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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Strolling down remembering lane

by

20140825

Mon­day's T&T Guardian spe­cial edi­tion, Re­mem­ber­ing World Wars 1 & 2 was a de­light. All day I had was to lis­ten to a set of old fo­gies call­ing and say­ing, "yuh see de Guardian to­day?" My chil­dren won­dered what the fuss was about. In­deed!

The war news was strange­ly pos­i­tive, "34 Ger­man planes shot down" and 100 tanks cap­tured, claimed the Poles. As all na­tions at war, they ex­ag­ger­at­ed. "Cham­ber­lain to pro­duce a "Dove' to­day," said one cor­re­spon­dent, a Mr Ar­gus. In ret­ro­spect, he had no idea what he was talk­ing about. Per­haps he was a lo­cal. Fas­ci­nat­ed­ly one head­line said "Mus­soli­ni seeks peace­ful so­lu­tion." That is lie! With­in eight months he had in­vad­ed France as she was about to sur­ren­der to the Ger­mans. "Ah want ah food" was alive and kick­ing in 1940.

The best read­ing how­ev­er came from be­tween the lines and from lo­cal news and ads. My friend Ma­jor Pain point­ed out to me, one rainy morn­ing on top of Chan­cel­lor, that some­one was sell­ing 75 acres of land in the East for TT$3,500! The Colo­nial Sec­re­tary's Of­fice on Au­gust 31, 1939 was invit­ing ap­pli­cants for the post of part-time med­ical of­fi­cer in To­co with a salary of $1,920 per an­num and free quar­ters.

Du­ties in­clud­ed at­ten­dance at health of­fices; at­ten­dance at the homes of some­thing called "pau­per pa­tients." The "usu­al fees" would be paid for vac­ci­na­tions, prob­a­bly small­pox be­cause that was all that was avail­able at that time, views (deaths?), port health work (in To­co? They must have had plen­ty re­la­tions with To­ba­go), coro­ner's work and at­ten­dance at court.

Apart from the salary, lit­tle has changed.Imag­ine, Murine, "for tired eyes," was around and you could buy an eight horse pow­er Mor­ris For­dor (not four door but For­dor), "very good con­di­tion, bar­gain" for $525 from Chas. McE­near­ney & Co.

On Sep­tem­ber 5, Page 5 is a small no­tice, "Ger­man aliens in Eng­land de­tained." This led to one of the most shame­ful events in lo­cal his­to­ry that is nev­er taught in schools nor com­ment­ed up­on. Ger­mans, main­ly peo­ple of the Jew­ish faith, who had fled Ger­many and set­tled in T&T, peace­ful­ly con­tribut­ing to so­ci­ety and the econ­o­my, were locked up in small con­cen­tra­tion camps right here in Trinidad, for the du­ra­tion of the war.

There are hid­den sto­ries that one hears at so­cial gath­er­ings to­day, of deaths from beat­ings in those camps and of car agen­cies hand­ed over to the lo­cal Eng­lish gen­try.

The same lo­cal gen­try no doubt ap­pre­ci­at­ed Col­gate Tal­cum pow­der. Pow­der­ing your face in the heat ap­par­ent­ly was a ne­ces­si­ty but no­tice how the ad says that it al­so makes your skin "clear." I won­der if the com­pe­ti­tions for Miss Clear Com­plex­ion be­gan around that time?

In the "Let­ters" col­umn a Mr "Suf­fer­er" com­plained about the hard­ship ex­pe­ri­enced by the res­i­dents of Di­a­mond Vil­lage in get­ting to and from San Fer­nan­do, "es­pe­cial­ly on Sat­ur­days and Mon­days," be­cause the Par­adise Bus Com­pa­ny bus, from Bar­rack­pore to San Fer­nan­do through Di­a­mond Vil­lage, nev­er had room. "Would the au­thor­i­ties please make the nec­es­sary in­ves­ti­ga­tions and oblige, as it would be a great re­lief." Yuh want to make a bet the bus still full and peo­ple still wait­ing?

It was in­ter­est­ing to see that in 1939 the Guardian was ask­ing let­ter writ­ers to give their "full name and ad­dress," even if they used a nom de plume. It still is. Class is class.

By the next year, 1940, the head­lines on Sep­tem­ber 4, spoke to the US trad­ing 50 de­stroy­ers with Britain for Caribbean bases. This then al­lowed in­nu­mer­able Trinida­di­an women to mar­ry Amer­i­cans and get away from Trinidad and for Er­ic Williams to "walk in the rain," our equiv­a­lent of holy mar­tyr­dom, and claim back Ch­aguara­mas for long suf­fer­ing Trinida­di­ans to use for J'Ou­vert fetes in Ju­ly.

"Talk of Trinidad," that per­fect­ly up­beat so­ci­ety col­umn by the Hum­ming Bird was in full swing and war­bled on won­der­ful­ly about "The crowd­ed ball­room at the Coun­try Club" com­plete with a pic­ture of the wife of the then gov­er­nor, La­dy Young. Now there's a road I would re­name.

The winds of change must have been in the air or as cyn­ics would ap­pre­ci­ate, the smell of mon­ey, be­cause Madame Hum­ming Bird even men­tioned the Por­tuguese Club on Queen's Park West and a Chi­nese din­ner to be held at Prince's Build­ing for Les Amantes So­ci­ety. Not to be out­done the own­ers of the Ho­tel De Paris, at the cor­ner of Ma­rine Square and Aber­crom­by St, ad­ver­tised its ice-cold beer and in­vit­ed the hard work­ing busi­ness­man to step in on the way home and fire one.

For those who had one too many and de­vel­oped what was cute­ly called a "sour stom­ach," you could take a De­Witt's pow­der and in a "few mo­ments pain and dis­com­fort will go." This stom­ach pow­der thing seemed to be pop­u­lar be­cause there was an­oth­er ad, "Maclean brand stom­ach pow­der" for the same prob­lem. This ad­ver­tise­ment is prob­a­bly one of the ear­li­est ones pur­port­ing to have been writ­ten by some­one who had been "suf­fer­ing very bad­ly with "stom­ach dis­or­ders" and "gas­tric trou­ble", a dou­ble wham­my of the same thing.

Ex­am­ples of this sort of ad­ver­tis­ing are to­day be­ing seen with in­creas­ing fre­quen­cy, with com­pa­nies send­ing out so­phis­ti­cat­ed "press re­leas­es" that are then used as ar­ti­cles by lazy young re­porters.Yes in­deed, Tri­nis al­ways knew how to have a good time.


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