In Milford My Sister Joined Us

It was here in Milford that I first met my sister. I don’t remember anything leading up to her birth. It was like one day the world revolved around me, at least from the way I saw it and next day there was this thing with everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing around her. I cannot remember exactly when she was born or even if she was born at home or in a hospital; in fact I don’t remember my mother being pregnant or if the pregnancy was difficult. But I do remember distinctly the joy, happiness and pride that exuded from the family with my sister’s arrival.

We had been living in Milford for some time then and our family had become close friends with many families, especially the Swaurez who lived in the house behind us and the Brown’s (I think) who lived further up the road. So we were very much a part of the community. But with my sister’s birth it seemed like we gained new prominence, there was constant activity in the house. She became the center of the activity with everyone talking about her or doing something with her. I think her coming brought some of the happiest times in my mother’s life.

But I remembered it as turning my world upside down. For eleven years I was like an only child; yes I had to share sometimes with Bill, but that was different, or was it? In any case it felt like all of a sudden my prominence was usurped. I now had to share and compete. I remember feeling like an outcast as my sister became the sudden pride and joy of the family. I do not think it was jealousy it was just new. She was still a joy to be around for by association some of the attention would also fall to me. Know something! Not much has changed, today she is still the center of the family and she is still my pride and joy.

My father had started working at Shaw Park Dairy by then. He was the manager. It was just up the road, about a mile or so from where we lived. I think that was the reason why we moved to Milford in the first place. The dairy itself had not been built as yet and it was more like a milking station then with stalls for about eight or ten ‘milk men’ who did the actual milking (no automation then). I remember spending many afternoon there, just helping ( more likely a nuisance), like feeding the cows to keep them quiet while they were being milked and as I got older being trusted with bigger tasks such as measuring out the amount of milk from each cow and later still recording each cows production in a big record book.

The purpose of the dairy was to supply the hotel with milk but they produced much more than the hotel could use. The extra milk had to be trucked to a main dairy in Bog Walk and my father often made these daily deliveries himself. Also I guess as the manager, he had the privilege of using the vehicles during down time for personal use. And so began the most endearing period of my relationship with my father. I was his constant companion, whenever and wherever he was driving; weather it was over to Bog Walk to deliver milk, or to some impenetrable backwoods and bush just to check up on a distant relative that he has not seen in a while, or my favorite, after a hurricane driving around the island to see the damage. The most fascinating thing about these journeys though was that we could go all day without exchanging a single word! A grunt here, a point of his index finger there or a nod of his head (as only a Jamaican would) or my glance in his direction was about the only exchange we did. But the journey was not strained; far from that, it was entertaining, exciting and special in its closeness. It was something I looked forward to and will always remember as a special time. We communicated, it was just not verbal; it was at a higher level.

It was also about this time that I started realizing the remarkable talent for math that my father had. A part of his job was to keep a tally of how many quarts of milk that each cow gave. So there was this huge record book with a cows name on each line and the date in the column and each day you record how many quarts and fraction of a quart of milk that cow gave. Then at the end of each month you had to add up both those rows and columns and make sure they cross foot. My father could do this in one try, all in his head; with no calculator, computer or even an adding machine, and with only an elementary education, no high school. Later on, when the dairy had sent him back to school ( a school down in the Bay that specialize in accounting) I remember him commenting on finding errors in the class textbook. He was that good!

Read more!

We move fron Ochie to Milford

From Ochie we moved up to Milford. It was to one of those ‘row’ houses, that is three rooms stuck to each other in a row. I can remember the exact location. It was about four houses up from the intersection of where the road to Shaw Park/Parry Town intersects with the road from Ocho Rios to Fern Gully. The house was just before where the Shaw Park/Parry Town road splits with the left going on to Parry Town and the right going up to Shaw Park.

The property was not particularly big or interesting. I remember a big bread fruit tree by the gate which I would climb whenever I had to miss school so that I could greet everybody on their way home from school. One of the drawbacks of the house was its close proximity to school. I now had to go home for lunch and gone were the more preferred lunch treats like snow cone, drops, fudge, bullah cake, totoe, gizada, etc. Compared to when we lived in Ochie I now had to save real hard to get some simple treats like icy mints or 'lick and fall back'. A snow cone was now almost out of reach.

Thinking back now though, the house itself was quite remarkable. It was what we would call today an apartment complex. But each 'apartment' was just one room! Ours was the middle. But that one room was sectioned off by curtains and temporary dividers that you felt like it was a whole house in itself. In the very back was the bed room area and even that was sectioned off into my parents area to the left with their big bed and on the right a small area for my cot. In the front on the right was the kitchen and dining area. There was a communal kitchen outside but I don’t think my mother was agreeable to that so my father had rigged up a kerosine stove so that she could cook sometimes inside. To the left of the kitchen area was the living or guest area which became the nursery with a crib when my sister was born. And I can remember Bill being with us sometimes so there was room for him too. All that in one room, and I never thought of it as cluttered, dirty or crowded.

The other ‘apartments’ were just like that. Mr. Brown lived in the first apartment and I don’t remember who lived in the last. He had two daughters, the oldest one’s name I can’t remember for she was older than I. The second one’s name I think was Thibs. She was more my age and we were great buddies. She taught me how to jump rope and double dutch and I taught her how to shoot 'glassy' marbles. Seems like we were almost inseparable for a very long time.

It was not that there were not other kids around. A little further up on the opposite side of the road was another row house/apartment with many kids but for some reason I was hardly ever allowed to go over there. Then further up on the road to Parry Town there was a bunch of kids but these too I do not remember much about them. The only other friend I can remember was Orville (‘ville) Harrison (wow! I have been trying for weeks to remember his name and now it just came to me, just like that, in a flash! I guess by writing it all out the synapses made the linkage). ‘ville was my kite man. With his knack for the construction and my meticulous attention to details I think we made some of the best kites in Ocho Rios.

Kite season for me was special. First you had to start saving deligently for this was an expensive undertaking, it required hard cash and delicate negotiations. When I think I had saved up enough I could then negotiate with ‘ville to build you the kite frame out of bamboo and twine. Depending on the kite size, the season and his costs you negotiated a price. Only when he was done and you had your taunt frame securely hanging from a nail above your bed then you could proceed to your next step, selecting and buying the colored paper. So you would measure carefully and from listening to all the talk from the other kids you would learn which store had the best colors and at what price. Armed with that information you would make your purchase, but with limited funds you wanted to make sue you bought just enough to do the job; with the least left over and more importantly you did not come up short. I think that was my forte. Having bought your colored parchment paper and cut it meticulously to the kite dimensions then it was time to mix the glue from starch and water, making sure it was thick enough to hold but not lumpy to weigh the kite down or unbalance it. Then you go to work at crafting your kite.

Flying kite in Jamaica was something special. None of the kids I knew had enough money to buy a kite. I don't think they even sold them in the stores then, at least not in the ones we frequented. You crafted it from scratch. Each child was expected to have some hand in the creation of his or her own kite. If you were like me and not good at construction you had better develop skills in design to make it look appealing, crafting to glue the many patches of paper together neatly, aerodynamics to tie the perfect knot to balance the kite for elevation, or just the simple skill of flying it to keep it out of trees and your competitors flight path. I think my skill was in the design and measurement. I could figure out how much paper to get with the least left over. That’s probably where my love for math came from.

Then once the kite was made you would wait for that perfect day and that perfect opportunity. My chance would come by making sure I get all my chores done on time and done well so that I could entice my parents to letting me go to Kellington for a day. Kellington was quite a long ways off but it was worth the trip, for it was like the kite flying capital of the area. There was no better way to spend a day than to have your kite out there on a windy afternoon among the other many kites of all sizes, colors and designs just watching them soar, ebb, dive, spiral down and at the last moment rise again; and you hanging onto that taunt line as you maneuver yours to stay afloat all day and out of harms way. But inevitably the end comes; somebody cuts your line and you can only watch helplessly as your kite drifts off into never-never-land, or a down draft comes up and forces your kite into one of those sickening death spirals that shreds your kite into the top of some unreachable tree. Then it’s back to square one.

Read more!