A tribute to San Fernando , Trinidad

I was born in the year World War II ended , 1945 , and my first home was in the city of San Fernando in Trinidad.
My early memories are of Broadway , now Independence Avenue , and we lived in the shadow of Naparima College.
I remember we lived in a small apartment on Broadway , but we had electricity and running water , and we were in a town!
My earliest memories are of playing under the large samaan trees on the Naparima College campus , which was virtually our back yard. I clearly remember one day our home being visited by our cousin Elmo Leonard who was then a student at that fabulous institution where he was to later have a distinguished career as a teacher. As a matter of fact he was my French teacher when I attended Naps as a student in the late fifties and early sixties.
Back then there were two roads leading up to the college ; a winding road for vehicular traffic , and a steep hill for pedestrians leading to the main campus.
Both roads have been replaced by Lute Drive.

To us as kids back then, San Fernando was a safe , happy place (even though there were occasional scares like the Green Face man and the Shaver Man ), and we fearlessly roamed about town after school and during vacation, as much as we could get away with from our parents 😊.

My first vivid early carnival memory was seeing a steelband chased by police on J’ouvert morning.

I’m pretty sure it was 1951, because I remember some large men carrying steel drums hung around their necks, singing obscene lyrics to the song “l’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts “ about someone called Thelma , and that song had been a top ten hit in the US by Merv Griffin the year before.

For some reason I’ve always thought this happened at Cross Crossing, but I was never sure.

Even though I was very young , I was influenced by the culture of Broadway.
At the time there were well known young men in the area like Frankie “Grease” Ramjohn and Frankie “Lips” , who was a popular and talented portrayer of Indian mas at the time , George “Biggers” Braithwaite was one of the leaders of Hatters and the Ifill boys who lived at the base of Naparima College hill, with Mrs. Ifill being a friend of my grandmother, and of course there was Broadway Hatters Steelband , my first steelband love.

I should also mention “Jap” Beharry who was a teenager then , and who was to become a future leader of Hatters.

I remember him playing a”Ju Ju Warrior with Hatters back then and I also remember seeing him with a”duddup ” !

He did look somewhat Japanese, and I guess that’s how he got his nickname. This was following WWII , after all 😊.

Years later, I saw a photo of myself, probably about seven, watching Broadway Hatters as they gathered in front of the Ifill’s home at the bottom of Naparima College hill for their Carnival presentation featuring The German Army.

Wish I still had that photo 😊!

The house we occupied on Broadway was owned by the Baisdens, and our neighbors were San Fernando notables like the football player Ian Seales and Ria Chong Asing, who was to become an accomplished tennis player.

Directly across the street lived the Jogie family.

It was definitely culture shock for us when the family moved to the country village of New Grant in 1953 , when I was about eight.
The move was made to facilitate my father’s work in the oil fields , but my mother hated it since we had no indoor plumbing or electricity in the country, and she was more of a city person.
Although we couldn’t afford a radio , in San Fernando my father had the Rediffusion company install one of their speakers in our house .
Reddifusion was a hard wired radio network , and the company rented their speakers to be mounted in homes for a small fee.
The speaker box mounted on the wall had a two way selector switch and featured two radio stations , identified as the Golden and Silver networks.
The Golden network was actually Radio Trinidad , the Silver Network was the Voice of Rediffusion.
I loved the Rediffusion ; it was greatly responsible for my early love and appreciation of music , and an awareness of current events.
We left that all behind , when we moved to the country.

In spite of all that , my mother did the best she could , even insisting to travel all the way to San Fernando to do her grocery shopping , much to the resentment of the nearby local shopkeeper .
He would see her emerging from a taxi filled with groceries right in front of his shop , since we lived just across the street opposite his shop at the Hindustan road junction , in Mrs. Dookie’s old house, which we rented.
I’ve always maintained that in the old days , there was no need to go to Port of Spain for Carnival.
San Fernando’s carnival was great.
So even though we lived in New Grant , my mother made a point of bringing us to San Fernando for Carnival every year, sometimes finding accommodations with friends – a base for the day.
That was no easy trip back then , especially with five little kids, especially having to arrange transportation back home after the Carnival..
My mother was a seamstress , and she would make new clothes for the occasion. She would make fancy shirts for the three boys (we called them “bad” shirts back then) , and we would be wearing “blue duck” {denim ) pants , which had newly become fashionable.
( Sorry , can’t remember what my two sisters wore , but I know my mother sewed them new clothes , too )
. As poor as we were , my mother did her best , and I could never forget those days. And , carnival was so much fun , I was sad when it was over.
I must admit that as children we took the hardships of country living in stride , even enjoying the adventure of playing in the country woods , the abundance of fruits , the relative freedom and carefree nature of country living etc. , but my mother hated it.
Obviously , we had no indoor plumbing or electricity, and at times in the hottest months even the street standpipe would go dry , and we would have to await water deliveries from trucks.
We got pretty good at balancing pails of water on our heads !
And sometimes , I do wonder how I managed to see to do my schoolwork using kerosene lamps and candles !
After a few years we moved to Princes Town where I attended St Michael’s Anglican school, and which was less rural and more to my mother’s liking .

In 1958 I was accepted as a student at Naparima college and a couple years later we moved to Marabella where we lived and established roots .

At the end of the 1961 school year I left school to enroll in the apprenticeship program at the nearby Texaco Oil Refinery where I learned a trade and graduated as an electrician. I migrated to the US Virgin Islands in 1968, served in the US Army and established a permanent residence in North America

Associated Childhood Memories!

At my age certain memories still cause me to smile, and some of my memories also include my dad, who In my mind was a bit of a character himself.

Today I had one such memory that I thought I might share it.

When I was a boy we moved from San Fernando to New Grant in the country to facilitate my dad who worked in the oil fields on a crew of men also referred to as “roughnecks “.
At Christmas it was common for these workers to visit each other’s homes, having fun celebrating the holidays, eating, drinking and talking.
Especially talking !
These drinkers would get especially loquacious.

The whole “Christmas moppers “ thing.
( Trinidadians would know what I mean, if you don’t check out the video as the Mighty Sparrow explains).

I don’t know if many of our younger people are aware, but in the 1950s quite a few people, especially of the East Indian community in rural areas resided in homes with thatched roofs.
These houses, constructed with palm (carat) leaves and also called “ajoupas” by the Indians, were erected in a way that made them pretty effective in the inclement tropical weather conditions.

Anyway, after a visit by the usual Christmas “moppers” – my dad’s coworkers, he couldn’t wait to share his humor with us.
Looking back I must say it was a sort of gallows humor , but at the time we thought it very funny when he quoted one of his coworkers , whose son was a friend and schoolmate saying,
-and this is the exact quote that struck with me all these years:
He said “As you know, the portals of my house is carat”(palm leaves ) “and I’ve caught two mapapi snakes in it already “.

Given the context and my father’s sense of humor , as we found that to be very funny .
But it was indeed gallows humor.

The mapapi or mapepire balsain is a venomous pit viper also known as the fer-de-lance and is the deadliest snake found in Trinidad!