My Story & Other Stories: A Memoir

By Hartley Neita

If storytellers pass memories from one generation to the next, and remembering is an art, then Hartley Neita was a master of both. My Story & Other Stories: A Memoir, is a new Jamaican classic, one of the finest books about her in generations.
 

With his brilliantly crafted writing, Hartley leads the reader past the signposts of his life — through the tiny Clarendon village of Four Paths in mid-20th century Jamaica, and along paths that crossed with a queen, an emperor, a premier, presidents and prime ministers. The result is an "autobiographical memoir", an inspiring collection of columns and short stories written by a master storyteller who enjoyed entertaining readers with his unique literary style and sharing thoughts and life experiences with friends, old and new.

So, here is a literary virtuoso's memoir of Jamaica from the 1940s to the present, seen through the eyes of this gifted storyteller and global traveller. Poets laureate Lorna Goodison and Olive Senior, and former prime minister and friend, P. J. Patterson, describe it best,
 

"A big book of brief, sparkling stories by a man whose writings kept us enthralled for over sixty years." Olive Senior. Author, Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2021-2024
 

"In this finely curated collection, our Hartley lives again in all his blazing intelligence, courtesy, warmth, and wit." Lorna Goodison CD, Author, Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2017-2021.
 

"As a master writer, he wrote with the painter's brush; a wide sweep when necessary and with precision where appropriate." Rt Hon Percival J. Patterson, ON.
 

These narratives were penned by a seasoned traveller and griot, a multi-faceted man who embraced all with his famous charm and humour. In it, his wit, sarcasm, and sometimes scathing observations, draw attention to our shortcomings and challenge us to answer the questions of if, when, and where we as Jamaicans have gone wrong.
 

Hartley Neita's My Story & Other Stories: A Memoir, significantly contributes to Jamaica's many literary gems.
 

If you read only one book about her this year, this is it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Neita
• Release date: Aug 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9789769695528

Book preview

Introduction

If you have missed Jamaica recently, you will find her in the pages of My Story & Other Stories: A Memoir.

Written by the author of two respected biographies, historian, columnist, social analyst, Press Association of Jamaica veteran and awardee, it is a panacea for the things and times we lost, the renewal of hope and for falling in love with Jamaica all over again.

Its magnificent canopy spreads across the memories of an emerging nation—from the simpler country-life vistas of days long gone, to a seat in the assemblies of nation builders that allowed him personal intervention and first-hand observations of the toss and turns of the crossover to Independence.

But this is not a history book or biography. This three-part chronology is a collection of writings updated by we editors. In it, Hartley leads the reader, chapter by chapter, story after story and scene by scene, on a sentimental ride past the memories and signposts of his life.

Part I, is a fascinating word picture of an era when whole villages adopted the child. It recounts a time when he, like them, played cricket in the schoolyard, valued neighbours and elders, and adhered to ol’-tyme good manners. These are recollections of the never-to-return Jamaica of the first half of the 1900s, remembrances of family and friends, and boarding at his beloved alma mater, Jamaica College.

Then Part II, and the time-honoured tradition of the big city move and his entry into journalism through the doors of the Old Lady of Harbour Street. On his typewritten pages, he introduced his readers to the great musicians, entertainers, writers, street preachers, and leaders of the past. Here are travel stories, music and entertainment, relationships and friends, politics, politicians, and local legends. These were the prime years of Hartley Neita—young civil servant, dashing man-about-town, family man, and then tragically, a widower. Midway through his life, he is a romantic, a playboy and sports lover, a policy and political adviser, a journalist, historian, public relations master, consultant and communicator extraordinaire.

Part III introduces his golden years, in which he faces the final chapters of life, seeing mortality through the eyes of an elderly retiree, parent, grandfather, and always a storyteller.

At first, he believed that the stories, newspaper columns, prime ministerial speeches, and policy papers he wrote should remain archived in dusty newspaper vaults and the memories of nostalgic readers. But reflecting on the absolute wealth of content scripted into more than 1,800 published writings, he realised he had more to say. Some things to dust off, take a fresh look at, and once again share.

Here is the culmination of that process. It provides context to students of history and sociology and those who, in their letters to him, requested, sometimes demanded he re-publish his delightful storytelling for future generations.

These stories are in his pleasant, easily read style that fills the heart and sometimes breaks it. Nostalgia is revered, the diaspora embraced, and there is pride and confidence that we are what he did not doubt—that Jamaica is a God-blessed land.

So, we present My Story & Other Stories, a refreshingly updated collection of Hartley Neita’s writings. A Jamaican storybook with personal best wishes from the author, who shared his life and passion with generations of Jamaicans.

Lance Neita, Co-editor.

**

Preface

Perhaps, Hartley was a descendant of West-African griots, or jeli’s, the oral historians who passed on historical narratives and oral traditions of family, a village, or a people, and served as advisors to royalty. I fully believe he was, and I will tell you why.

My father was a living archive and storyteller, a weaver of tales, legends, and historical facts. His stories spoke to the indomitable spirit of the Jamaican family, the strength of character and community, and the greatness of a people whom he humbly believed had created one of the greatest nations on the face of the earth.

Many years ago he travelled the globe with Prime Minister Hugh Shearer as a delegation member. The mission; to establish relationships with developed, lesser developed, and independent nations including Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Liberia, Uganda, and Zambia.

On one of those African-nation visits with Minister of State Dudley Thompson ¹, they toured the site of an ancient village deep in that country’s interior. It was a recent discovery, and anthropological excavations and studies were ongoing. He told us that as the party disembarked from their vehicles, an eerie sense of déjà vu came over him. He felt a chill. He said it was as if he heard a country village—children playing, the back-and-forth of women talking and laughing, and smelled the smoke from their cooking. Yet, the site was uninhabited.

Their guides—non-African anthropologists with no roots in the continent but with doctorates and years of experience—displayed their discovery with pride. They explained their excavations, the physical layout, and the types of structures which stood at the site and painted a vivid picture of how those villagers would have lived. They pointed to shallow depressions of varying lengths in the ground and sought to explain how families stored their food, tools and weapons in them. But Hartley said no, those were where the household had slept. For, on hot nights, the earth in them was cool while, in the cold months, the ground was warm, and they placed clay pots with hot coals by their feet and wrapped themselves in their blankets. He had lived it he said. Felt it in his bones and was at home from the moment he arrived.

He was a griot returning to an ancestral home.

Hartley began writing for newspaper publications as a seventeen year old teen, in 1946. It marked his first stint as a contributor to the Daily Gleaner and later the Jamaica Star newspaper as an entertainment correspondent, along with other publications. Decades later, The Gleaner began publishing his series of weekly columns (from hundreds in his collection still unpublished); Reflections, This Day in our Past, Interesting Historical Highlights, Historical Highlights, Hartley Neita Tells, and various Saturday and Sunday features and short stories.

Hartley came to live with my family and me after a brief but severe illness. He was understandably reluctant, wondering what the future held and what the readjustment from being a loner would bring. Later, he my wife that he never realised how lonely he had been, living by himself. As apprehensions faded, he relished having his grandchildren around, even if they had him at their beck and call.

He had written biographies on two prime ministers by this; Hugh Shearer: A Voice for The People and Jamaica’s Forgotten Prime Minister, Donald Sangster. Now, he was busy researching and writing newspaper columns and magazine features, papers, memoirs and reviews for corporate clients and friends.

Shortly after submitting the final manuscript of the Sangster biography, he began work on The Search, the story of five Jamaica College boys who went missing in the Blue Mountains. It was published in June of 2008, with the Donald Sangster biography slated for publication some months later. Hartley was on a roll and almost immediately set to work writing another book. This time, he selected a completely different genre—the most transformative event in southern Clarendon up to the 1940s; the Vernam US Air Force Base, known ever after as Vernamfield. Hartley finished the first chapter in under a month and assured me he would complete the book in another six.

Frankly, I was stunned and somewhat disappointed.

Stunned because of the speed at which he was writing. The research had started a month before after informing the readers of his newspaper columns about his plan. The response was overwhelming. Numerous persons, many residing overseas, who not only had strong memories of Vernam but had worked there or had photographs, documents, or memorabilia they were eager to share, contacted him. They encouraged him to write what they considered their story, and he was excited. Hartley tried, in vain to get me as excited as he was, but I could not see the story as a book, and told him so. He laughed but was not deterred, saying I would soon eat my words.

Why disappointed? Because I badly wanted him to write his autobiography. After all, Hartley had held an unparalleled front row and also a behind-the-scenes seat to many transformative events, from pre-independent Jamaica and up to that point in his life. For the truth be told, as a senior civil servant, advisor, confidante, and friend to key decision-makers, he had more than a casual hand in formulating policy, and in national events of the past half-century.

Hartley rarely placed himself front-and-centre in these recollections, nor conversations or writing. Faced with a choice of adding his name to an event in which he played a meaningful or historical role, he would opt to write about himself in the third person (as he did in the Shearer and Sangster biographies) or not at all. We argued about it, but I eventually coaxed him into having his name in a larger typeface on the cover of The Search, as he firmly believed that readers were not interested in him as the author, only in its content. It was difficult to get him to agree that his name as the author was a drawing card to his readers.

Towards the close of 2008, Hartley reassessed his new year plans. The Gleaner Company had earlier informed him that,This Day in Our Past would become an in-house column in the following year. He had expected it, but it was still a blow, considering he had years of material already prepared. But by then he had come to realise he was something of a brand with an instantly recognisable name, and it was time to make the most of it.

He worked hard at his computer all week and handed me a thick folder containing a typed stack of newspaper columns that weekend.

‘Gary, I need your help. I need to republish these in a book,’ he said.

Together, we would rewrite where necessary, edit and discard less interesting ones altogether (I had no idea how complex and time-consuming that seemingly simple task would become over the years, or how painful it would be to discard some articles for want of book space). So we set to work.

We strategised for hours after I came home from my office one evening in December. He was excited as we mapped out plans for the coming year. He would create a blog and a website, begin embracing social media, write a weekly series of historical anecdotes on Jamaican sport, and importantly, begin work on his autobiography (Thank God, I thought. Finally).

Sadly it wasn’t to be. Hartley passed away the following morning, December 12, 2008, shortly after an early morning meeting at our home with his graphic artist and friend, Michelle Welsh.

The contents of that folder, plus writings later discovered and included, are only a small selection of stories he wrote and the themes he returned to time and again; of his childhood in a small village in Clarendon, of family and friendships gained and lost through the years. Of a mother’s love, and a father’s guidance. Of good manners, brought-upsy, common courtesy—and cricket at Glenroy Oval. And of the rains, which came to the Vere plains in May and October and chased the day’s heat.

I heard Hartley while putting this collection together, and while attempting to do rewrites in his style. His voice was in every story. At times they have made me shake my head, smile, laugh, stifle a tear or just break down and bawl. You might, too.

So, this is my father’s story — and other stories.

Gary Neita

**

1 Ambassador Dudley Thompson OJ, QC, Pan Africanist, Rhodes Scholar & freedom fighter, held many government and parliamentary portfolios. Ambassador to Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Namibia, he practised law in Jamaica, East Africa & the Caribbean with distinction.

PART I

My Story

Hartley Neita portrait, in his late 20s.

Hartley Neita. in his late 20s.

ONE

My Village

The Most Important Day of My Life

The day was

a Sunday in December. The place? A village in upper Clarendon.

The day before, the SS Sixnola sailed out of Kingston Harbour destined for London with four hundred crates of grapefruit for the British market. The fruit came from citrus groves in Manchester, St Ann and St Catherine.

Elections for the House of Representatives were in the air, but today the candidates rested their voices. A few went to church to pray for victory at the polls.

Marcus Garvey, although having a problem with his seat in the KSAC ¹ was nevertheless campaigning all over the island for the candidates of his People’s Political Party, the PPP. Yesterday, he held meetings in Ocho Rios, St Ann’s Bay and Brown’s Town in St Ann, urging voters to vote for Manneseh Scott, a pen keeper ² of Wakefield, Bamboo, in St Ann.

A Chevrolet motor car was stolen from Mrs. Hooker last night after she parked it on Wild Street in Kingston. It was recovered by the police the next day along Rockfort Road, used but undamaged.

It being Sunday there were religious services and meetings in every town and village. Mr. Nathaniel Jacks and Mr. M. H. Solomon conducted a Chanukah musical service at the Duke Street Synagogue in Kingston.

Newspaper advertisements that day advised slim-built people to take Carnol to round out the hollows and put flesh on their bodies. Mothers read that White’s Cream Vermifuge, a sure and hapless worm repellent will make the symptoms of restless sleep and loss of flesh caused by round and pinworms in their children, disappear.

Employees of B. and J. B. Machado, cigar manufacturers, were enjoying Sunday lunch of curried goat and rice and peas with their families, happy because the company had provided a free insurance scheme for their benefit.

At the movies, The Garden of Eden starring Corrine Griffiths in modern dress was showing at the Palace in East Kingston, while at the Movies Theatre in Cross Roads, the feature was A Dangerous Woman, a 100% talking movie! ³

Someone must have spanked me on my bare bottom that Sunday. I must have cried, while being deliriously happy at having escaped my cage ending nine months of darkness.

I do not know. I do not remember, for it was the day of my birth, December 29, 1929.

The most important day of my life.

Granville and Abigail Neita, parents of Hartley Neita

Granville and Abigail Neita, parents of Hartley Neita. Hartley Neita Photo Collection © Lance Neita All Rights Reserved

**

Whistling the Wind

A windmill on the Clarendon plains.

The windmill was silent in the early hours after dawn. …

There was once a well in my village that provided water for everyone.

At its top was a weather vane, and we could see the direction from which the wind came, and where it went. The windmill was silent in the early hours after dawn. There was no wind, but after mid-morning it began to blow from the South across the broad Clarendon plains from the far-away sea, lightly at first, and gradually becoming heavier and heavier, spinning the windmill faster and faster.

The water flowed into a concrete tank atop four fifteen-foot-tall pillars. When it was full, a man employed by the parochial board disconnected the pump, preventing it from overflowing and going to waste. Until about two in the afternoon when the wind became tired of blowing from so far South. So the windmill rested until the next morning.

The rain came heavily in our village twice every year: in May and in October. Night and day, day and night. And it poured.

The wind blew heavily then, and the tank was full all the time, although we did not need it as much. We played board horse at the edge of the road when the rain stopped for short spells, racing short sticks in the rushing roadside gutters and ran and hopscotched from puddle to puddle. Few cars and trucks drove the road in those times, and the drivers were kind and polite. They drove slowly and carefully because they knew we would be walking and playing carelessly, even though our parents warned us of the danger.

It was dry during the other ten months. The earth became rock hard. The air was hot and burnt our nostrils as we breathed. For days, too, the wind was light. The tank went dry, and we depended on the Public Works Department’s sprinklers to carry water from the Rio Minho four miles away. Because it was hot, we drank a lot of water during those times. And the water was sweet.

We gathered in groups looking up at the silent windmill and whistled the wind. Then, we saw the leaves of the trees gently tickled by the breeze’s breath and felt it kissing our faces all over. Tenderly. Had we known what a lover’s whisper was like we would have been in rhapsody.

The blades of the windmill moved, inch by inch. We heard the shaft struggle, creaking as it turned slowly inside the well’s hole, and the water it sucked up trickled into the tank. One drip at a time.

No one dared tell us that our whistling did not bring the wind.

**

The Villages of Yesteryear

Maggoty Square, St Elizabeth. © Amador Packer.

Maggoty Square, St Elizabeth. © Amador Packer.

Ask anyone in Jamaica over sixty years of age who lived in a village during their youth, and they’ll tell you the same stories.

It is as if each was the twin of another and yet another, and so on. For example, each had a village square. Sometimes it was there because two roads crossed somewhere in the centre. Or it was just that the road, passing through, widened to allow villagers to gather for holidays and ceremonies.

One thing is for sure. Every village square had a Chinese grocery, each grocery had the same design, and all smelled identical. The mixed scents of their merchandise were heady, aromatic, and memorable.

The counter circled three sides of the interior of the shop. To the right as you entered was the bar with rum, beer, and other spirits. Some rums, like One Dagger, Two Dagger, Three Dagger, Daggaree, Green Seal, and Applemoney, have long disappeared into the mists of time. Yes, those were names of popular rums back then. Red Stripe beer was there, seemingly from the beginning of our time. That section sold Polo, Cricket, and Four Aces cigarettes, long coils of moist, aromatic, rope tobacco and La Tropical De Luxe cigars made by B. and J. B. Machado, a Cuban family that immigrated here and eventually controlled the local tobacco industry. Then there were the aerated waters that are no more, like Kelly’s Grape and Pineapple.

On the main counter were large mason jars filled with sweets; toffee, chocolate balls, Bustamante Backbone, mint balls and mint sticks, lollipops, and paradise plums. Glass cases kept penny bullas, sweet biscuits in rolls, cut-cake—or wasp-nest as we called them—and sugar buns. At one end were the scales that weighed the flour, sugar, salt, and salt fish.

Behind the counters were shelves with every imaginable item needed by households. Your mother needed cloth to make clothes for you and your siblings? It was there. Your father needed slates, exercise books and lead pencils for his sons and daughters? He would find them there.

Outside, on the shop piazza, were large barrels with mackerel and shad and a kerosene oil drum, next to which four old men sat playing dominoes, checkers, or ludi ⁴. All evening, and late into the night.

The Chinese grocer could speak a little English, but his wife, who sat in the doorway to their living area in the back, spoke none—or so we thought. She smiled and sat all day, saying not a word.

A house nearby had a sign advertising, Dressmaking done here. Close by were a blacksmith whose hammer rang out all day on his anvil, a tailor, a barber sometimes, and a small carpenter’s shop where coffins were made for the village’s dearly departed. Thinking back, I realise we owe those blacksmiths a debt of gratitude, for they kept us mobile with horseshoes and iron wheel rims during the war years when motor vehicle owners could not obtain gasoline or tyres and had to park their vehicles. If there was no resident tinsmith in the village, blacksmiths were the ones who soldered cooking pots when they had holes and made drinking cups from empty condensed milk tins—with a handle if you please. They were essential members of every community.

The post office or postal agency was near the square. So, too, were the church, the elementary school, and a police station with one corporal and two constables.

A short distance away was the cricket and football field, where many brilliant cricketers and footballers had played their first ball-games as youngsters.

These villages have grown and become towns, and their elementary schools, have probably become all-age schools. Soon there will be a secondary school. The blacksmith is a relic of the past. A supermarket has replaced the Chinese grocery shop, a mechanic’s shop repairs motorcars, and pride-of-place belongs to a service station filled with route taxis.

We have come a long way, baby. Yet, I sometimes wonder about the way we got here.

*

Hartley Neita’s Jamaican Memories

August 25, 1934: Mrs. E. Hunter of Benbow near Blackstonedge in St Ann, wakes after a deep, night-long sleep to find that her shop was broken into by thieves who stole 29 bars of soap, 7 large tins of milk, 125 packs of cigarettes, 20 bottles of aerated water, 8 tins of bully beef, and 4 tins of herring. They ate a late supper and left a note for Mrs. Hunter on the counter that read: We will not distress the shop anymore this time for we hope to come again.

May 2, 1940: Because of the war between England and Germany, that started last September, Jamaicans begin to feel its impact on their lives through various restrictions and codes of conduct in business. With immediate effect, new anti-hoarding regulations are issued by the Defense Control Authority. No one may have in his possession, hold, keep, store or have under his control in any manner whatever, more than 40 bags of rice, 50 bags of flour, 20 bags cornmeal, 5 barrels with salted beef, 5 pieces dried salted cod, 1,000 lbs. pickled fish, 20 cases corned beef, 30 cases condensed milk, 5 barrels biscuits and crackers, 50 gallons of coconut oil, and other commodities. The fines and sentences are severe.

February 27, 1942: Steps to ensure the Corporate Area’s safety in the event of an air raid by German planes, are announced by V. C. Alexander, the Chief ARP Warden. Ten auxiliary fire stations which will be used in cases of emergency or during practices are identified. There are also a number of first aid stations, among them, the Admiral Town, Half-Way Tree, Franklin Town, and Smith Village police stations. A number of public buildings have been provided with sand bags as a precaution against incendiary bombs.

July 11, 1942: The management and staff of Allied Cycle Shop in Kingston, close their shutters when scores crowd the store to buy new bicycles and parts because of the announcement that petrol was shortly to be rationed, and used only for essential services. Already motor vehicle owners are turning in their licence discs and registration plates to the collector general. The rationing is due to the war in Europe between England and Germany, which led to a shortage of petrol, tyres and other transport supplies. As a result, buggies and bicycles are becoming the main forms of personal transport.

**

The Early Years

The Congregational Disciples of Christ Church, Four Paths, built in 1834. The original wood structure, bell tower and sash windows were replaced in 1934 with cut stones, steel and mortar. © 2022 Gary Neita.

Four Paths’ Congregational Disciples of Christ Church built in 1834. © 2022 Gary Neita.

I lived my first four years in Mount Providence, a small village near Chapelton in Clarendon.

I remember very little of life there. What comes to memory are fleeting glimpses of places and events, like straining my eyes to see through the morning mist in the Rio Cobre Gorge.

I’ve since discovered it was a village of small farmers. Each family owned one or two acres of land. They grew bananas, citrus, coffee, avocado pears, cocoa, a few clumps of cane, and hills of yam, which they reaped for the women to take to the Chapelton market (long ago known as Chapel Town as it was believed the village took its name from the church) and for their daily meals. Every family had a donkey, or two, and a mule, and they reared goats and pigs and poultry.

My father was the headmaster of the elementary school in the district. There was one assistant teacher, and it enrolled eighty children, but the maximum number attending was fifty. On Fridays, only fifteen or so came; the others stayed at home to help reap the food and fruit for their mothers to take to the market. It was the village of my first four years.

Then my father heard of a vacancy for a headmaster at the Four Paths Elementary School, four miles as the crow flies, ten and more by road in those days. At my young and tender age that was the other side of Jamaica. He applied and was appointed.

I remember my next twelve years in Four Paths as if crumpled into one day—yesterday. Four Paths was dramatically different to Mount Providence, where nights were trembling cold. Here, it was hot, and it was dry. It rained only two months each year, May and October, but it poured and poured in those months. We had a zinc roof, and the rainfall was loud, beating on it like a drum. Gutters at the edge of the zinc carried rainwater to drums set at the four corners that overflowed with each deluge. In the yard of our new home, known as Teacher’s Cottage, was a tall hog plum, two cashews, and later it had a calabash tree. The schoolyard adjacent to our house had a logwood tree, three wild cherries, and a hog plum. My new school had more children attending and a pupil-teacher, the now Rev. Stanford Webley, who had two assistant teachers.

Ours was a village of not more than fifty, perhaps sixty houses that began just beyond the Webley’s home and ended at the well, two hundred yards from the crossroads and the market. From there, it stretched to the Waddell’s beyond the railway station. I remember the family names; Webley, Edwards, Grandison, Allison, Lawson, Mills, Waddell, Howe, McTaggart, Burrell, Givans, Shim, McFarlane, and in later years, the Smiths, the Davies, the Wrights, and others. I discovered early on that the fifty or sixty families were one great family. Everybody knew everybody.

The village had four roads, as the name suggests. One headed easterly to May Pen ⁵ and after passing through, went on to Porus. The other went westerly towards Osbourne Store and Toll Gate—all paved. Another went to York Pen, and Parnassus in the South, while the fourth went North to Mocho, Richmond Park, and Smith Village. Marl and stone covered these last two. In my early years we had no electricity, no telephone, and no domestic water supply. So, it was the bottle lamp, word of mouth, and the monkey jar. More on them at another time.

Four Paths was the hub for several sugar cane estates and large properties: Parnassus, Pleasant Valley, York Pen, Denbigh, Sheckles Pen, and St Jago at Osbourne Store. It was the gateway into the Mocho Mountains; to Brixton Hill, Thompson Town, and other farming settlements.

But I discovered early on that our village life had six focal points that all else revolved around. These were the church, the school, the railway station, the post office, the market, and the legendary cricket field, Glenroy Oval.

The Congregational Church I attended was one of the first five established by missionaries in rural Jamaica after Emancipation. The original wood structure, bell tower, and sash windows, were replaced in 1934 with cut stones, steel, and mortar. We didn’t have a resident parson until sometime in the 1950s. Almost all the babies were christened there, and the bell tolled for many a death, whether churchgoer or not. Most adults attended, if not every Sunday, at least at Easter and Christmas.

The choir was one of the finest, and I don’t say that lightly. I can recall Dickie Vassell, Ena, Lauris, Gwendolyn, Madge, and Gifford Skipper Lawson, Edna and Mae Waddell, the railway station master C. G. Bailey, and Mr. Burke-Green. Our choir sang in Kingston, Brixton Hill, and Porus, and theirs visited us, along with famous tenor Granville Campbell and soprano Blanche Savage-Taylor, who came and praised God with their gifted voices. Now, do not say I said, but some voices from the choir would attend Ms. Flyter’s bar after service to clear the throat so to speak.

School, our second village centre, was held in the church hall, a wooden building with a porch and bell tower, sash windows, and wooden jalousies. By 1867, thirty-seven years later and two years after the Morant Bay Rebellion ⁶, it had grown to 60 pupils. So, the government built a school, and when my father came here in 1934 to teach, 150 were enrolled and the weekly average attendance was 100. Some of the assistant teachers I recall are Miss Hepburn, my aunt Ivy Hamilton, Lauris Burke-Green and later, pupil teachers Zada and Stanford Webley. It was there I first discovered the sweetness of love, swapping love notes at the age of eight with Zada. A heart is carved high on a branch of a cherry tree in the schoolyard with both our initials and Cupid’s arrow piercing it. She subsequently became a full-time teacher.

The school building doubled as a vibrant community centre, where there seemed to be activities every night; 4-H Club and Jamaica Agricultural Society meetings, Jamaica Welfare, elocution contests, concerts, debates, and mock trials. Some great names in Jamaica’s literary world came, including Una Marson, U. Theo McKay, Granville Campbell, Tom Girvan, A. E. T. Henry, Louise Bennett, the wandering songster-troubadours Slim and Sam, ⁷ the brilliant Frats Quintet in their formative years, George Bowen, D. T. M. Girvan, the Reckords, and Eddie Newsy Wapps Burke. I first heard Redver Cooke and The Red Devils play ‘Soldering’, ‘Slide Mongoose’ and ‘Linstead Market’ when our parents danced to them in the schoolroom, to the music of the famous George Moxey, and Lionel Hart orchestras.

One morning each week, we formed a line and held out our fingers for our teacher’s inspection to see if our nails were trimmed and clean. Palms were spanked with a leather strap if they were dirty, and we had to find a sliver of wood and clean away the dirt. We got punished when we misbehaved in class. Boys had to stand on a chair, and girls stood in the corner, the boys sometimes for one hour and often holding up one leg. If we were late, we stood outside during prayers, and then one-by-one, entered and received a flick of the strap on our palms. Excuses were unacceptable.

The railway station was the third centre. Trains were always on time. Watches were set to the clocks on the station master’s office walls and the waiting room, and synchronised with all the stations in Jamaica. VIPs travelled in the first-class coach, where there was a bar, a bartender and a waitress to bring drinks to the privileged few.

Next to the station was the post office, the third centre. It opened all day, working closely with the trains that brought the early morning and late evening mail from both ends of the island.

Then there was the Four Paths market. It opened on Fridays and Saturdays, where housewives in and around the village met, exchanged news and gossip, and bought food grown by the farmers in the hills brought down on donkeys by their wives.

Four Paths and its cricket ground, Glenroy Oval, were familiar to the great Jamaican and West Indies cricketers: George Headley, Ken Weekes, the Bonitto's (Arthur, Neville, and Colin), Hines Johnson, Dickie Fuller, Allan Rae, Irving Iffla, and Ken Rickards. We youngsters had the joy of seeing these greats for free. Headley once scored 57 retired at Glenroy, but the star of both the Four Paths and Clarendon Nethersole Cup teams was Martin Waddell. You see, Clarendon's Nethersole Cup team was made up mainly of Four Paths cricketers. We played and defeated every Senior Cup team in Kingston at Glenroy and even a Costa Rican team there.

I remember watching as Dickie Vassell hit eight sixes in one over off West Indies slow left-arm bowler, George Mudie. The wily captain was Gifford Skipper Lawson, who, with his brother, was the opening pair. Their tactic was to wear down the pace bowlers like L. G. Gooden, Leslie Hylton, and other fearsome Jamaica pacemen, steadying the ship to the rhythmic shouts of 'No!' 'No!' 'No!’ coming from the Four Paths spectators. By the time they got our openers out, their bowlers were weary and fielders restless, so incoming batsmen Martin Waddell, Dickie Vassell, and Bertie Givans dashed off the fifties and sixties.

Where else but Four Paths could a woman have bowled Headley, the man internationally regarded as one of the greatest cricketers of all time, on a bet that she could do so within three balls? That woman was Daisy Waddell-Lawson. And where else but Four Paths could legend tell that Headley was found plumb in front of his wicket by Martin Waddell, but when Martin appealed, he was told by the umpire,

‘You can appeal until nightfall Martin. Nobody came to see you bowl. They came to see George Headley, bat. Not out.’ That umpire was my father. Sadly, Glenroy is no more. The field was ploughed up during the 1970s by a parson who bought it to grow sugar cane.

Where else in Jamaica is there a tiny village the size of Four Paths that produced a Miss Jamaica Farm Queen, three Miss Clarendon Parish beauty queens and a Miss Jamaica (Karlene and Joan Waddell and Suzette Wright). Plus, two presidents of the Jamaica Council of Churches (Rev. C. Evans Bailey and Rev. Stanford Webley), and a chief engineer of the National Water Commission, Leo Lawson? I can’t think of another, can you?

From this tiny dot on a map came the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, a president of the University of Technology, and a minister of finance, Drs Carlton Davis, Ray Davis, and Omar Davies. From the Lawson family, two brothers, Gifford and Alvin, were chairmen of the Clarendon Parochial Board and a son and nephew, Roy, became a councillor. This dot’s families produced beautiful sisters, like the Waddell women of two generations, with Winsome, the Lawson girls, Ruby, Ena, Lauris, Madge, and Gwen, Grace and Suzette Wright and their cousins, and the Smith sisters, Pearl, Myrtle, Imogene, Polly and Jolly. Young men came to Four Paths just to see our beauties. Some later became adopted residents, like retired ambassador Keith Johnson and sportswriters Jack Anderson and Alva Ramsay.

Alexander Bustamante and his secretary, Gladys Longbridge, were frequent social visitors to the village. My father kept a bottle of Johnny Walker for Busta’s visits, who, after two tots, gave my brothers and sister a six-penny silver coin each, saying,

‘Go buy a Bustamante Backbone.’

From ours, they went to Skipper Lawson’s home, Elba, to swig more tots of Johnny and hand more six-penny coins to the Lawson children before driving up the hill to Wint’s Shanty, a mansion and property in Mocho owned by undefeated welterweight boxing champion and well-known physical culturist (as they were then known), T. Kinkead Wint. ⁸

Busta was also a cricket lover and was completely mesmerised by the expensive shoes and uniforms worn by the Four Paths cricket team. After a match he gave a toast to the team, saying

To my friends of equal standing and high repute, I raise my glass as a gesture on my part to express my appreciation to the wonderful cricketers and gentlemen of Four Paths. May you always give every visiting team a damn good beating every time they are stupid enough to think they can beat the Four Paths Cricket Team.

So, these are memories and stories of the Four Paths I grew to love and still do. I’m glad for those early years when I made lifelong friends and for a village that I can say sincerely, quoting George Campbell,

I would kiss this place / This rich scenery /And press it close like a woman to me.

November 15, 2008

*

Hartley Neita’s Jamaican Memories

August 1, 1838: The former owner of newly emancipated slaves informs them that their services are no longer needed on his property if they attend the Emancipation Service at the nearby Four Paths chapel. He dismisses an elderly woman, his long-time faithful slave, for defying him.

October 18, 1935: The first shipment of 48,000 boxes of oranges leaves the island, on the SS Tainui for New Zealand. The order was negotiated by the Citrus Growers Association, and packaged by Lawson Bros. of Four Paths, Sharp Brothers of May Pen, Clarendon, and McGregor’s in Kingston.

December 25, 1935: The Myrtle Bank Hotel’s Christmas-night dance draws Kingston’s and St. Andrew’s social crowd. Admission is two shillings per person, and the dance ends in time for couples to attend midnight services at the Kingston Parish Church, Coke Methodist Church, the North Street Congregational Church, and the Holy Trinity Cathedral.

March 1, 1939: Members of the board of management of the Jamaica Agricultural Society, are presented with a case of a new type of citrus produced by D. D. Phillips of Manchester, as an entrant in the competition promoted by the society to find the perfect orange. ⁹

December 19, 1946: A Four Paths cricket team is named to play a team, including West Indies cricketers George Headley and Ken Weekes at the Glenroy Oval, Four Paths, Clarendon, on New Year’s Day. The home team will be captained by Gifford Lawson and other team members include Martin Waddell, Burke Green, Percy Thomas, Hines Johnson, Laurie Fidee, Johnny Wong Sam, Dickie Vassell, and [teenager] Hartley Neita.

February 20, 1957: Redver Cooke, leader of the Red Devils, one of the top Jamaican orchestras of the 1930s and 1940s, dies suddenly in Montego Bay, while returning to work after lunch. Since retiring, he has worked as a headman with the St James Parish Council.

**

The Growth of a Town

Everyday Jamaican village life, 1930s.

To the West, towards Four Paths, were a string of homes…

May Pen, in Clarendon, was a cluster of little villages when I was a child.

There was a small one at the railway station and another at the bridge over the Rio Minho. It stretched about half a mile along Fernleigh Avenue, on both sides of which were the homes of the wealthy.

At the centre of May Pen itself, surrounding the market and the clock tower, was another village that had Muir Park cricket and football field, the police station, the Stork de Roux hardware store (the owner of which had two beautiful—scratch that—two very beautiful daughters) a Chinese grocery across the square from de Roux’s store, and the cinema, Theatre Clarendon. To the West, towards Four Paths, were a string of homes, an ice-making factory, the citrus plant, and other small businesses.

At the foot of the hill, where the road divided, with one route to Chapelton and the other to Four Paths, was another village, Guinep Tree. At the edge of Guinep Tree was a factory that made rope, grown on a sisal farm between May Pen and Old Harbour.

During my late teens working in May Pen, I think I knew everybody in this cluster of villages, especially girls—the Russells, Palominos and other beautiful belles. Dr Robinson’s family, the Cousins with three beautiful sisters, and the Watts, lived on Sevens Road. There was a restaurant in the centre of this cluster owned by, I seem to recall, the Shagourny family.

Denbigh on the western edge of May Pen was an empty waste of grassland where cattle grazed. A three-mile stretch of road cut through the Denbigh property on its way to Four Paths and had only one building, a one-room at Jacob’s Hut that accommodated Ol’ Fowl, the railway crossing’s bald-headed gatekeeper who kept a pile of stones close at hand for truck-back passengers who had the temerity to call him that.

I doubt if more than 3,000 people lived in this area, maybe a bit more, but memory can be deceiving. But what I do remember was suddenly, May Pen began to grow. It was no longer a cluster of scattered villages and had become a town. So, within four years, I no longer knew everybody.

The growth was not natural. It happened when the US government built an airfield base at Sandy Gully, and a naval base on Little Goat Island on the Clarendon coast in 1941. Three thousand skilled and unskilled workers—carpenters, welders, masons, and plumbers—were employed during the height of the construction on Little Goat Island. They travelled from as far as Kingston in the East, Porus in the West, and Frankfield in the North. They eventually got tired of waking before 5.00 a.m. to catch the train and not reaching home until after 8.00 p.m. So, gradually, they rented rooms in May Pen, later buying lots in Denbigh when auctioneer and developer R. O. Terrier subdivided it.

Jazz orchestras, including well-known impresario Dudley McMillan with his musical revue Hot Chocolate, and the Hugh Coxe Orchestra, entertained the American servicemen at their base club. Or, they patronised their United Service Organisation (USO) Centre on Old Hope Road, the Glass Bucket in Half Way Tree, and Bournemouth Gardens in the East, and closer to home for a little R&R at Marl Hole, Moonglow and Kenny’s in May Pen.

Property values trebled. Before this expansion, land sold for two pounds, then suddenly it cost fifty pounds and more. New suburbs appeared, and today it is one of the largest in Jamaica.

I look forward to seeing towns like Alley (originally known as Withywood), Hayes and others that were just districts and villages when I was a boy, expanding, Vernamfield re-developed when Highway 2000 passes through the area, and the new town at Inverness is built.

*

Hartley Neita’s Jamaican Memories.

May 25, 1941: The first member of the American armed forces to lose his life in Jamaica, the Chief Boatswain Mate of the USS  Bowditch, dies when a bus he is travelling in from Kingston to Old Harbour, crashes into a bridge on Spanish Town Road. The bus was on its way to Old Harbour to take a group of American Marines to Kingston.

May 27, 1941: Construction starts on the United States Navy base at Portland Bight in Clarendon. Two hundred of the three hundred temporary workers who were laid off three days ago are re-employed. These workers are transported from the coast to Goat Island by Old Harbour fishermen.

December 26, 1941: Huggins, a cyclist from May Pen, wins the two-mile race for Class 8-12 and pays 52/- ¹⁰ to his betting supporters at the inaugural cycle meet at the new Denbigh track laid out by A. U. Ricketts, Supt. of Holmwood Training Centre.

May 16, 1942: May Pen, is placed out of bounds for American soldiers and administrative staff on the US airbase at Sandy Gully, in Clarendon. The decision is the result of a fracas that took place in the town a few days ago between the Americans and the May Pen police.

December 24, 1945: May Pen in Clarendon is invaded by the largest group of excursionists from Kingston who travel by train, buses, trucks and cars to celebrate Empire Day, the public holiday that commemorates the birthday of Queen Victoria. By mid-afternoon, liquor and food in the taverns and shops are exhausted, and tempers begin to boil. Luckily, heavy rains send the visitors hurrying to find transportation home, leaving the town undamaged.

September 16, 1955: May Pen is to become the undisputed capital of Clarendon, and an old controversy will be settled by a Bill declaring it the Parish Town of Clarendon and made law. Residents of Chapelton, Four Paths and May Pen ¹¹ have been claiming this distinction for their townships for years. Chapelton claims its Anglican Church was the parish church and unlike May Pen, has a public hospital. Alley’s residents boast of having these too and claim it was the capital of the old parish of Vere.

April 25, 1957: The May Pen police reports that for the past six days, since Good Friday, the jail is without any prisoners. No crime is reported in the town since the Easter Holidays and there has only been one minor motor vehicle accident.

**

A Sharing Village

Rural village scene

Rural village scene.

My father was the son of a farmer who worked the twenty acres of property he owned in Mt. Industry, St Catherine, and he worked it hard.

Those were the days when neighbours got together on each other’s farms to give a day’s work; ploughing, planting, weeding, reaping, and sharing farming chores. They sat late into the night, playing dominoes and draughts and competing in stick-licking contests against each other. This was the genesis of the annual Put Work into Labour Day programme. ¹²

He never lost his love for the land, even after becoming a teacher. On the property was a school garden where he taught the male pupils the basics of agriculture: to mound the roots of tomatoes and place ashes around the plant, pick gormandisers off the stems, sow lettuce and cabbage seeds, mulch, and conserve water by dripping it at the roots of plants.

He planted gungo peas along the fence at home, and the job for my younger brother and me just before Christmas was to pick the pods and shell the peas. I liked it, and I remember how pleasant it smelled. My mother kept a few quarts to cook