By Sheldon Taylor
In early 2010, my Kenyan-born wife, Pam, our daughter Malaika, son Bakari, and I vacationed in St.Kitts where images of growing up there crowded my memory. During a visit to the Rotary Club’s Thursday luncheon meeting at the Ocean Terrace Inn (OTI), our host, Alphonso (Al) Pierpont Barker was gracious. His fellow Rotarians, men and women, displayed a generosity of spirit that reminded me of the old days.
We sat in proximity to the then recently knighted, Sir Edmund Lawrence. Proper in both mannerisms and dress, he greeted us warmly and spent time with our children. Just like other Rotarians he gave us a St. Kitts welcome that left me feeling it was good to be “home.”
I have always had a special place in my heart for Sir Edmund. I spent a portion of my nurturing years in his home on the hill just across from what we called, “The Old Grammar School.” This was the 1950s, when as just a boy in short pants, along with Yvette and Teddy, the grandchildren of Mr. Clarke of Basseterre Post Office reputation, we romped through Sir Edmund’s mother’s home. It is there his mother, Miss May taught us about family, respectability, responsibility, raising chickens, going shopping, and had us help the old Drake to understand his job was to make sure she had an abundant supply of eggs and ducklings.
Circa 1960 Sir Edmund left for England. Other people had done so before; many more planned to follow. In braving unknown shores while adding to the richness of the Motherland their absence created a void in the hearts of left-behind family members and friends. In an era of challenges to British colonialism St. Kitts was coming of age. The recent back and forth about the successes and shortcomings of the West Indies Federation, the rising costs of rice and flour and the need to find a way around the forever flooding College Street Gut were part of this unfolding narrative.
Of course as children such discussions were foreign to us. For if the rising tide of water from Monkey Hill flooded the gut as the water moved southward to the Caribbean Sea that was all the better for us. Since Keith Morton, Stafford Allen, Russell Blake and I could out do each other by trying to jump the widening trench as the water rushed by. We just wanted to play, be friends, go to school and depending on the season score a soccer goal or mimicking our local cricketers, bowl like Gilbert and like Harris, see if we too could bat, not out, whilst playing in our backyards or on some side street.
Before he went away I admired Sir Edmund’s resoluteness and listened to his stern command of the English language. I appreciated how he respectfully paid attention to Miss May. She commanded esteem in the home shared too, with her other three children: Delores, Harwood and Sylvia Brooks. My mother, Annie Taylor and Sylvia were best friends underscored with me calling her “Goddie.” Yvette and Teddy also had a great deal of respect for Sir Edmund and we couldn’t imagine him walking all the way from St. Johnston Village, as he did, to his job at the Factory.
When sugar production dictated all other events in St.Kitts, he worked, we thought, near the chimneystack from which gushed dark smoke and a horn signaled the Factory’s labour force to and from work.
Goddie was one of the best dressmakers in St. Kitts. Her talents were sought out year round; during the various festive occasions, Easter included, dances at Factory Social Centre, the MIS and elsewhere. Then in the period leading up to Christmas after studying the latest fashions portrayed in anxiously received foreign catalogues or by using styles seen in the latest movies shown at the Apollo Theatre, she fitted her customers in the finest garbs.
Her high season started in October simultaneously with the practicing of the fifes and drums when the masqueraders’ chants could be heard in the distance at Dorset, Monkey Hill, on a quiet night from where I lived on Lozack Road. Goddie made her mark by preparing costumes for some of the women wanting to make good on the challenge: “Match Me!” by entering Miss St. Kitts. Sir Edmund’s and Goddie’s home became even busier than ever.
Friends dropped by to have a chat, satisfy curiosities and assist with stitching long into the night. My mother who was a hairdresser while helping out suggested which hairstyle would suit Miss So and So’s dress. “Got to get shoes to match!” someone would be heard to say. Stanley Sebastian, brother to the now His Excellency Sir Cuthbert Sebastian, MD was there too. Stanley was a civil engineer and amidst our innocence my friend Delano Bart told me that Stanley made water flow uphill. Goddie was happy to have him around because while skylarking, he could bend the wire with precision needed for the skimpy carnival outfits.
The best time for me to be at Miss May’s home was on Saturday. She always had one more job for Yvette, Teddy and me to do. Sometimes she had us venture to the market where we learned to shop for provisions. At other times it was just a matter of going down the road to Doris Thomas mother’s shop for bread rolls we quickly rushed back with, so they could be filled with jam, and butter, then washed down with freshly made lemonade; maybe a Fanta sweet drink.
I liked to hear Miss May call out to me. “Shelley!” which was a signal she was sending me off to Mr. Mack’s store via the laneway bordering her home. She always gave me more than enough money because her purpose was to have me reckon; make sure I was getting back the right change and learn to properly count. She taught me to be careful and stressed the importance of surety. As I spirited myself away, Miss May call out: “Don’t trouble anybody; count the change before you come back, Shelley!”
Some of the items I bought were Growena for the chickens she kept in the fowl coop in the backyard; butter and cheese, or maybe luncheon meat so she could prepare her version of Mr. Mack’s popular sandwich, a two-four. Whatever it was, I liked to roam the nearby allies and laneways. Sometimes I would run back; out-of-breath, and tell her, “Mr. Mack didn’t have the cheese;” only hoping to hear her say: “Go by Mr. Carter and check if he has any Shelley.” But she knew I just wanted to roam, to move about the friendly village that helped raise me in a period when St. Kitts was a place rich with exemplar human beings for us children to grow up and become like.
There was a richness that emboldened us in St. Kitts in the 1950s and early 1960s. Of course as people continued to leave, Sir Edmund too ventured forth. But I wasn’t surprised to hear he returned and helped establish exemplar banking and insurance systems. After all, with a mother like Miss May who fussed over the right change and being careful, he couldn’t help but be inculcated with similar values.
It was joyful to see Sir Edmund Lawrence and people like my good friend, more so a brother, Al Barker. In that OTI room we were in the company of people with family ties running deep: Hobson, Archibald, Warner, Cramer and so many others. On returning to Canada I listened to our daughter Malaika brag about the Kittian blood running in her veins. This pride I am sure came about because of our trip to the land in which long ago, I listened to Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw in Warner Park lull me to sleep with his rendition of the old song: Abide with me; fast falls the eventide/The darkness deepens/ Lord with me abide/When other helpers fail and comforts flee/Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
St. Kitts will always abide in me.
© Sheldon Taylor October 27, 2011
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