Our Second House – Part I

From Grove we moved to a little house just on the outskirts of Ocho Rios’ bay area. It was a three room house on what is now Main Street out towards the western end of the town. It was directly across from Our Lady of Fatima, a Catholic Church and school. The house is now demolished and a commercial building occupies the space.

I don’t recall entirely the circumstance surrounding why my father left Shaw Park Hotel but I felt that my mother had a pivotal role in the decision. Being a people person I can see how she would have hated the isolation of Grove. In any event my father left Shaw Park Estates and started working at a hotel out towards White River; it could have even been Tower Isle Hotel. He was commuting on his bicycle and it was during one of these commute that he almost lost his life. He was hit by a car that knocked him off his bicycle and down a steep rocky precipice. He ended up in St Anns Bay Hospital with severe head injuries. It was the result of these injuries that some felt caused the memory lapses in the latter part of his life.

I think I must have been about four or five when we started living there. I estimate that because I was still riding ‘under bar’ and I was not yet in primary school. But I was attending the Seventh Day Adventist’s school in Milford. This in itself was a remarkable accomplishment by my mother, for she must have been brilliant in applying the necessary pressure and persistence on my father for him to agree to this. You see, for him it meant going against his entire side of the family (his father, his brothers and sisters) plus the entire Jehovah’s Witness congregation in Ocho Rios; a gut wrenching, conscience strewn and unnerving decision. Or maybe it was just love for his wife, but allowing his child to get any education in a religious house other than a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witness I know did not come easy to my father. But my mother’s mantra for me was education, education, education and she would have traded with the devil to make that happen. It was not the last time too that she pulled that off.

Our house was one of two that that was located on that property. In the other which was bigger but older lived the Greens (I think that was their name) and they had a son called Cutie who was about my age and a daughter whose name slips me. Both houses faced out onto a common yard with a big almond tree in the western corner of the property. Under the tree was the communal stand pipe. It was not that we did not have running water in the houses for I distinctly remember a kitchen area and an outside shower area behind our house. But Cutie and myself seem to have spent a lot of time together under that almond tree, all our games and activities happened there. I remember it as a happy place and not just for the almonds; which you stoned off when they were ripe to get the fruit and when dry you broke open for the nut inside, and the leaves, when you really bored or destitute, you could make a poor kite out of it. On our side of the property was a breadfruit tree. I mention this because thinking about it now I realize that every house that we ever lived in my father always seem to manage a breadfruit tree. I guess it was his way of ensuring that there was always food.

I will bring you Part II soon but first I want to go Back to Lucky Hill. Until then...

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