Six­ty-plus years ago, one Thurs­day af­ter­noon (and there is a sto­ry be­hind Thurs­day af­ter­noon horse rac­ing at the QPS) leav­ing St Mar­garet’s Boys An­gli­can School on the oth­er side of Bel­mont and run­ning “pell-mell” through well-known streets and lanes to see the big 6-Fur­long sprint in the QPS for the A-Class hors­es, I reached just in time to stoop un­der the out­side rails at the Sham­rock Bend to see the Great Go­di­va Pink Flower colt out of Fav­il­la, Men­tone, gal­lop­ing at a heart-thump­ing rate with the Bar­ba­di­an jock­ey, By­ron Clarke, aboard, “pulling dou­ble”, the ex­pres­sion to de­pict a horse strain­ing at the bit to gal­lop away from the pack.

The heavy pound­ing of the hooves on the track of these gi­ant thor­ough­breds sent my heart pal­pi­tat­ing. The vi­sion of the ra­di­ant colours worn by the jock­eys, these lit­tle men with tens of thou­sands of pounds of horse­flesh be­neath them, their gog­gles smeared with the dirt from the track have stayed with me, and un­less se­nil­i­ty catch­es up, they will re­main un­til I leave this place.

Wan­der­ing through J’Ou­vert be­tween the pub­lic ten­nis courts and the Memo­r­i­al Park on Up­per Fred­er­ick St, Des­per­a­does and its ren­di­tion of Kitch­en­er’s “Margie” some­time in the 1970s was an­oth­er out-of-the-world ex­pe­ri­ence akin to that of hear­ing High­landers’ play­ing its Bomb Tune, “Let Every Val­ley Be Ex­alt­ed”, Bertie Mar­shall’s high tenors ring­ing to the Heav­ens as if to say to his mak­er “I have done your will my God”; the goose pim­ples reap­pear.

Bri­an Lara’s ex­tra cov­er dri­ve off Ja­son Gille­spie to pull off an out­stand­ing West In­di­an vic­to­ry over Aus­tralia lit the way for years to come, it still does in these gua­va sea­son times. In this same vein, I shall al­ways re­mem­ber Roy “Fred­do” Fred­er­icks (my favourite open­ing bats­man of all times) hook­ing and cut­ting Lillee and Thomp­son at Ade­laide as if they were school­boys.

My boy­hood friends and I sat by a ra­dio in won­der. One late af­ter­noon at the QPO the im­mor­tal Gar­ry Sobers bat­ting against Jeff Brown of Eng­land bowl­ing from the Pavil­ion End on a damp and slow out­field, an off-dri­ve from Sobers hit the fence with a force that fright­ened. Foot­ball in Front De Grand­stand, 1960s, Malvern vs Maple, nil, nil, min­utes left. Jap Brown cross­es from the right wing, Kelvin “KB” Be­rasa climbs over the de­fend­ers and drops a head­er on Lin­coln; Malvern sup­port­ers leave the Sa­van­nah singing “De Same One that made you cry,” Brook Ben­ton. Un­be­liev­able to read­ers, but true as I write, is my beat­ing of Ed­win Roberts in a 100-yard dash, which took place out­side the sand track in the Sa­van­nah. When re­lat­ing the true sto­ry, I am usu­al­ly faced with ut­ter, mock­ing and hi­lar­i­ous dis­be­lief by my friends as I usu­al­ly, at least for the mo­ment of telling, leave out the fact that he gave me half the dis­tance ob­vi­ous­ly prac­tis­ing to fin­ish like a train; he did not catch me and I have a wit­ness.

Lim­ing and lis­ten­ing to the mu­sic out of Mo­town of the 1960s-70s, the com­bos and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans of the era, Duke, Mae­stro, Stal­in, Valenti­no, Shad­ow, Spar­row and Kitch, play­ing foot­ball, ten­nis, crick­et, pitch­ing mar­bles for bokey, and then en­gag­ing in heavy dis­cus­sion on every imag­in­able sport with Jerome, Michael–now Obafe­mi, Lester–lat­er on Ed­win, and con­test­ing against each oth­er at Mo­nop­oly dur­ing the cur­few pe­ri­od of 1970 till the wee hours of the morn­ing was ex­cit­ing, en­light­en­ing and the com­radery shaped our lives and sus­tained our friend­ships.

To Jerome, who has left us, con­tin­ue to RIP meh bro, we will al­ways re­mem­ber and cher­ish you. The pure unadul­ter­at­ed thrill of hav­ing my in­ter­pre­ta­tion of a mi­nor bot­tle-throw­ing in­ci­dent at the Oval, which erupt­ed af­ter the dis­missal of Alvin Kalichar­ran was greet­ed with cel­e­bra­tion from el­e­ments of the crowd and re­ferred to as “hooli­gan­ism” by the ra­dio com­men­ta­tors, hav­ing that ac­count pub­lished af­ter in­tense scruti­ny by the great George John of the Ex­press, made me feel that I had worth as ob­serv­er/writer.

Like­wise, when in 1978 Carl Ja­cobs, ed­i­tor of the Trinidad Guardian pub­lished my re­view of Blood Broth­ers, a show by Stal­in and Valenti­no, and when Rick­ey Singh, then ed­i­tor of the Caribbean Con­tact based in Port-of-Spain, paid me $75 for an ar­ti­cle on the Chi­nese in Trinidad, I tran­scend­ed to the heav­en­ly realm. In the lat­ter in­stance, I still mar­vel at the im­pu­dence of me to think Mr Singh and the Con­tact could have been in­ter­est­ed in any­thing that I wrote.

The de­ci­sion of my then boss, se­nior jour­nal­ist, Al­fred Agui­ton, to place faith in me to cov­er the 1980 Ja­maica gen­er­al elec­tion filled me with ex­cite­ment and frankly scared the hell out of me, not so much that over 800 peo­ple were mur­dered dur­ing the cam­paign, but that I was wor­thy enough for such an as­sign­ment.

Fitz Vaughn Bryan’s record­ing of “Tan” re­mains the fore­run­ner to big brass band mu­sic and had as its com­pan­ion piece, John “Bud­dy” Williams’ “Sheep pon Top”, both played by Bob Git­tens on Ra­dio Trinidad. This is a col­umn away from the trou­bles of our world.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, Mona and St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.