The Mcknight I Knew

By Seymour Davis

Presently, when people speak about McKnight, it is in the context of crime. The author Seymour Tally Davis was born and spent the first 30 years of his life growing up in McKnight. During these years McKnight never had this reputation of a Gangster Town. The McKnight I Knew was written in an attempt to give the public another picture of the authors birthplace. If you believe that this book will be another boring presentation of historical facts, please change your mind! Facts will be presented, but in a funny, fresh, storytelling form. Dont be surprised if you find yourself smiling as you read.

Secondly, this book is not only for McKnighters. This book is an excellent read with much universal application. Wherever you are from you will be able to read this book and reflect on the area in which you grew up and realize that you had so much in common with McKnight. This is especially true when it came to how you were raised back in the day. Purchase this book and be informed and entertained at the same time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469782997

Seymour Davis

Seymour Tally Davis was born in Fiennes Avenue McKnight, Basseterre and spent the first 30 years of his life living there. Tally as he is called by his friends attended Ms, Thomas' Pre School, The Irish Town Primary School ,and the Basseterre High School, The St. Kitts Nevis Teachers College and The University of The Virgin Islands. After graduating from High School, Mr. Davis taught at The Sandy Point High School from 1975 to 1992 . In 1992 he entered the Teachers College graduating in 1994. He returned to the Sandy Point High School in 1984, but was soon transferred to the Cayon High School. Mr. Davis attended The University of The Virgin Islands from 1986 to 1990.

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Copyright © 2012 by Seymour Tally Davis.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-8298-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-8299-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 02/20/2012

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Crime

Education

Business

Religion

Nick Names

Characters

The Alleys

The Garden (De Garden)

The Arts

Fitness

The Mcknight Experience

Major Events That

Affected Us

Some Prominent Mcknighters

Other Mcknighters

About The Author

Conclusion

Glossary Of Terms

This book is dedicated to my sister

Paulette Mc Mahon

dedication.jpg

her actions and reactions saved my life

on

October 24, 2010

Foreword

Who, just who, would you think is fitting to pen a book sharing some history about McKnight, St. Kitts? I don’t want to appear to be dropping a name… . but I find that Mr. Seymour Tally Davis immediately comes to mind. Affectionately referred to as Tally by his friends and family, he has always been a community minded kind of person. As early as age fourteen, he was involved in work that gave back to the community. From Hobbies, to The Social and Educational Association, to The St. Kitts Amateur Athletic Association, he was there, and today, as a founding member of Concerned Citizens for a Better McKnight, he is still resolute to the mission. Here is one of St. Kitts’ bred and born who knows the island in general, and Mc Knight in particular. Truly a man committed as only a few others are.

Tally found himself in a quandary when he realized that today’s youths living in McKnight, know little or nothing about the community as it was just a mere twenty to thirty years ago. It also became apparent to him that many of his peers of yesteryear enjoy time reminiscing about their youth. A chance encounter on an airplane made him realize the negative thoughts people had about McKnight. Out of this state of perplexity, came The McKnight I Knew. While written as an easy reading book, make no mistake, it is filled with a wide variety of historically important information. Historical in the sense that the contents include facts which shed light on important people, business, and happenings in the community, and easy reading in the sense that it contains bits and pieces about daily life, and the presumably eccentricity which existed. Find out about the importance of the baking industry to the island of St. Kitts; the pharmaceutical outlets; some of the island’s prominent residents; and what I believed to be the tallest wooden structure on the island, its architect, designer, and builder.

I’m hopeful that you will find yourself thinking, if not uttering short bursts of phrases such as, Really! (In a good way that is), and I didn’t know that! The pages that follow will allow you to ease into a place where you can choose to relive any part of your youth, no matter where your roots are. It’s a wonderfully put together piece of literature with more significance than one might garner at first glance. This book caused me to think big people thoughts, and to compare yesterday with today. While instinctively, I may want some of today to be just like it was yesterday, I was able to keep my emotions in check and enjoy the book for what it is. Welcome to The McKnight I Knew, utterly enjoyable reading that brought smiles to my face, and a little bit of inner peace knowing that it was the same McKnight that I knew. Tally… . thank you for the memories.

Lloyd Hendricks

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my wife

Evadine and sons, Shomari and Tabari

for their never ending support.

Special thanks to George Adams, Venetta-Nisbett Adams, Veronica Benders,

PJ Browne, Viona Garnette, Ivan Harris, Yvonne Hector, Dr. Mervyn Laws, Val Parry,

Bernard Rawlins, and Pat Richards, for the help you provided in supporting, or refuting what I believed to be true.

Very special thanks to Wendy Colleen Phipps for the magnificent job and the time you

put in editing this project. Thanks Lloyd Hendricks for your kind thoughts that you

transformed into words for the foreword. Thanks also to Nesta Seaton-Clarke for your

skills in wrapping up the final package.

Anyone who granted me an interview, or encouraged me in any way, I say thank you.

With your help, and the help of citizens of McKnight, past and present, this book

became possible. For you who purchased this book, thanks for your support,

Happy Reading!

Introduction

Let us be frank. A number of individuals, who were born in McKnight St. Kitts, are now ashamed to be identified with that area. I AM NOT. My name is Seymour Charles Davis, also known as ‘Tally’ or ‘Talco’ and I was born and raised in McKnight. If I had a choice I would do it all over again. You see, whatever you think of McKnight now that is not the McKnight I grew up in.

What I am about to do, is give you a glimpse of the McKnight I knew, loved, and lived in for the first 30 years of my life. This book is considered easy reading. I will try to tell a story using the dialect where necessary. Let me set the record straight; this is not an official historical piece. I will not tell you when McKnight was founded and by whom. However what I will tell you is what we considered to be the borders of McKnight. Cayon Street to Cunningham Street, onto Horsford Road, left onto Irish Town Bay Road, turning left up College Street Ghaut, up to Cayon Street.

This book is purely an account of some of my experiences growing up in McKnight. This is McKnight as seen through my eyes from around 1960. Would I remember everything? No! So this is where you come in. Use this book as a talking point. Call a friend and point out some schools or churches I missed. Bring up some incidents, some old jokes; remember any old crushes you had. Talk about the good old days.

What is my motivation for writing this account? Well, on August 24, 2010, I was on a Spirit Airlines flight travelling from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. I was seated in the aisle seat with two young ladies in my row. Lillian sat next to me, with Cassandra at the window. I was about to listen to my IPod when these two sisters struck up a conversation. I immediately started to smile. I was not smiling at what they were saying (I don’t even remember what they spoke about) it was all about the accent, pure Kittitian, and it was sweet to my ears.

Eventually a conversation started between us. Sometime during the conversation I said, So you guys are from St. Kitts? They were astonished! Lillian explained that she left St. Kitts when she was nine years old, and Cassandra left at around two. Lillian wanted to know how I knew they were from St. Kitts. The accent, I said. Lillian placed her hand to her mouth then said, Me mothers… I said, Stop! You see that Me Mothers? Pure Kittitian! We all had a good laugh. We continued talking and they told me that they were from Conaree. I told them I was from McKnight. Cassandra immediately said, So you is a shotter? I pretended not to know what she meant. She saw the look on my face and explained. YOU IS A GUNMAN. I smiled and said, McKnight was not like that back in the day, when I lived there."

Two months later as I lay sick in bed, that encounter came back to me. I decided that with time on my hands, once I was strong enough, I was going to write this piece.

The first murder in St. Kitts for 2011 took place in McKnight. In addition to that, shots were fired during the Irish Town Primary School Sport Day (Feb. 25, 2011). As a result the Sports Day had to be suspended. Did you hear about these sad events? My friends, this is not the McKnight I knew growing up! The true story about McKnight must be told! Growing up in McKnight shaped not only my life, but a lot of other lives in a very profound and positive way. To tell you about my boyhood home I will explore a number of topics. I will begin with crime, because that is the context in which McKnight is discussed these days. My discourse will eventually turn more positively, as I reflect on some prominent McKnight residents and the talent that came out of the community.

Crime

I want to be very clear here. McKnight was no Utopia! Yes we had crime, but not on the scale it is now. For example, between 1956 and 1986, the murder rate in McKnight was 0.167 per year. That is about five murders in thirty