Letters from Arima to Arizona

By Ric Hernandez

Letters from the Caribbean, Arizona, and Elsewhere is a compilation of essays selected from a column by author Ric Hernandez, who wrote them over a three-year period for the Trinidad Express. They were first published in a more abridged version as Letters from Port of Spain.

Come along as the writer recalls the sometimes quixotic events of his life as he travels in and outside his native Trinidad and Tobago. This book offers Trinidadians at home and abroad a unique personal insight into the authors life as it morphed from country villages into and experiences in Europe and America as an advertising executive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503588516

Ric Hernandez

The author wrote for over forty years, starting as a reporter on the Trinidad Guardian then working in public relations and as the editor of the Sunday Mirror. Early in this period, BIM, the Barbados literary magazine, published some of his short stories. Author Ric Hernandez was inspired by the works of E. B. White. Hernandez worked throughout the Caribbean, visiting Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent, St Lucia, and Puerto Rico as a regional creative executive. After retirement, he lived in Show Low Arizona with his wife, Janice, until his death on July 28, 2013.

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Copyright © 2015 by Ric Hernandez.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/28/2015

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

1.   A Life of One’s Own

2.   A Gift of Words

3.   Poetry As Journalism

4.   The Four Last Songs

5.   Hope and Courage

6.   Days of Your Life

7.   A Forgotten Trinidad Son

8.   The Last Cadillac

9.   Street of Dreams, Arima.

10.   Book Van Days

11.   Among the Shadows

12.   Calling the Food Fairy.

13.   Signs and Portents

14.   A Life of Idleness

15.   Red Alert

16.   Coming for Fire

17.   Whodunnit This Time?

18.   A Cradle of Song

19.   A Word or Two From Walcott

20.   How I Missed Mr. Skipper

21.   The Promised Land

22.   Coffee Conundrum

23.   Consuming Passion

24.   Farewell to Carnival

25.   Names from Home

26.   When the Iron Bird flies

27.   In Praise of Agnes Quildon… A eulogy

28.   A UFO of my own

29.   Working for the Yankee Dollar

30.   So Far From Home

31.   This, too, was Christmas.

32.   Cricket, Awful Cricket!

33.   Two for the Queen

34.   A Guy Named Joe

35.   The Lost Yerby Years

36.   Taking the Long Way Home

37.   The Seven Deadlies

38.   On Approaching 50

39.   Sea Change.

40.   Down at the Heels in Spain

41.   Bourgeois Days

42.   The Beckoning Train

43.   Nuts to California

44.   Change of Heart

45.   When Words Return

46.   Stones of Remembrance

47.   Pictures and the Past

48.   Return to New Orleans

49.   Just Leading Me on

50.   Alaska Ferry Tales

51.   In Black and White

52.   The Wright Stuff

53.   What’s in a Name?

54.   Ways of the World

55.   Freedom

56.   Dread or Alive

57.   Old Tales Retold

58.   Food for Thought on the Road

59.   The Cranes are Coming

60.   Knowing it All

61.   Thanks for my Islandss

62.   Hemingway to go.

63.   Aiiyyo Pancho, for Now

64.   Putting Pen to Paper,

65.   Pieces of a Puzzle

66.   V is for Vegan

67.   Sir John Fielding arrives

68.   End of The Road

About The Cover

Dedication

To Janice

and

Trini readers

at home and abroad.

Foreword

R eaders of Ric’s newspaper column suggested he publish them into a book. That’s how Letters From Port of Spain, was born.

His introduction to the first printing remains exactly as he wrote it, but I chose to write this foreword explaining why a changed title better reflects the contents.

Ric’s interests were immense and go beyond the margins of Port of Spain and Trinidad and Tobago. He writes about travel all over the U.S, and many other countries. He writes about music, and food, and most of all about writers and writing.

Half the essays were written while we lived in Port of Spain, and the rest after we moved to Arizona. Some shared recollections will be familiar to readers in Trinidad who will recognize names (perhaps their own) and places. Some of those mentioned are no longer with us, but they live in colorful cameos here.

Others who pick up this book, gain insights into village life in a small tropical island and a plethora of Ric’s thoughts and interests as they arise. I have expanded this book with new contributions. All Ric’s words… my selections.

Before he died, Ric and I discussed what he wished he’d done with his book. I have tried to be his voice in this second edition.

=====

How to describe Ric as a writer? He’s an essayist to be sure… a great admirer of E.B. White. A travel writer? That too, but from unique perspectives.

Then there’s Ric the sports writer. He pops up. And although the philosopher and humorist are often elusive, they’re worth your discovery.

A black writer in the U.S. In Trinidad’s multi-ethnic society he would be better described as mixed. He was deeply interested in black writers, yet he didn’t write from a black experience but rather a human one. Even his essays about Trinidad and the Caribbean spring from a very personal point of view,

But most of all Ric was a lover of books. They were both his education and entertainment. Other book lovers will recognize a kindred spirit. They’ll find his take on a surprising variety of books.

I began this journey with a plan to arrange these essays in a chronological sequence that I thought made for more clarity. But I abandoned that. The reader can begin anywhere. Choose any title; and find a chuckle or something of interest. Each essay is self-contained. Consider each a conversation between you and Ric

Janice Hernandez

Introduction

F ollowing is a particular perspective, expressed through the impressions of a writer born in Trinidad and Tobago, and who has lived in country villages there and in the city of Port of Spain, working in journalism and advertising.

These essays are a selection from pieces first appearing in a Saturday column in the Trinidad Express, over a three-year period.

I am grateful to editor-at-large Keith Smith and to the Trinidad Express, for generously allowing me to re-produce them here, to a somewhat different audience.

Many of these pieces appear in their original form. Others have been tweaked, for one reason or another.

I present these essays as Letters from Port-of-Spain since most of them were written, and all of them published, in the capitol city of Trinidad and Tobago. Some were written elsewhere, on the fly, as I moved between Port-of-Spain and the United States: This is reflected in subject and point of view.

Ric Hernandez

Show Low, Arizona

1.

A Life of One’s Own

H ow good it would be to read your own history, as you lived it, the author being yourself, the medium being notes you jotted down from time to time, as the spirit moved you!

I know: the immediate reaction is: I can’t write, I am actually afraid of attempting to put words on paper; so that leaves me out. Well, it doesn’t have to be. What makes writing difficult are all those rules, those requirements like knowing about parsing sentences– what I think the experts call syntactical analysis.

None of that really matters in putting down on paper things that happen to you. Basically if you can write a grocery list you’re well on your way to managing a diary. The rules of grammar don’t all have to apply. You can put down what happened, what you would have liked to have happened, what you dreamt (there have been whole books of recorded dreams!). Sentences can be as simple and straightforward as you’d find in the Bible, or Hemingway’— or as long and convoluted as with Marcel Proust.

You can forget punctuation and just let the words flow; anyhow you want them to, once they add to the telling of your story. (Incidentally, a fellow named Peter Carey won the 2001Booker Prize in the U.K for The True History of the Kelly Gang. The book, famously, had no commas!).

The thing is, most of us have a notion that we’re not sufficiently significant to have events in our lives recorded for posterity, or for our own enjoyment or education. Well, it simply isn’t so. Many a great novel is based on the life of ordinary people, and the fact is, into the meanest lives events can happen that are curious, funny, full of pathos, or alive with breath-taking and uncanny coincidences.

The big thing about keeping a diary has less to do with whether you think you can write or not, and more to do with a little bit of discipline.

Obviously it is better if you take notes daily, or, at least, regularly. Looking back on my own journal keeping I am appalled at the lapses over the years. For instance, I have nothing about my stay at Mt, Hope, and an operation that didn’t quite work, through no fault of the people there.

And I have nothing, but the memory, of those young days in Tobago when I would leave my post as resident reporter and take the Friday night ferry back to Trinidad to be home with my buddies; and those nights on deck, the boat swaying perilously from side to side, as if threatening to take in water, and finally making it to Port-of -Spain at dawn, the sea reflecting pink and salmon from the lightening sky and the lights welcoming from the hills of Laventille.

Tobago, Venice, Paris, Spain, London… I can reconstruct bits of it, but where are those confirming notes? I have to thank Reagan for this reflection on diaries, since the late president published his dogged note taking. Peeking through the pages of his memoirs at a local supermarket, I could see that the great communicator didn’t try for literary style. He simply put down events of the day, and he did so, largely without lapses, for all his years in the White House.

Just think of it: imagine a great grand child of yours picking up a bound manuscript of your life, and to hear, in your own words, the life you lived; your thoughts and fears, and your triumphs; the car troubles and memorable jaunts traveling the United States, your stint in the army stationed in Trinidad, your fishing trophies — and the time you were almost elected to the local council!

As valuable, surely, as leaving a bequest of money!How much I have missed in my own note taking is perhaps not fatal, but still I rue those lapses. And I am happy I had the urge, and the discipline, most of the time, to put down on paper what I thought was happening around, and to, me. Even for no other purpose than to see myself, as in a rearview mirror. And wonder at it all.

JH* This essay has been placed first because it illuminates those that follow. Ric encouraged others to keep journals, and he often wrote by reviewing his.

Since these writings appeared first as a weekly column in The Trinidad Express, they were written as a choice-of –the-week. In a book, I thought they could benefit from a more obvious progression.

2.

A Gift of Words

T hey came on foot along the asphalt, which the sun was already softening to show tar glistening where carts loaded with cane had made nicks in the road. They would have taken the Princes Town train from San Fernando, disembarked at Williamsville and begun plying their trade from the first house after the stretch of sugar cane and before the hill leading into the village proper.

One man, the darker one, would be in front at a slow, water buffalo pace. He would have a bundle on his head, easily balanced. Behind him would be another man, sometimes carrying a switch against curious dogs. The man with the bundle would be an old East Indian; the man with the switch, walking behind, would be Lebanese, his shirt tight around his middle, and together they made up a kind of ambulant haberdashery service to country areas far from any town, or such facilities.

My mother would always seem to know when they were coming due, most times, had the money ready for them: no more than a shilling perhaps, and sometimes as much as 50 cents.

There were times, though, when there was no money. Then the man with the switch for the dogs would hear a familiar story: Mammy say she not there. And he would tell the timid messenger: Tell Mammy not to worry: next time. He might offer a sigh, perhaps, but would move on to another customer, not complaining, fully expecting to hear a variation of that story many times before his trek was over for the day.

When my mother was officially at home, the man with the switch would tell the other fellow to un-wrap the bundle in the gallery, revealing wildly colored cloth and trinkets.

Then he would spin a web of words meant to transform my mother into a princess in fine raiment and ornaments such as they had brought specially for her that day, and were willing to leave with her, right there and then, for just a few pennies down, or, if he was feeling generous, no money at all.

Not having money for their finery was not ever a problem. They would insist that the prospective buyer keep it, anyway, most times over objections that became progressively weaker, less adamant, until the cloth was finally thrust, in a gesture of wild generosity, upon the subdued objector.

No money would sometimes pass hands, but a sale could be made, with the understanding that some Sunday morning the bundle and the man behind the bundle would come again, collecting a pittance to keep the sale alive.

I happened to be there one day when money did change hands. My mother was unusually strong that day, not blinded by the colors; steadfastly declining offers to keep this, that or the other piece of luminous fabric.

Then the traveling salesman, a master strategist, changed his approach, no longer attacking my mother’s supposed vanity, but struck instead at the high hopes she must surely have for her first-born. I became his target.

Reaching from the bottom of the bundle, taking his time, building up expectation, he produced and held forth a surprising object, a book. Holding it over his head, as if never intending to give it up, he painted a picture of what that particular book could, and would, do for your little boy, there. He went on this way for long enough that I suddenly found myself reacting to his blandishments to the point of wanting very much to reach out and take hold of the promise.

Then he delivered the coup de grace: I will give it away to the boy for… for 36 cents, he said, his voice trailing away at the thought of the vast concession he was making. We quickly saw the reason for the price. The book was soft-covered and had a sizeable tear across the front cover.

My mother bought the book. It was a Highroads Dictionary. I can still see its orange color, and the scar: the first book I ever owned.

At first I didn’t know the dictionary’s purpose, and only gradually did I get the hang of it. But there were no other books in the house and newspapers seldom came to that part of Williamsville, so I didn’t have much opportunity to read, beyond the occasional, fumbling examination of the particular set of printed words in my torn treasure.

When we left Williamsville and moved to Arima the Highroads moved with us and by then I had become used to it… even friends with it.

Later, at the Catholic school, I also became the friend of Joseph Langton, affectionately known as Jacketman,. He was to extend the growing results of the Highroads in a new and helpful revelation.

One recess, I confessed to Joseph my continuing befuddlement at stringing words together. He untangled the puzzle for me, quietly explaining the rudiments of composing essays in one surprisingly easy lesson. It was a lesson that stood up to whatever class exercises that followed.

Some time after that, teacher Johnny Brooks {in the school-yard under the almond tree} suggested that I might want to try journalism when I left school. Going home for lunch I took to the Highroads to make sure I knew what Brooks was talking about.

For me, what a fine conjunction of time, people and things: the man with the bundle on his head; the man walking behind with the switch; Johnny Brooks my teacher; Jacketman’s insights and my mother’s 36-cent gift of words.

3.

Poetry As Journalism

E very sensible person ought to have a poem of her own. It doesn’t have to be something you’ve written: it could be a poem you sought out and loved, or one that