Easter yesteryear
By Godfrey Chin
Stabroek News
April 8, 2007
Today I invite you to join me on a roller-coaster, time-travel trip this Easter weekend, "like the ones we used to know."
Scholarship 1948
Ash Wednesday, first day of Lent, 1948, 10 am, Broad Street Government School: Am biting pencils over ten arithmetic sums. Scholarship exams with another 3,500 hopefuls nationwide, competing for free tuition at QC, Saints, Bishops. First five sums easy. After-hours lessons, cramming, teachers' dedication worthwhile - but this problem on lbs/cwt/tons hard. Guyana should really go metric? At lunch break, will compare answers with classmates Shirley Fields and Elgar Cummings, the bright sparks, to estimate how many sums I got 'right.' Essay, précis, grammar this afternoon.
Passion week, 1948
Last Sunday we brought home from church, Palm Sunday crosses which replace last year's over the sacred pictures around the house. Tomorrow, Holy Thursday, Easter preparations must be concluded, as we only venture forth on Good Friday for a two-hour high mass, wearing better than our Sunday best. Father gets a chance to wear his black serge suit earmarked for his burial, or to be handed down to me years later. Not worried, as cooler, practical shirtjacs must replace some day the colonial trappings in these tropics.
My Mother, like the perennial lent fast, reminds our clan of the Seven Ponds in the Botanic Gardens! Am tired of hearing about four brothers and three friends who went fishing Good Friday and all drowned. A true story intended for us to keep our tails in the house on that holy day! Today up here in America it's work as usual, with their customary huge Easter sales everywhere!
Easter chores
Chores for completion Holy Thursday include a trip to the backdam behind Lodge to collect bamboo and glamacherry for our kites. Purchase broken biscuits at 5 cents a lb at W & R, High and Breda St, and pick up a whole, 24 inch snapper or grouper (36 cents) from Bourda Market, as meat is taboo on Good Friday.
I am expected to walk all that distance, yet catch Passion Play and Johnny Sheffield's Bomba the Jungle Boy at the Empire, 5 pm. After 8 pm, am sent to buy cross buns and bring back 200 in a pillow case to a mother expecting change, and counting every penny like Ole Higue, picking up rice. Two deserved thumps, and I'm at neighbours' door begging to sell excess cross buns. Besides girls and cricket, we boy child just loved flour.
NB 8 hassar or 6 bundarie crab for 24 cents and eight Buxton spice mango for a 'bit! Today these are at least $100 each. Ya think it easy!
High mass
Compensation for the tedious two-hour high mass, Good Friday, was that you could pocket at least 20 of the 24 cents given you to throw in the collection plate - two matinee bills. Lunch was a wide assortment of boiled ground provisions, topped with steaming fish in butter/tomato sauce. Choices of refreshment - mauby, fly, or ginger beer. Cross buns a 'must' to augment our Easter zeal! Sorrel out of season.
Making kites
After Good Friday lunch - Japanese Origami - lots of beautiful paper brought out. Barbados paper in twelve colours with tissue for frills and brown shop paper to make the singing engines sing. Never learnt whether Barbados kite paper or the Bajan bun came exclusively from that flying fish island.
I lied: no glammacherry, having eaten the few ripe ones we found. Too late to get gum arabic as drug store close, so the old lady's starch is boiled with plenty lime to keep away the cockroaches. Never knew whether there were female roaches. All the neighbourhood fathers gathered under our bottom house, but also all the neighbours' children. Confusion like Georgetown picketing, with continuous pleadings to go play somewhere else.
Of course every kid wants his kite two feet taller, but Number 0 Crochet only good for maximum two-foot height.
Impatient kids
Waiting for your assigned kite, is worse than waiting for Santa, Xmas morning. Pot luck does not work with children, and every four-year-old wants a six-foot singing engine. Assigned box kites/kankawas are as belittling as opposition parties having no major say in governance.
The old farts (secret nicknames for parents by smart kids, who know better than parents) taking their own sweet time framing the kites, and every few minutes, they must stop for a refresher guzzle from a bottle marked XM - shortened form for XMas spirit. Each guzzle makes them cut wrong/short, speak louder with a slur, and exchange jokes where they spelt secret words that we already knew.
And talk about show-off - striving to outdo each other with intricate 32/64/128/256 star points, in blended primary Barbados paper colours, with a star burst in the centre.
Every poured rum shot eyed like Customs at the airport during Banlon Years! ...empty rum bottle worth matinee bill 4 cents! Ya think it easy!
Tails and bollas
The tails were pieces of bedding - loose term for abandoned old clothes, all purpose floor/plate cloths, wipe-feet, pot-holders, shoe-shines and sometimes bandages. Mops were distant luxuries. Old bedding was precious also for hand-made afghans sewn from variegated colour scraps. The only comforters we knew then was Woodward's Baby Gripe Water!
Twine bollas would be criss-crossed on 12 inch sticks, and the mounting loops set for climbing. A key secret to kite-flying was determining the high tides on the sea wall, which reduced the space on the beach, but ensured 'nuff' breeze for aerial displays.
It's frustrating to us males, failing to get our kite up in the air privately as well as in public before anxious crying youngsters. The sight of fathers running to raise a kite with no breeze is a joy of fatherhood, and humorous like Sam Chase.
Go fly a kite
I distinctly remember my mother admonishing my father trying to steady a pitching kite, "Needs more tail." Later years, I understood his reply in disgust, "Woman make up your mind; same thing, I told you last night, and you said to go fly a kite."
Excursions and outings
With the kites ready to fly and hanging in the house, the big decision was where to fly. The luxury of the remaining three no-work days, provided options for myriads of family outings/picnics, that matched any perms in the English football pools, Shermans or Littlewoods.
Overland weekend trips Georgetown /Bartica/Potaro by Mrs Rockledge provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the majestic splendour of the mighty pristine Kaieteur. Train excursions by Sunday schools were a delight.
The bonus of a train ride was learning the several major stops - Kitty, Plaisance, Beterverwagting, Buxton, Enmore, Golden Grove, etc. These were in themselves useful geography/spelling/memory lessons. A two-day horse-race track meet at Port Mourant was the Berbice version of Ascot Downs, while yodelling vaqueros competed at the Lethem Rodeo.
Weekend in Bartica
Another popular Easter Retreat was the Annual Bartica Regatta. Leaving the T&HD stelling 5 am either Thurs or Sat, arrival at Bartica by 3pm the same day, was a greeting to match any USA ticker parade. The entire town turns out at the stelling to see who's disembarked, and without telephones, e-mail, or fax then, their grapevine knew every piece of gossip, who visiting way up the line to Potaro. Football and cricket matches scheduled visiting teams vs all Bartica as the weekend highlight, while no one missed zegging at the Community Hall dance, Sat night.
Regatta
Basra, the abandoned former T&HD riverboat was the pavilion for an Olympic-style regatta, that seemed to attract the entire Essequibo, Charity to Lethem. Those who refused to pay, lined the sea wall esplanade.
Guyanese always feel it's their God-given right not to pay at public functions - their sacred duty to pope or crash - and are faithfully loyal to friends who know a friend or family at the gate. The vegatta events include races for speedboats, swimming, climbing the greasy pole, and naturally, a Miss Bartica contest. The envy of spectators at this contest was the constant slurs to aspiring Esther Williams: "She like a FBI," or "Her behind broader than a panama hat," or "She got seven children - should stay home and cook for them than try to be a queen." Ya think it easy!
Waratilla
Easter Monday, Lady Northcote, the then riverboat brought you back to Georgetown Mon by dusk, for a las' lap evening on the town before you reported sick for work Tues morning. Another popular getaway was a launch trip to Waratilla or Hooradia Grant, below Atkinson field. All country trips/outings were limited to available public transportation.
Bicycles and cars
In the early fifties, the the Guyanese Cadillac's were Raleigh, Humber, Hercules, Rudge bicycles. Luxury model, three-speed or constant, while the network of limited coastline roads consisted of two narrow concrete strips laid in red, burnt earth embankments.
Until 1969, Linden could only be reached by RH Carr, launch or chartered plane. Red Water Creek needed an Atkinson Field Gate Pass. No. 63 Beach only became picnic accessible after the working classes could afford Morris Oxfords/Minors, Vauxhalls, Hillmans, Volkswagena, Wolseleys in the G$3800 range in the early sixties. Japanese imports Toyota, Datsun, Mitsubushi and the Australian Holden came in the mid-sixties. Starlite Drive-in opened in 1964, while drive thru's and toll gates came later
Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday was picnic preparation day. Easter and Xmas have always been traditional memorable Guyanese Holidays, which apart from their reverent significance, brought families closer together.
We are a vicarious loving people, longing to return to the good old yesteryears, so let's continue this nostalgic journey - preparing sandwiches, patties, cheese straws, cassava pone, salara, conkie, and sugar cake. Mauby, swank, ginger beer, drinking water from the vat, must be made ready; ice in the thermos flask and basket/food carriers set to go early Mon morning. Coolers were in the distant future, as was melmac unbreakable ware and sodas, in disposable cans.
To the sea wall
Depending on where you lived in G/town , walking to the sea wall was 'no big ting,' and motor transport buses were available from Punt Trench and Vlissengen Road - the city limits then. Leaving home early Monday morning allowed you a stake on the hill at the head of Camp St, and shade under the huge almond trees.
This haven no longer exists, and the Luckhoo Pool for which I diligently raised funds in the early sixties is now as extinct as the Assembly Rooms. Every available open field from the Drive-in, Plaisance to Ft Groyne was a bobbing, weaving, pitching kaleidoscope of colourful kites of every description and size, each one reflecting the character of the person, holding their bollas on tether.
Happy Easter everyone. If our cricketers hold their 'Alamo' World Cup 2007, my Easter will be the best ever, otherwise, 'all gone lake.'