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Memories don’t leave Peter Ray Blood, Trinidad Guardian, Published: Wed, 2011-04-20 20:21 http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2011/04/19/memories-don-t-leave With the help of reader Joseph Richardson, last weekend I went down memory lane, remembering how simple and uncomplicated life was in Trinidad and Tobago. Read on: Good old days •Ignition switches on the dashboard. •Pants leg clips for bicycles without chain guards so that the black oil don’t rub on your pants or your foot. •Irons heated on a coal pot or pitch-oil stove. •Using hand signals for cars without indicators or the little yellow hand would pop out of the side of the car door. Older than dirt 1) Candy cigarettes, Kaiser ball, chili bibbi and mango chow, Wonder Bag, tippy tambo, snatty nose dongs, gru-gru beff, padu, parlet. 2) The parlor at the corner and the shop on the main road. 3) Storming fete. 4) Only one telephone and television on the whole street. 5) Cinema: Newsreels before the movie, and the boys lime in the cinema was in Pit (admission: 25 cents) and they would exit the side door, and the cute girls would lime in House (admission: 50 cents) And, there was always an old woman selling nuts and dinner mints on the steps outside. 6) TV: Rikki-Tikki was the hardest children show, as well as Four Feather Falls and Thunderbirds. The lime was at somebody’s house and all the children in the area would be sitting on the floor enjoying the show—One TV channel (TTT), and just one, possibly two, television sets in the entire neighbourhood. 7) Slingshot, and the big game for the boys was ‘police and teef’, and gun and caps was the weapon of the day, but “yuh muss only fall down and play dead when yuh get shoot.” 8) Latrine, WC, outhouse. Those who had toilet had a water tank high above your head with a long chain to pull to flush. 9)78, 33 and 45 RPM were the records and a gramophone or turntable to play your records. 10) Hops bread, butter bread, rock cake, halle and a big snow cone without a cup. On a Sunday evening, ice cream was churned, using block ice and salt. 11) Metal ice trays with a lever; ice box for people without electricity. 12) Pitchoil flambeau and torch light with a blue flashbulb (two-cell using two batteries) and a green flashbulb (three-cell using three batteries) Every battery was a Berec); 13) Pitching marbles and hop scotch in the yard. A big rope hanging from the tree with a piece of wood for the seat to swing with. 14) The fish man would ride by every day on his bike with a horn on the bike handle squeezing and bawling, “Careet, Munshine and Cavallie.” A box full of fish on ice at the back. He had a scale, Guardian newspaper to wrap up the fish and a chopper to chop it up...The man knew everybody in the area by name and their choice of fish. 15)Scrubbing board or jooking board, blue soap and Tide, and mummy must bleach the clothes at the back of the yard or, on a bleach with wood and chicken coob wire to lay out all the whites already washed in blue. Water at the stand pipe. Starch was boiled and strained through a bit of cloth. 16) Boys raiding people’s mango tree, plum tree, guava tree and any fruit tree at night and scaling fence. 17) Every body had to be Uncle or Auntie, and yuh better say good morning to everybody before they tell on you, or is licks. 18) Getting a ‘cuff in yuh mout’ or a ‘clout in yuh head’ for answering back, watching cut eye or walking off while Mummy speak to you. To steups was to commit harikiri. 19) Posey or tensil to pee in at night and no body want to empty it or wash it. Don’t let mummy smell it because is licks in yuh tail. 20) And you had to drink your bush tea, and take senna pod tea, your salts, castor oil (with half an orange), worm out or else... |