Close your eyes, and go back . . .
Way back...
I'm talking about hide and seek at dusk.
The excitement of catching candle flies in a jar and batimamselles.
Keeping an eye out for Soucoyant and La Diablesse.
Looking through the window at the people passing on the street or the rain falling, or just looking.
Sitting or rocking in the gallery.
Saying good morning or good evening to anybody you see on the street.
Licking your lips over hops and condensed milk.
Going to Saturday afternoon confession.
Drinking Chocolate tea and cocoa tea and green tea and shining bush tea.
Carrying sandwiches in a brown paper bag to school.
Eating Chilibibi and Press with green and red syrup, with or without milk.
Bathing in cold water from a barrel with a calabash.
Hopscotch, butterscotch, hoop, Jacks, Police and Thief, Rounders!
Pass-out Cricket in the road with a lime.
Lying on the floor reading Mandrake and Katzenjammer Kids and Mutt and Jeff.
Borrowing books from the library.
Hula Hoops and Jawbreakers and kaiser balls.
Bathing in the rain under the guttering.
Going for walks on Sunday afternoon. Band Concerts. Window shopping.
Wearing old pants to the beach and collecting sea shells and pretty stones.
Wait. . .
Putting the ti-marie to sleep.
Killing birds with sling shot and cooking and eating them.
Pitching Marbles and playing jockey in the canal.
When a calypso on the radio in Lent would have caused a scandal.
When going to town was a major outing requiring serious preparation.
Spending holidays by your grandmother and aunts.
Castor oil and senna pods at the end of August to clean you out!
Eating caimite and mammy seepote and downs and sapodilla and sugar apple and tying up your mouth with lalay.
Climbing trees, skipping rope and eating a bucket of long mango.
And Christmas time.....
Making a Christmas tree from a guava branch with cotton for snow.
You thought apples and grapes only grew at Christmas time.
When you wish for a gun or a dolly, but get a pair of pajamas.
Boiling the ham in a pitch oil tin in the yard.
Going to midnight mas and falling asleep.
How the air feels cleaner and the sky is brighter.
Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians.
Sliding down the bannister, jumping on the bed.
Pillow fights.
Having a pet chicken, duck, rabbit or goat and crying when it became a meal.
Being tickled to death.
Running till you were out of breath.
Laughing so hard that your stomach hurt!
Being tired from playing....remember that? Neither me.
Going to the Chinee shop for Trebor and a penny sweet biscuit.
There's more . . .
Scratching your mother's head.
Fighting for the bowl when your mother made a cake.
Churning coconut or custard ice cream on Sunday and licking the palette.
Peeling cane with your teeth.
Easter holidays, August holidays, Christmas holidays were not called Spring Break, Summer and - well, we still call them Christmas holidays, thank goodness.....
Listening to "Portia Faces Life" on the radio every day.
Remember when . . .
When there no sneakers, only washekongs and you washed them every Saturday and whitened them.
When you knew nothing of rotweillers or pit bulls - only pot hounds.
When a penny was a decent allowance, and another penny a huge bonus.
When you'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
When fashionable young ladies wore crinoline and boleros.
When your mother wore stockings that came in two pieces and had garters.
When all of your male teachers wore ties and female teachers had buns.
When none of your female teachers were married.
When you had to be rich to have a car or a radio.
When there was no TV and you went to sleep at 7.00 o'clock.
When there was no designer water.
When laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box.
When any parent could discipline any child or feed him or use him to carry groceries, and nobody, not even the child, thought a thing of it.
When it was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents.
When every kitchen had a safe with wire mesh.
When milk came in rum bottles and had to be boiled and the cream was a great treat.
When they threatened to keep children "down" if they failed a school test... and they did!
When your mother used to say that your licks hurt her more than it hurt you.
When adults spoke in code so "little ears" wouldn't hear.
Basically, we were in fear for our lives but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, or gangs. Disapproval of parents and grandparents, godparents, tanties... these were a much bigger threat!
Don't forget Gru Gru Bef and Tolomb Bum Bum!!
Or making kite with flour glue and cociea as a frame, using zwill on the tail, using typewriter ribbon for a tail, getting very upset when your kite goes HiOOH! down the street and trying to climb the tree down the block to get it back!
And those of us from Port of Spain:
Remember Guava Valley down by the National stadium??
How about fishing down Slipway??
Catching Guabin up Pompeii river?
What about:
Using a slingshot to shoot down a jap nest and run for your life!!!
Pelting stones at a full mango tree when you hungry so you dont have to go home for lunch!
Catching fowls in the backyard and cutting their heads off and putting the headless body under a bucket to stop it from running around!
Helping the fishermen pull seine in Mayaro so you could get some free fish!
Having a marbles club and storing all your marbles in a 5lb KLIM tin.
Using a steel ball bearing as a "tor".
Attaching playing cards with clothes pins to the back wheel of your bicycle to make it sound like a motorbike!
Playing with toy guns and not having to worry about the police shooting at you!
Putting sugar on your bread and butter.
Getting up early to go to the bread bakery for fresh hot hops bread!
Cooking every part of the chicken except the head and sucking the bones!
Getting some nice hot Pow (cha su bao) from a chinese restaurant.
Sweeping the dirt backyard with a cociea broom!
Getting your Sunday coconut water and boil corn or roast corn by the
Savannah.
Going to cinemas to see an Audie Murphy Movie.
Paying ten cents for a taxi.
Lining up with the school children to wave the Union Jack at Queen Elizabeth or any other member of the Royal family when they came to visit!
Getting your tail cut when you were bad and never thinking it as about child abuse!
Buying black pudding from the street vendor.
