every unexpected sound, her hands shaking as she tried to maintain the normal duties of their daily life. They spoke in hushed tones when they thought Gay was not listening, discussing options that seemed to grow more limited with each passing day.

The final blow came not with words or direct confrontation, but with a presence that was somehow more terrifying than any spoken threat. It began on a Tuesday evening in March, when Gay first noticed them—dark silhouettes standing motionless on the distant ridge that overlooked their property. Three figures outlined against the sunset, too far away to make out faces or details, but close enough to know they were watching.

The next evening, they were there again. And the next. Always at sunset, always in the same position on the ridge, never moving, never approaching, but never leaving either. Gay's father would step out of the house with his rifle, staring up at the ridge until darkness finally swallowed the watching figures. His mother would pull the curtains tight and turn up the radio to drown out the oppressive silence that seemed to press down on their farmyard like a weight.

By the fourth day, the psychological toll was devastating. Gay watched his parents jump at shadows, speak in whispers, and move through their daily routines with the mechanical precision of people trying to maintain normalcy while their world collapsed around them. The watchers never came closer, never made demands, never spoke—but their message was clear in its very silence. They were waiting.

That evening, as Gay sat in his bedroom, he could hear his parents' voices through the thin walls, discussing the impossible choices that now faced their family. His mother's sister, in Canada, had been writing letters for months, begging them to consider emigration before it was too late. Those letters, which had once seemed like distant possibilities, now represented their only hope for survival.

Gay pressed his ear to the wall and listened as his parents wrestled with the heartbreaking mathematics of their situation. They could not all leave together—there was not enough money for all three of them, and the emigration process would take months they did not have. But they could not all stay either, not with the threats growing more violent each day. The farm that had been in his father's family for two generations would have to be abandoned or sold for whatever price desperate sellers could command in a market flooded with fleeing families.

As Gay lay in bed that night, his mind drifting between reality and the cowboy fantasies that had sustained him, he began to understand that his childhood was ending not gradually, as childhoods normally do, but abruptly and violently. The world he had known—the safety of the farm, the rhythm of seasonal cycles, the simple certainty of family life—was being torn away by forces beyond his comprehension or control.

What Gay could not have known, lying there in the darkness with rain drumming on the tin roof and his parents' worried voices drifting through the walls, was that this moment would mark the end of one life and the uncertain beginning of another. The decisions made in the coming days would set in motion a chain of events that would forever alter not just where he lived, but who he would become.