An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

James Cum­mings, in his sem­i­nal work on The Bar­rack-Yard Dwellers, said, "For the peo­ple of the bar­rack-yards, the sun just had to rise to­mor­row." By this he meant that decades of eco­nom­ic penury in the post-eman­ci­pa­tion ur­ban space, lead­ing up to the mas­sive slum clear­ance ex­er­cis­es of the 1950s, had made the dwellers of the poor­er parts of Port-of-Spain mas­ters of cop­ing with pover­ty.

In the ar­eas of Queen Street, Char­lotte and Quar­ry Street where the bar­rack-yards pro­lif­er­at­ed, there were oc­ca­sion­al wood­en cot­tages owned by more "re­spectable" coloured peo­ple, Venezue­lan refugees flee­ing po­lit­i­cal un­rest, and white peo­ple of re­duced means. Many of them would be on the verge of not know­ing where to­mor­row's bread would come from.

One cop­ing strat­e­gy was to open a small "one-door" shop in the front premis­es of one's house. This could be in the porch or as a wood­en ex­ten­sion.

The state­room at the front of a house is com­mon­ly called a par­lour. Since these makeshift shops of­ten oc­cu­pied the afore­men­tioned space, the en­ter­pris­es them­selves be­came known as par­lours. Few, if any, Trinida­di­ans are aware that this was how these vi­tal com­mu­ni­ty es­tab­lish­ments came to be called thus.

The par­lour, in ur­ban and rur­al ar­eas, be­came a fo­cal point of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion where peo­ple, young and old, could meet and ex­change the lat­est gos­sip. Par­lours of yore were places where the fare was man­u­fac­tured al­most en­tire­ly by lo­cal hands and where sim­ple treats meant so much.

They were ten­u­ous busi­ness­es where tiny prof­it mar­gins made their pro­pri­etor­ship more a com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice than a get-rich-quick en­ter­prise.

For chil­dren of yes­ter­year, there could be few pleas­an­ter places. Large glass jars would be filled with sug­ar-coat­ed par­adise plums, kaisa balls, tangy tamarind balls, mo­lasses-drip­ping toolum, pink sug­ar cake and paw-paw balls.

A huge block of ice, de­liv­ered by a cart in the ear­ly morn­ing, would be rest­ing on a piece of sack­ing, swad­dled in straw to keep it from melt­ing too quick­ly. This ice, of course, would be vig­or­ous­ly shaved, rammed in­to a met­al cup and then cov­ered in sweet, red syrup for a pen­ny, and for an­oth­er cop­per, laced with con­densed milk to re­sult in that much-rel­ished treat, snow­ball.

Out­side of the city and in the coun­try­side, there were par­lours too, most­ly run by "ce­les­tials with pig-tails and thick-soled shoes grin­ning be­hind cedar coun­ters, among stores of Bryant's safe­ty match­es, Hunt­ley and Palmer's bis­cuits, and All­sopp's pale ale..." this ac­cord­ing to Charles Kings­ley, writ­ing in 1870 about a Chi­nese par­lour in the deep coun­try­side.

The coun­try par­lour of­ten was the oa­sis of rur­al trav­ellers, ac­cord­ing to one ac­count from 1914: "Restau­rants are rare in the West In­dies, ex­cept in the prin­ci­pal towns, but it is gen­er­al­ly pos­si­ble to ob­tain some­thing of a sim­ple kind, which on this oc­ca­sion con­sist­ed of that nice aer­at­ed drink called ko­la, to­geth­er with buns from a stall at the en­trance of the same shop."

So then, this is the ori­gin of the par­lour, a small-busi­ness mod­el which still thrives to­day.