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Book 3. Caribilly Continued, The Emperor of The North.
Book 3. Caribilly Continued, The Emperor of The North.
Around 1973, my friend Tutsie took me up to the North Side, to Estate Neljeteberg to meet his new guru “Roupe” and to sit a while at the Roupe’s bar. Roupe, was an old Creole fisherman, his Grand father was a German (Moolinar) who had owned the entire Estate, his Grand Mother was an ex slave from the British Island of Tortola. Roupe, had golden skin, wild wavy hair and green absolutely merry with mischief eyes,. He was dressed in kaki gurka shorts, a favorite ripped and faded shirt and a cowboy hat made of straw.
His bar/house was an unfinished two story concrete block construction with a dirt floor and no roof on the second floor.. The walls and window spaces up above gave the impression of a psychedelically lopsided medieval castle, while the drinking and living quarters was a menagerie for merrymaking madmen and wild chickens, and there were plenty of both.
The Roupe, or Calwin aka The Vampire aka The Emperor of The North, sang and played an old old very old rusty stringed Spanish guitar, tuned to a reference note that only he could hear. Or perhaps a note that existed on the equally ancient orchestral flute/pipe that only he could play. What a merry mix of madness the music was. It was Caribilly at the source.
Roupe, or Calwin, or The Emperor aka The Obeah Man, had a most extraordinary sweetheart living there with him, quite a daunt in her own right. “Doris” was a large, and very dark lady who had come down from Tortola many years before. She had twelve fingers, and twelve toes (demonstrating perhaps a genetic inclination to ultra naughty behavior amongst her immediate ancestral), but the extras came in mighty handy when referenced as “proof of things supernatural” by Calwin when he was in his (Voodoo) “Obeah Man” bag.
It turned out that Calwin had a deal with many of the superstitious north side French people, they would acknowledge him as the baddest of the baddest, the “Emperor of The North” and he would refrain from raining down Obeah, or Voodoo curses upon them.
Doris had married a local French man, and inherited his land, which included some rent paying properties. This meant that Doris was not only a wiggling and willing living twelve digit proof of The Emperor’s mastery of magic, but a lady of means, a lady with Monarchs! (Which may account for Doris’s monthly accusatory chorus of “Calwin yu stinkin’ one drawers ting yu, is only me f**kin’ Monarchs yu want!”)
The libation of choice at Calwin’s was the rankest of Gins, in fact the very same gin that had caused the London gin epidemic of 1760, it was vile. However, like everyone else, Doris drank double her share and then some.
Rough as they were, (and they were plenty rough) they were genuinely good souls, Many a Saturday night became Sunday morning at Calwin’s and that meant that we all switched from the profane to the insanely profane, or to drink addled hymns and the blitzed reading of everyone’s favorite passages from the good book.
Calwin is the good fellow that taught me the old Virgin Islands “folk song” La Beiga Carousel, which I fell in love with and stuck my song about my friend “Tutsie” right in the middle of, making a medley which I then recorded on “Many Sunny Places” aka “The Helsinki Album”
Here’s what it sounded like on the Helsinki Album Released on RCA as “Many Sunny Places”
La Beiga Carousel/Tutsie
Cho. 1)
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night, before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night, before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle, tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle, tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
Ver. 1
And a skinny little fellow looks a little bit like me,
Lives on an Island in the Caribbean sea
And he drinks straight cane rum from an old calabash
And with those Island girls, lord he really is a smash
Cho.1
And he lives off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
Why I’ve even seen him selling bags of cool Island breeze
He lives high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
He wants to be a Pirate, I know someday he will.
(La Beiga Cho. 2)
An’ I’ll walk and drink rum whole night, before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Man I’ll walk and drink rum whole night, before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Ver. 2
And he spends all his days cooling out in Trader Dan’s,
There’s no time for working in my friend Tutsie’s plans
He wears a pretty flower tucked up in an old straw hat
But if you should try to fight him, he’d show you where it’s at.
Cho.2
And he lives off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
Why I’ve even seen him selling bags of cool Island breeze
He lives high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
He wants to be a Pirate, I know someday he will.
(La Beiga Cho. 3)
An’ I’ll walk and drink rum whole night, before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Man I’ll walk and drink rum whole night, before me go ride on Labeiga Carousel
Ver. 3
And I wish I were like Tutsie and could do as I please,
then I’d be barefoot at the Foxes’ Tamarindo
And I’d drink straight cane rum from an old calabash
And with those Island girls, lord, I’d really be a smash
Cho.3
And I’d live off the tourists with the greatest of ease,
And have fun selling bags of cool Island breeze
I’d live high on a mountain in an old sugar mill
And someday I’d be a Pirate, you know someday I will.
(La Beiga Cho. 4)
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night, before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Man I would walk and drink rum de whole night, before me go ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle, tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel
Come go home come go home Cecebelle, tonight we’ain gon ride on La Beiga Carousel.
What an outrageous and colorful, multifaceted man and musician he was, and what fun we had spending time with him … Calwin, Roupe, The Vampire, The Obeah Man aka The Emperor of The North (just a few of his pseudonyms) was the wildest of the wildest, of our very own Caribilly Cowboys.
When he died, I was asked to sing at his grave side. I was deeply honored to do so. As we crowded around in the little family cemetery by the side of the road, directly across from Calwins Caribilly Bar, at the Top ‘O the World, Estate Neljteberg, Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, I sang the song requested. “Home Home On The Range” it was the most natural thing in the world.
After he died, I wrote Captain Creole in remembrance of yet another side of him.
Captain Creole
The word spread through The Virgins, the Old Creole was dead
He died in the light of the full moon night, in a swordfight, in his bed
Some say he was crazy, he had a rum dream in his head
But I will tell you, in his words, what Captain Creole said…
He said “Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
The Dancing Senoritas, the Ghosts of Buried Gold
The German and The African that battled in his soul
The Jolly Jolly Rodger, The Treasure Ships of Spain
Called out to him and bid him come… back to The Spanish Main
Because “Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes they don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
The word spread through The Virgins, Like the ringing of an old ships bell
The Preacher turned to Heaven, most folks bet on Hell
The Old Creole was sinking, the Old Creole was gone
And we cried in the light of the full moon night, whispering his song
He said “Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
Old Pirates never die, dry your eyes we don’t ever die
Old Pirates never die, they just sail away”
Book 3. The Vigil… Conclusion.
Book 3. The Vigil… Conclusion.
Remarkably, along the long zig zaggy journey to uncovering and discovering “who yu tink yu is?” or more precisely, “Who is you is you is?” these good folks have for the most part, found their way to being themselves.
It is long past time that we stop telling people who they should be, (based on the old racist models, or the newer racist bullying of the “who’s blacker than who prison gang model”) and allow people to decide for themselves who they are, and how they wish to be..and further, to welcome them there
You might think that I’ve been on some kind of a socio/religiological dig, or vigiling for reasons to rant and rave, but I’ve been thinking about these things long and hard since my own childhood and particularly since I (as a young white boy) became the older brother to one and then another younger brother of color.Trying my big brother best to help each of them find their way in the world; as children of color and young men of color and then, as men of color, with children of their own, of color.
In addition to these thoughts and concerns swirling in and out of my head and around and through the solemnity of the occasion, I confess that I have also been holding close, a secret hope, to see a certain smile.
I am watching and waiting for the one who inspired my poem “The Girl With The Golden Skin”
“The Girl With The Golden Skin”
When I was a boy I fell in love with the girl with the golden skin
Gold dust is her face, she glowed as if she were little sister to the sun
I whispered her name to the moon, I sang, she was music to me
Can you imagine?.. A girl with golden skin..
She fought in the street for me when another girl said, “he’s mine”
And again when her Mother said “he will never do”
he is too Splotchy and blotchy and pink and red and foolish
to think of you,
the girl with the golden skin.
You are our pride and our joy
You are our prized possession
the peak of perfection
he will never do, he is not for you.
The sky was blue in those days,
The air like frangipangi soup
the world a ruckus of color and sound
my head pounded to think of her,
I could never catch my breath
You are not for him, her father said
We have suffered for centuries to make you as you are
denied our destiny from Africa to Colon
slaved in increments of a hundred, hundred years
To make you
You are not for him
I was a hero in those days, a little one but still..macho
A splotchi-ty blotchi-ty pink and red, 85 pound macho man
A hero for justice and equality, a fly weight street fighting “doun de road” boy
Against the drunken U.S. Navy. Once, twice three times a week
“But he’s good Mam’ere and he’s a hero” she said, “I love him”
“He is not for you,” said her Grand Mother “he is nothing but a ragamuffin pae-hae
his Mother is a drunken white woman married to a drunken black man
life will trample him, time will explode his illusions
like balloons on a string
bang, bang, bang, in his empty and presumptuous big head
You are our triumph, our future story. We vanquished Portugal and Spain,
Africa and the Aztec. the Dutch and Dane, the Carib and the Ciboney
All are in you, the girl with the golden skin, the apex of our intention
the vessel of our arrival, the dawn of our day, the virgin saint of our freedom come
There were trade winds in those days, and I would put my face in them
I knew that they came from Sahara,
I knew that they carried truth across time
to those that cared to listen.
and so I came to know my place..
Still, a lifetime later,
I can never catch my breath
my temples pound
I will love forever, the girl with the golden skin
Gold dust is her face, little sister to the sun
I whisper her name to the moon, I sing, she is music to me
The apex of perfection, the virgin saint of freedom come, the girl with the golden skin
The one that they would bless for you, could never be me.
because he must never be… less than golden too…
I had been at the vigil for over an hour, and had promised my friend Nicky Russel (The Mighty Whitey) that I would come and do some tunes at his open mike night at “Tickles”, a bar and restaurant in the Crown Bay Marina. I was beginning to go back and forth between the idea that it was time to go home to start tuning up the pipes for the performance, and staying right where I was, to hear the service and especially the singing of the old spirituals. (And yes, I’ve confessed that a certain lady girl was on my mind).
I struggled back and forth and finally, my sense of artistic responsibility won. I got up and excused my self along the pew and headed out.
When I got to the foyer, I ran right into the girl with the golden skin.
She looked at me with her aquamarine eyes and said in a melodious voice that moves me like a Philharmonic “I heard your new song (Surrender To The Sun) on the radio this morning” My dear friends,..can you imagine what those words mean and meant to me? As I cooly stammered out “Yee ya yo ya yu did?” my shoulder was grabbed from the other side by my old friend Freddie, the Chief of the Carib/Arawak Federation, and in that moment she was gone.
I stared in amazement as the crowd that I had just come through, closed around her.
Friends, I have loved this girl for over fifty years. That’s a long time for a boy of thirteen to hold on to that kind of feeling, but there it is. In all that time, in all the years that I have known her, we have not exchanged more than a hundred words with one another, and sixteen of the best of them were spoken and sputtered just moments ago.
I would like you to know, that I know that she is a married Lady, (and unbelievably, a mother and grand mother even) and that I would never intentionally disrupt her situation in any way (well in ultra-truth, I would hope that she still holds at least a sparkle of affection (if not a raging wildfire) for me, but I will not be disrespectful of her situation or her sweetheart, and will behave appropriately..(This despite my dear friend and long time advisor in matters of relationships and the heart, (who shall remain anonymous,) insisting over and again that clearlyI should have grabbed her and pulled her into the room where they keep the frozen dead people, and given her a big fat smooch)
Anyway..I struggled with the irony and a cascade of ephemeral but insistent emotions and concluded that the Great God almighty was saving at least two of his star-crossed children from further heartbreak and mayhem, and that my shoulder grabbing friend Freddy, Attorney at Law, Chief Of The Carib and Arawak Federation, ultimate Wazam of The Knights of The Mysterioso, was used this day by the divine as an interventionary angel. I wondered if Freddie had felt the gentle hand of the Eternal directing him as he reached out and distracted me from pursuing what might have become (and still could be) a disasterous and dastardly destiny.
Whatever else, “The girl with the golden skin” has always been an inspiration to me and will be forever. I do hope that she knows or at least suspects how grateful I am to her, for her…
Book 3. The Vigil…
I went to the viewing for a “much-loved by the community” friend this afternoon, at the Davis Funeral Home. The paper said that the viewing was scheduled from four to six PM, I got there a little early, and parked between the Western Cemetery #1 and #2. The Western Cemetery is over three hundred years old and is one of a number of very old burial grounds in Charlotte Amalia and on the Island of St. Thomas.
The Western Cemetery was in two sections (#1 and #2) for many years and has now become three. It’s very reminiscent of New Orleans with the above ground (always picturesque some time quite fancy) vaults. Within the old stone walls and beneath ancient mahogany trees, time stands still.
I have been affected by the powerful emotional impact of this place since I first saw it up close, as a boy of five. All of us children from Nisky School were here standing sadly around a little white coffin, poised to go deep deep into the ground. We were burying “Peggy” a beautiful little brown skin girl with a bright and smiling face and a heart of gold. After school yesterday, or the day before, Peggy fell off one of the children’s play things (a rusty old dump truck) in the communal “yard” in the Nisky community atop “Chinaman Hill” She fell and broke her neck. And just that quickly Peggy was gone, and every one that she had ever known was forever changed because Peggy was beyond any doubt, as pure and as good as they come, she was an absolute innocent.
Why the good and loving God at the center of the Nisky School, Nisky community and Nisky Moravian Church Universe would break Peggy’s neck and take her away from us, is a question that hangs in the still air of the Western Cemetery, and will for us, be there forever.
That she would be followed soon after by “Augustine” the most perfect and beautiful golden boy child that the hardscrabble community of “French Town” had ever produced, furthered the idea for some that the God that the children of Nisky were trying to understand and obey, did not make any sense.
Still to this hallowed ground where cries and questions and prayers, hang in the air like blue smoke, we came and come again and again.
Today it’s another golden boy, as innocent and loved as any before. Chronologically, no longer a child, still he was his Mothers baby boy, and the youngest of the brothers.
This is a “Creole” family, children of children of Scotland and Africa, with some of every other sweet sop of the earth thrown in for good measure and there is “plenty of good” to be measured.
As I walk towards the door of the funeral parlor someone says to me “You look like Jesus Christ” a quick glance at my reflection in a car window confirms that he’s right. I’m all spiffed up and when I’m all spiffed up, I do tend to look a bit like Jesu Christo. Conversely, when I’m not spiffeled, I look more like a Tasmanian devil. (Could be some kind of cosmokarmic, Yin Yan bipolaric impression disorder? who knows.) The observation comes from a brother of the deceased, he then says “if you’re here for the viewing you’re an hour early, from four to five is for family only..I don’t want you to be embarrassed”
It occurs to me to say (a whole day later it’s true but..) “Yes, but if I look so much like Jesus Christ, the family might be overjoyed to see me, and that I have come for the dear departed” (and then to my self) “and perhaps I could steal a kiss or two from one or more of those beautiful Afro-Celtic daughters”. Instead I say “Well, thanks for telling me, it could have been very uncomfortable for them, I’ll be back in an hour”
So I walk back up the road between Western Cemetery #1 and #2 and as always the power of the setting captures my attention. Section #2 had been closed to burials for 100 years because of the terror of Cholera. 1867 was a very difficult year for the people of St. Thomas. There were two Hurricanes, a Yellow Fever epidemic, a Cholera Epidemic, an Earth quake and a Tidal Wave
They put the people (over 1200 men, women and children) who died of Cholera in Section #2 and declared that no soil was to be turned here for 100 years. And they stuck to it. All through childhood we wondered and worried, could it come back up from the ground to get us all?
Just across (on the North side of the street) from The Western Cemetery #1 and #2 is the Old Moravian Cemetery and next to that, The Old Jewish Cemetery. Each very interesting and colorful in their own right, many generations of my son Scott’s maternal line, are in The Old Jewish Cemetery)
The Danish West Indies were a welcoming and tolerant society and St. Thomas is the home of the second oldest Synagogue in the new world. Jewish families of every hue have been a part of these Islands since shortly after the last ship load of their ancestors (fleeing the inquisition), left Palos Spain on the exact same tide that Columbus did on his first voyage of discovery. My boy’s people (the Trepuks and Levin’s) went first to France and then came here to the Danish West Indies. Of course “My Boy’s people” are his beautiful Mother’s people, and she and he are a natural-born part of the Creole society that I am holding vigil with today.
While waiting for four to become five, I drove over to the Old Villa Olga, in French Town. The Villa Olga has been many things over the past three hundred years, and I am drawn to it’s beauty, history and cool breezes. Villa Olga sits on a little point, in fact the very point from which the coal carriers of old (all female) would cross the slippery marshy coral bridge to Hassel Island every morning and evening, going to and from their work. These coal carrier ladies, balancing precariously on sagging steeply angled narrow gangplanks, loaded and unloaded (in baskets balanced on their heads) every rock, nugget, sliver, and dust particle of the coal that fired the furnaces of the great transatlantic steam ships of the time.
After carefully removing and folding my spiffy jacket and leaving it in the car, I sit on the rocks and think about them and a hundred other things that are a part of the history of the area. The entire economy of the people of Charlotte Amalia (apart from the merchant class) were dependent on the work of these women and their paltry hard-earned incomes. The old photos show lines of ragged coal blackened women that appear to be caricatures of human beings. No one could be that ragged, that dirty, that disheveled, that exhausted. The impression is that they aren’t photos of people, rather they’re paintings exaggerated to make a point about suffering.
For years the community response was “Thank God that’s not me, thank God that we’re not like that. But in reality, they are, we are like that. These are the Grand Mothers and Aunties of many of our loved ones and friends. The heroic “Coal carriers” the hard pressed ladies that changed the history of the DWI when they organized themselves and struck from insult and rage and defiance when the twice removed decided to pay them for their hard work with (of all things) Mexican Pesos.
Mexican Pesos worth even less then, than now. But to the twice removed the caricatures that carried the coal were worth less than a worthless Peso. When it became clear to the ladies that their labors were rewarded with currency that they could not use to buy food for their children and families, they struck. And in so doing, earned their place in history.
The slippery coral bridge is long gone now the US Navy blasted it to kingdom come when they bought the Islands from Denmark in 1917 for 25 Million Dollars and no sense. (a small local joke) They blasted the bridge to give boat traffic improved passage from one anchorage to another. It was a good thing, sea water got stagnant in this little corner of the harbor, and Yellow Fever is rumored to have had a ball concocting it’s self among the flotsam and jetsam of three hundred years of naughty goings on here.
Before our town was given the name of the beautiful Queen Charlotte Amalia, it was known throughout the West Indies as “Tap Hus” which means of course “The Drinking House”. Many more than one drunken sailor was swept by time and tide into this corner of the harbor to wind up as a rum poisoned feast for fish and mosquitoes. You can imagine what a God awful stew of stink and pestilence this quaint little corner must have been. This may be one of those rare instances in which three bombs and a bazooka “done good”.
This afternoon, Passenger Boats of every possible color combination, inbound from or out bound to St. John, St. Croix, Tortola and Puerto Rico, are zipping through the passage on their way in and out of the Harbor. Sea planes are splashing down and splashing up every few minutes and fishing dinghys and inflatables are zipping by every where.
This is quite a busy quiet spot. Over there are the remains of the concrete walls that was the huge salt water swimming pool of my childhood, and here (floating across the harbor from the West Indian Dock), comes a basso profundo rendition of “When You Wish Upon A Star” played by “Captain and foghorn” as the Disney cruise ship announces it’s imminent departure to one and all. As It slips out to sea I can’t help but notice what a remarkably classically beautiful ship it is, and think how extraordinary it must be, for little ones to take a cruise on her.
It’s ten to five, time to get back to the Vigil.
Book 3. Sula, The Mountain Dove
Book 3. Sula, The Mountain Dove
I had an unusually enjoyable visit with Sula this morning, I put three of my last six dollars in the tank so that I could go up to see her. It was a beautiful morning and the views round this that and the next corner were crystal clear. The” surf was up” outside Hull Bay, Tortola, Jos Van Dyke and islands of the Thatch Key archipelago were a majestic blue in the distance, and the”Plums were up” in Sulas “Hog Plum” tree too. The shutters are flung open in her little wooden house and the voices of the choir at the Cathedral of Saints. Peter and Paul come pouring out of her little radio, each utterance aspiring to sanctity and sounding like they are hitting awfully close to the mark, to me.
I have come to love the shaky but sincere leads and rough harmonies of one singer after the next and one Choir after the other. Sula’s sister the long departed “Tantan Bertha’s” son, Ashford is in the other room, with his radio also tuned to WSTA and he is playing his alto saxophone along with the music. He plays in the old “Quelbay” style, a high wavering vibrato, a full beautiful tone. He is one of the very best but does not play in public, he is very shy and is waiting until he becomes a better player. He is really very good already, and I very much delight in listening to him play.
Ashford and I connect through the music and we have interesting music related conversations just about every Sunday. Conversations about music books that he orders through the mail, scales and intervals, theory and improvisations. He honors me by presenting thoughtful questions about these things as though I were (because I am a recording artist) a knowledgeable maestro. God bless him, I’ve actually been able to answer a few of his questions and even add a little info on top of that, but it’s a fluke, small bits of knowledge I’ve picked up by osmosis. My storehouse/library of academic information in this area is embarrassingly sketchy, my own musical gifts are more like a wild rolling eyed confidence, married to a series of semi spontaneous heartfelt polyphonic outbursts through an instrument that continually surprises (among others) me, with it’s power and purdyness.
What the heck that has to do with knowing anything, is a great mystery. But if Ashford (or anyone else) wishes to be kind to me because of it, I’ll take it and try my best to return the same.
The music of sincere people in reverential worship fills Sulas world every Sunday and it is a beautiful thing
Sula’s Hog Plum Tree is weighed down with golden-yellow and soo very sweet plums. She was hoping that I would be able to pick a bag full for her “other” boy friend Desooka” (really Desouza but Sula has decided to call him Desooka and so it is)
My first question to Sula is always “Sula have you been behaving your self?” and she answers sweetly in a proper lilting creole, “Yes Scott, I am always well-behaved” My second question is “But Sula, how can a woman who has not one or two or even three or four but maybe five or six or more boyfriends at the same time, claim to be behaving herself?” And she will throw her head back and laugh out loud..
I ask her if she has gotten all dressed up for me this morning, because she looks so sharp.. She denys it, but her dress was especially pretty, a royal blue with little heart wreaths filled with flowers all over. She looked very pretty and I told her so. She had a red kerchief on, but took it off to re-tie, as she did I noticed her hair, a wild confusion of snow-white curls with perfect little plaits and braids. I said “Sula, don’t you ever leave the kerchief off? Your hair looks so pretty and the kerchief must be so hot.
To my surprise she did leave it off..she looked great and comfortable and cool.
Breaking into a more colloquial calypso accent, she said, “Scott, Ah wan yu tu git me ting dem frum de box dare fo me, ah want a candy, because my mout is soo dry, an ah wan yu put me oy drop dem in me oy”
I teasingly say “Sula yu wan me put yu oy drop dem in yu oy? In yu oy? She laughed at my exaggeration of oy, then I said “but Sula yu have tu open yu oy so I cou put in de drops” She said “But, What do yu mean? I thought they were wide open already? Yu know yu poor girlfren is as bline as a bat, de poor ol girl kee-an see a ting!
“Scott yu know what I heard on de radio? Some boys who went to college say that there is no God, Who de hell dey tink made the heavens and de Eart, de moon and de stars? Dey mus-ee tink red pea soup could cook it self. How de hell dey could tink there is no God?
Sula then spoke a loud the sequence of the angel of the lord visiting a young virgin Mary and God placing his only begotten son in her womb, to grow there like every one else. She recounted the angel of the lord coming to Joseph in his sleep to explain what was happening with Mary, and she noted that in those days for a young man to be engaged to be married and discovering that his young bride to be was having a baby, was a difficult thing, but Joseph over came that and they had the little baby Jesus. And the little boy grew up playing and going to school just like all the rest, but then gave himself so that the rest of us could have life everlasting, could be relieved of our sins..”Oh yes!” she said “I know there is a God and I know my God is a good God.”
“Didn’t God save me when I was only twelve years old and I had the Typhoid Fever? Scott, Doctor Knud Hansen was right here, he was white yu know, and He told Mama Lovie (Sula’s Mother) that he was going, and coming back that afternoon. Then he told Old Uncle George (one of the original of the three Moolenar brothers), he told him that he didn’t believe that it would be possible for me to live out the day, and George came down and told Mama Lovie what the Doctor had said”. “Sula” I asked, “Were you in the hospital in town whe you had typhoid fever or were you out here?” “Right here” she said “I was right here, and Knud Hansen called me his little girl and took care of me” “Sula” I said, “How did Knud Hansen come out? Did he ride on a horse or a carrage”? “No, Scott, No,” she said “Knud Hansen walked, he walked all the way from town. Knud Hansen came out here ten times to see me, and when he came back that afternoon and saw that I was still alive..he said it was a miracle. He told Mama Lovie that if he could, he would give her a Gold Star for how extra specially good she took care of me. It was God that saved me, my God is a good God. How else could I have lived when I gave birth two different times, to two little dead babies?”
“Knud Hansen took care of me then too you know, even though I was a big and old and grown up woman, he still called me his little girl, and said that he would never let anything happen to me”. “How big where you then Sula”, I asked “any bigger than you are now? I don’t think you were ever big Sula, I don’t think you were ever any bigger than a Mountain Dove. And Sula, tell me, how old were you then?” “I was tutty one, tutty-two, tutty-three,” ” Wow Sula” I said, “all things considered that doesn’t sound very old either. Big and old?” She laughed..”You’re right, anyway, How can they think there is no God when God has always been so good to me?”
As she spoke..I thought to my self, just listen Scott.. she doesn’t need, nor will she benefit from hearing your cockamamie comments on the old or new testaments, or you recounting current theories on self-organization. you don’t really know any more than she does, or Knud Hansen did, about what came before or lies beyond the stars..you don’t need to show off how smart you are, at the expense of her comfort and beliefs, you don’t need to upset her and make her sad. She’s a good soul and a wonder in the world. Just dig it and be present..listen to the love in her and in the music all around.
I asked her if she knew my friend PK Hansen, (related to the Christiansens, a family that she has mentioned often) she ruminated a bit searching through a vast net of direct and tangentialy connected names and relations, and then said..”But Scott, our friend Jowers said he was going to bring Noreen to see me, but Alric says the house is too old and run down for visitors, that we should paint it first.
I said “Sula, we all love your old wood house, it doesn’t need to be painted before anyone comes to see you, we all expect to see, we want to see, we love to see the old house just the way it is, it’s like a national historic site, and you, Sula, you are a national treasure”
Her face always lights up when I remind her of these things, her eldest son Alric has just moved back to the island after spending fifty-five years in the states, working mostly as a prison guard. He is a good and decent fellow, but he’s impacted by a stateside mentality that has not yet been recalibrated to the local culture. Further, he would prefer that Sula left her old house and moved into his brand new house, with he and his wife Florence, on the other side of Crown.
Perhaps enough people expressed their shock and dismay with that idea, voicing their opinion that that would be the end of Sula, to have gotten his attention. However, He is still unfortunately quite verbal in his disapproval of her “old-time” environment as it is. at 107, Sula really is a national treasure. The shame is that more people are not aware of her, and have the opportunity to spend time in her home and company. She is a National Treasure is every way imaginable.
Book 3. The Man Who Swam To St. John…
BOOK 3. The Man Who Swam To St. John
In 1985 Shaky Acres (the recovery program that Tuts and I had started in 1981) was going along fairly well, but was in need of a fund raiser or two, Tuts heard (along with everyone else) of a proposed St. John swim (every body heard of it because it was considered impossible by most folks, and suicidaly dangerous by local folks who knew that there were hungry sharks out there the size of the battleship “Bismarck”). The UDT (The Frogmen, The Navy Seals, The toughest hombres on or under the sea) while training for many years in St. Thomas, had given up on swimming to St. John because it was simply too crazy dangerous a deed.
The well intentioned local lady legislator who had proposed “the swim” was unaware of the deep and dark difficulties inherent in the “big fun fundraiser”
.When Tutsie was a young boy, riding back across Sir Francis Drake’s Passage coming home with his Mother from a harvest festival in Cane Garden bay in Tortola, he looked out from the deck of “The Joan Of Arc” or “The Bomba Charger” at Pillsbury Sound (The five mile stretch of wild water that separates St. Thomas and St. John) he said to her “I could swim ‘crass dat yu kno” His usually loving mother had replied “Man hush up yu schupid mout, why yu like tu talk such schupid craziness?” Tuts didn’t see any reason to discuss it any further, but, he says, the conviction that he could do it, was locked in his mind for ever after.
It was July the third, 1985, Emancipation Day in The Virgin Islands. (Emancipation Day is the day in 1849, on which it became official that the slaves in the Danish West Indies had won their freedom and were now and forever more free) Freedom was a long time coming for the children of Africa in the DWI, and very hard won, as was Tut’s own personal freedom from drugs and alcohol.
There were forty eight entrants all together, most of them young white kids from the hot shot St. Croix “Dolphins Swim Team”, they came prepared and ready to succeed, with sleek buoyant body suits, well fitted goggles and the best fins that money could buy
A number of the St. Thomas swimmers were runners down from the states, budding tri-athletes, an elderly white gent determined to show his wife he still “had it” and half a hand full of locals with a mismatched assortment of masks and fins..
Tuts on the other hand was wearing one pair of big and baggy boxer trunks, y nada mas…
As the other swimmers did warm ups and calesthetics on the sand at Vessup bay, Red Hook, a tough old Tortola man, a sailor, pulled Tuts aside and said” Buaayyy yu, yu crazy buaay? Following de damn schupid white people dem? Yu don kno de real name fo red hook is shak waff? Buaayy!! Shak ow de biggah den uh submarine! A black man gon follow dem schupid white people? Buaayy wha rang wid yu, yu crazy o something?”
Tuts concedes that the strongly delivered warning did cause him much concern, but that he had already told everybody over and again that he was going to do it, told them in the strongest terms, in the face of the harshest ridicule. It was common knoweldge that no (sane) black person from the Islands could ever, should ever and would ever attempt to make that swim. Therefore, as his sanity was in question, it was also a crucial moment for recovery in the Islands.
At this moment he was demonstrating clearly (to local folks) that local people who went to fellowship meetings “wid de crazy white people dem” were demonstrably nuts (just like they thought) and for him to chicken out before he even hit the water would have sealed it once and for all. Tuts has since confessed that on that particular morning he had decided that he would rather be eaten alive, than quit.
Once the old Tortola man realized that he was not talking to a sensible gentleman of color, he began to encourage him with information about what to expect in terms of currents and where to find what he called “soft spots” in the sea. He stated flatly that “yu can’t swim directly East ta St. John, yu will have tu swim for “Loango” (Loango Key, a small Island due North of St. John) and as yu hold Loango as your goal, the current will be sweepin’ yu south, look sharp! Buaay, dat is de onliest way to get dare”.
As the swim began, the fast and the fancy took off due East for Cruz bay and before you knew it half of them had been swept away and were heading backwards around Cabrita Point towards Big and Little St. James, then out over the Anegada Trench, (on the bottom of which the scariest bug eyed things on earth, with jumping, wiggling electro “bait worms” dangling in front of foot long razor teeth, swim around four miles down, snapping steel trap jaws, and saying fish prayers, to get their dribbly lips around something, anything, slathered in coconut oil, or greasy mango scented sun tan lotion) and then south and west for St Croix, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Haiti, The Caymans, The Isle of Pines Cuba, and New Orleans. (of course by the time they got to New Orleans there would be nothing left of them but a Speedo tag and whatever plastics they’d swallowed along the way) needless to say, an armada of rescue boats started pulling people in over the gunnels, like langustas on parade, on a fish pot Saturday night.
Tuts was heading for Loango .
Shortly after the fast and the fancy fiasco, the old white gent’s wife, standing in his rescue boat started screaming hysterically “A Shark! A Shark! Oh my God, I see a Shark!” Pull my husband out, pull my husband out, pull him out right now!! Oh my GOD! Pull my husband out right now!
Tuts says the poor old gent was utterly dejected as they pulled him up, his bathing suit drooping below his pale old, pink old, shiny hiney.
Next went the dapper sharply outfitted “high color” attorney from the states, who had looked most disdainfully upon our man’s baggy boxers and boney bare feet but was now being dragged, thoroughly defeated, flat on his back from the sea to flat on his back on the bottom of the heaving boat.
The boats were heaving now because the seas were heaving now, they were coming into “The Big Blue”. A section of the sound a mile or more wide, in which, or perhaps I ought to say, through which, big serioso, fast moving, megalo mountains of Big Blue Heavy Water Waves (Waves of the sort that make you say “Good Lord” or “Mama Mia” or “Holy Freakin’ Toledo” when you first see them even though you are looking at them from your perch on the deck of a passenger ferry, ten or fifteen feet above the water line.
If you are in the water “down in the hollow” splashing along on your belly and craning your neck up trying to see the top of the wave, you will probably say a lot more than good lord, and if you are Tutsie and your rescue boat is manned by one “Fisherman John” a continental dipso juicehead, that you helped to drag off the junk heap of life, but now haven’t seen for over half an hour, most of it will not be printable in a general audience mem.wha? such as this one. But you can believe me when I say, you have probably never heard anything like it.
Eventually, Tuts discovered that if he swam like crazy faster and faster as he got closer and closer to the top and he could then flip over to his back at just the last second the wave would crest and the curl would break over his shoulders. He could “hang there” for seconds, (perhaps one or two of the longest this side of eternity,) and contemplate his mounting misery and helplessness before having to roll over and slide headfirst down down down, ah..down down down, ah down down down, down. (Knowing that some thing is surely waiting in the “trough” to open its porky yaw and scrape you all along your back, belly and sides as it swallows you whole)
As I may have mentioned casually a short while ago, this section of the sound was just a splash over a mile or more wide, can you guess how many times your whole life can flash before your eyes before you get completely bored with it?
What you don’t get bored with is the fact that you cannot see either Island or for that matter any thing at all when you are down in the valley, nothing but deep dark blue. So the desperate hope that you might be able to see something, anything, hinting at where you are, (is it Puerto Rico? Is it Berlin?) at the top of the next wave is a powerful draw, and can keep you going for many a repetition.
One time he did see some thing recognizable back on St.Thomas, it was the two super poles that mark the spot where the undersea cable goes down beneath the sea. way down to the bottom, that’s the bottom way way down in the pitch black darkness beneath his own bottom. Better to see nothing he thought, than things as scary as that.
Pretty soon his primary concern had shifted from monstroso seas, to waves slapping him in the face, slap slap slap slap and he realized that he was in a different kind of swim now, the big blue was behind him, and he was battling offshore currents, lucky he had gone for Loango, because now, in spite of his forward motion he was being swept sideways, southward towards “Stephens Key”, a small flat island outside of Cruz Bay Bay, (or the Bay of Cruz Bay), that is actually two small flat Islands because what would have been one Island has a rocky channel (with it’s own spiffy little current) right through it’s middle.
Tut knew that if allowed himself to be swept southward beyond Stephens Key, he would be out in the Anegada Trench, and then as likely as not his rescuers would be the Venezuelan Navy. He determined that he had to get to and make it through the spiffy little current hole in the middle of Stephens Key
.If the current was running in his favor it could be a breeze, he was exhausted but just on the inside of Stephens Key was the outer entrance to Cruz Bay. He was almost, almost there.
Alas, the current was not in his favor (unless he wanted to turn around and “go with the flow” back to the “Cabrita express” and the afore mentioned many points beyond) and this part of the swim took everything but the very best of him. The very best of him was all that kept him kicking; the current was so strong that the surface water was rippling backwards in protest. That’s when the “water under water” is moving too fast for the water “on the water” to keep up, so the surface ripples backwards in tiny little cascades of confusion, all of which seemed to be going right up his nose, and down his throat.
They say that the children of Africa can’t swim. My friend Tutsie has proved time and again, that that is a racist lie, or put another way, demonstrably untrue. Although it is true that Tutsie’s Mother, Miss Meu, born in Dominica, was one half Carib. And although the present effort of the Carib/Arawak Federation is to dispel the myth that King Charles of Spain used to promulgate and excuse the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, specifically, that the Caribs were so savage that they ate people, there is no question that the Caribs were and are among the toughest of the toughest human beings that have ever lived. So our man, three quarters African, One quarter Carib (with a smitter smatter of Frenchish, British, both in the African part of the pie) is all but dead in the water, having just burst through the impassable current hole at Stephen’s Rock.
Tuts aka “El Toro” aka “Peperino” aka Skarpy aka “The Rabbi” (that’s another story) aka a hundred other desperado descriptors, is ready to surrender. If only he had the strength to raise his arm signaling, no, begging to be dragged out of the sea, he would have done so. Just then the cheerful voice of Fisherman John came skipping across the water, singsonging advice to“Make it look pretty Tuts! Make it look pretty! We’re almost there man!, Make it look pretty!!!.
Some day I’ll build a statue at Cabrita Point to Victor Antonius “Tutsie” “El Toro” Edwards, one portraying a skinny little mahogany hued dude in baggy boxers, tilting forward on one leg, the other angled out behind, with hands (as in prayer) just above his head,. Poised to dive into history.
Tuts became that day the first native Virgin Islander to EVER in all time, swim from St. Thomas to St. John.
It wasn’t pretty as he crawled and dragged himself ashore (water streaming from every orifice), and it wasn’t pretty as he collapsed on the sand, unable to stand for a full three minutes. But in his defense, he was forty freakin’ years old and working with a body that had been ravaged by drugs and alcohol.
The kids on the Dolphin swim team have much to be proud of, they did in their wetsuits, fins and organized swim formations, what the rough and tough UDT had given up on, they made the swim.
I know that where ever these kids are in the world, and where ever they will go, they will always remember that “once upon a time, when we were kids in the islands, my friends and me did the impossible together” they will also remember with awe and admiration “that skinny little fellow in the baggy boxer trunks” that did it alone and bare footed, and then, passed on the champagne and praise, because “that’s not why he was there”.
.Tutsie made the swim because it was Emancipation Day, and he wanted to demonstrate and celebrate freedom, he wanted to demonstrate freedom from fear of the sea and the ignorant idea that “Black people can’t swim” He wanted to demonstrate that “recovery is macho” and that black people now need to be emancipated from the chemical slavery that is alcoholism and addiction, and because even though she was long gone, he wanted his mother to know that he could do, what he said he could do, and now it was time to go home… And oh yeah, to raise a few dollars for Shaky Acres.
Book.1 El Gringito
Book 1. El Gringito
I don’t think that Norris ever came back to the house at 252 B Bournfield, I think Larry and Lonnie stayed with Tina, and Mud was out of “The Crazy Wall” for only a few days before we were evicted… There had been trouble with the management of VICORP, (our landlord) ever since Mud’s boss at VICORP, Mr. Gray (a wonderful dynamic African American working in the Islands) had been killed piloting his National Guard Jet off Puerto Rico.
One of the crazy and crazy making things about racial prejudice is that you don’t always know when it’s present and poisoning the water, or if a goat just fell in the well by accident. Trying to figure it out each and every time something occurs can really skew your view and tie your head in knots…
Additionally, in Mud’s case, there was the complicating factor of prejudice against a white woman, (by blacks) and a white woman married once, twice, thrice, to black men, (by whites and blacks) and the jealousy and power playing (by other women) and economic manipulation with her compliance and sexual favors as the goal. (by men in general)
But I was 16, and although I was sure I “knew sumpin’ in the world” I was basically oblivious to the real real…
All I knew was that I didn’t know what would happen next.
Norris and Mud, rented a one room, room in a local rooming house up behind Denton’s Bar in “Hospital Grounds”. Larry and Lonnie were to stay with Tina, Gale was in the states, and I was……wella wella wella…
Mud still seemed shell shocked and zombified (in retrospect, rather than Obeah or Voodoo, it was more likely psych meds) and while I was fairly familiar with dramatic crisis by now, this felt like a big one and serious. It was crazy
I was 16, I had moved 26 times, already in my life, but this was the very first time that I had to move alone, and I had no money and I had no place to go..
I didn’t know what the heck Mud was thinking…
Now that I am among other things, a well trained and skilled drug and alcoholism counselor, “Clinical Therapist” even, (as was my job description at “Next Step” a special inpatient treatment program for medical and legal professionals, Doctors, including Psychiatrists, Lawyers Nurses and Dentists, In Hattiesburg Mississippi) I could offer a variety of jargon laden diagnoses, subject to 40 different interpretations, by any 3 good Psychologists, however..
So I went to see Larry and Lonnie, they were beautiful and loving little boys, and we hugged and kissed. I remembered that Mud had suggested I ask the Morciglios (Anibal’s family) if I could stay with them, but the Morciglios were crowded into a little wooden house somewhere out in the East End, and even if I could discover where, I was much too proud to ask.
I walked down to the waterfront to look at the beautiful harbor and the sea…
After thinking about things for a while, a long while, I decided that I would live in town and I would sleep on the roof top right next to “Sebastians On The Waterfront” a happening nightclub.
The Marty Clark Trio with Jon Lucian singing would be providing the music, my girl friend Patty’s parents had a gift shop on Droningens Gade and…anyway…
To make a long story short, by the fifth or sixth night I stood up at 3AM and started hitch hiking east.
It was a little wood house on the hillside just above and to the right of Daddy’s Bar, on the road to Red Hook. It was locked and completely dark and quiet. I scouted around and found Anibal and (his slightly older brother) Papoun’s room. I climbed in the open window and lay down on a pile of laundry and went to sleep. When morning came, I was warmly greeted by all, absorbed and included in the family activities with no questions asked. I am almost in tears 50 years later just thinking about it. I think they would have begun to get insulted if I had waited any longer before showing up. Now, In fact I am in tears.
The Morciglios were not a namby pamby family, They had come to St. Thomas by way of St. Croix and to St. Croix from Ensenada, an little mountain town in Puerto Rico. Morciglio was a Portuguese name and once you knew that, you recognized the short powerful muscular frame of the males in the family. Mrs. Morciglio, on the other hand was all Borenquenia, the magical mix that seems uniquely Puerto Rican and produces some of the most beautiful women in the world.
There were three such in the family, Nellie, (Mrs. Morciglio), 18 year old Dolores, and 13 year old Francis (Panchie) the baby of the family. Their beauty was tempered by toughness and what seemed like never ending hard times… Much of that resulted from the fact that Mr. Morciglio had alcoholism, meaning that if and when he drank, his basic physiological responses made it very difficult for him to stop. And since every man in the society was fully expected and encouraged to drink, consequently, life was a lot of “stop start” or more accurately, start drinking, create wreckage, struggle to stop drinking, repair wreckage, start drinking, and so on.
So things were rough but they were ready.
Up with the dawn, the radio trumpeting the immediate and up to date news and scandals from Puerto Rico, en Espaniol, which was all we spoke there at home. (I had learned Spanish living in Puerto Rico, and Mrs. Morciglio (Nellie) and Mr. Morciglio (Juan) and the whole family got a kick out of helping me stay sharp in it) Every one out side by the cistern splashing faces and other places, breakfast was tea and French bread and then into the back of the truck for Anibal, Papoun and I, and off to work with Mr. Morciglio.
He was a “Practical Engineer” meaning, he was self taught. He was an electrician, a plumber, a builder, a solution finder and fixer of all things needing to be found or fixed; He was a wise, kind and gentle but very tough hombre.
A year or two earlier hard times had hit and during the “repair cycle” the family was living in an all but abandoned dirt floored carriage stable, right next to “Buck Hole” an old Charlotte Amalie slum notorious for desperate and violent, people and activities.
One afternoon, I happened to be visiting and helping to rewire a number of small electrical motors. Mr. Morciglio asked Anibal, Papoun and I to go to the ice plant nearby to get a small block of ice.
In order to get to the ice plant and back, we would have to cross the “mechanics yard” of a very large “red” fellow (Red in this case means the gent was a “light skinned” person of “high”color (almost yellow) but his pigmentation leaned intensely towards the red side of the color wheel) Custom held that people of “high” color were often mean but anyone with his degree of red coloration were ultra mean.
Apparently this big red fellow believed what they said about him because he was the meanest thing going, with the possible exception of the very tough, very muscular, racist named “Cannibal” that was “one of his boys” (we knew Cannibal from other times and places and he was very scary) The really big mouthed “junior” red guy that may have been his son, and the three wild eyed dogs snapping at everything that moved.
We had to pass there, and we knew we were in for an unpleasant time doing it. We were right. We got through to the power plant, got the ice and now had to go back. We had no alternative; we had to pass there… Anibal and Papoun, caught verbal hell for being Puerto Ricans, and I for being a schupid skunt and a white man, but the most abusive threats were saved for Mr. Morciglio. The big red fellow insisted that we go and tell him that he was going to “mash him up” and “Broke up he ass” and show him “who is de boss aroun’ here” if we or he, ever dared to try to cross this yard again.
When we told Mr. Morciglio what had happened, he very calmly picked up his electricians folding “hook knife” put it in his pocket, and headed directly for the yard.
We were scared to death, but we couldn’t let him go alone, so we stumbled along side trying to talk him out of it. The big red fellow and his bullies came blustering and threatening towards us immediately, Mr. Morciglio (who at five feet four seemed half his size) walked directly up to them and said “We’re here and now what are you going to do”
The moment the big red guy put his hand on him, Mr. Morciglio swept his own hand out of his pocket, flipping open the hook knife, and holding the blade and inch from the point he began slicing X’s all across the front of the bad guy. In an instant he had the big red meanie flat on his back, Cannibal and the other tough guy watched in astonishment as flabbergasted by the action as we were. Blood was every where and the big red fellow had his hands out pleading “ah give up” “ah give up”. Mr. Morciglio could easily have killed him, and he knew it. We all knew it. I saw an attitude change at depth come over the big red guy.
Mr. Morciglio reached out his bleeding hand and helped him to his very shaky feet, and it was over.
Except for the fact that we all had to go to the ER where both men received many many stitches.
They left the ER with their arms around each others waists, now unbelievably friends for life,
Holding the blade of the knife with his bare fingers while they fought, to prevent the knife from cutting too deeply or puncturing any arteries or organs, resulted in serious cuts to Mr. Morciglio’s hand, we nursed his hand along for weeks, but he felt that it was worth it.
I have never seen anything quite like that before or since. There is no doubt that the big red bully man was changed forever by that very violent encounter. Even Cannibal and Junior became friendly with us, we have been “alright with them” from then til’ now.
Still, to this day, It boggles my mind.
In any case, I was at home with the Morciglio family, In addition to expressing my gratitude for the the protective treatment that Gale and I recieved while on our own in Puerto Rico at 10 and 11/2, years of age, El Gringito is my attempt to express my gratitude and appreciation to The Morciglios for their unfailing kindnesses to me.
El Gringito
When I was a boy in the streets of Puerto Rico, people
You were good to me
When I was a boy, and I had no family people
You were good to me.
You said,
Meida el gringito,
Cuida el gringito,
Bendito el gringito
From the islands of the virgins, to the edge of El Fangito
Por la calle de San Juan
Por la calle de Santurce, y por aja por la Loiza people
You were good to me
You said,
Meida el gringito,
Cuida el gringito,
Bendito el gringito
Recitation…
Senor y Senores, nunca puedo olvidar lo que tu haceste por me
Las estrellas de mi joventude
Te debo por un idea de un mundo unido, por un idea que todos nosotros somos hermanos, por mi esperiansas de amor
Te debo mi gracias, te mando mi Corazon.
You were good to me.
When I was a boy in the streets of Puerto Rico, people
You were good to me
When I was a boy, and I had no family people
You were good to me.
You said,
Meida el gringito,
Cuida el gringito,
Bendito el gringito
You were good to me, you were good to me,
you were good to me, people you were good to me
Of course I recognize in retrospect that Mud also (along with just about every other adult in our immediate lives) had alcoholism, and that what we lived in and experienced as “real life” were in fact predictable symptoms of an ongoing and worsening alcoholic progression. towards a “bottom”. But we were “innocent consumers” and didn’t know this stuff yet…
Book 1. The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party…
Today is the day that my brother Lonnie (The Great Tanasha) “thought” was his birthday.
Things fell apart completely when Lonnie and Larry were still very young (4 and 6 respectively) and one of the many things that went by the wayside for Lonnie was which day was his birthday.
When the fit hits the shan you had to hold on to any thing you wanted to save, like “who’s your daddy, what’s, your name, Habla Ingles?, which grade are you in, where did you sleep last night, and your birthday. But Lonnie didn’t know that and any way he was only four” when the fit really hit the shan bigtime.
Larry, Lonnie, Mud, Anibal (Chicki) and I were living at 252 B Bournefield, with her new husband Norris Wilson, fortunately, Gale was in the states. Anibal was a friend also from Bournefield who lived with us much of the time because of difficult circumstances at his own family’s pad.
Norris was a Jamaican from Montego Bay, who had come up to The V.I.. looking for work. He was an accountant and the Hotels were always looking for people with bookkeeping skills. Norris was also quite a good dancer, a romantic letter writer and a heavy drinker. He was subject to very dark moods in which he would sit alone in the kitchen rocking back and forth with his head in his hands crying while he listened to Clyde McPhatter’ “Lovers Question”. We got along fairly well until one night in 1961, it was perhaps his 39 or 40th Birthday
Mud and Norris had decided to have a “Birthday Party”, they got some rum and invited Norris’s friend “Ed” a fairly jolly hardworking fellow also from Jamaica, and Philippe a very sweet painfully shy Spanish fellow who stuttered to the point of complete unintelligibility in two languages. Philippe stocked shelves at Happy View, the little shop just up the road.
The other guests were Mud, my friend Tutsie, Anibal (who as I said, lived with us) and me. Larry and Lonnie had been put to bed and were sound asleep by party time.
Why that short a guest list, I don’t know, why those two fellows? My guess is Ed because he was Norris’s only friend from home, and Philippe because he was not a threat to Norris where Mud was concerned.
Tuts and Anibal and I were 15 but had been drinking like, and with adults since we were 13 years old. It was not unusual in the islands for that to be the case. We drank together, here there and everywhere many times before.
If white folks are describing someone they might say well, she has blond hair and brown eyes or blue eyes, in the islands, folks referred to skin color or tone in very much the same way. The expression “a little lighter than me or a little darker than me”, is often an important part of describing someone. While talking to Norris and the rest of the guests, I (who was fairly tan) said in describing someone “he’s a little darker than me” and in an instant or less Norris had flipped his wig. He grabbed one of the living room chairs and swung it up over his head and then brought it crashing down on mine. Screaming all the time “you is a F**king white man! You is a F**king white man! Wha de F**k you know about that!”
The back of my noggin was split and streaming blood, Mud was screaming “Oh My God”. While I was trying through the dizziness to identify some sort of face saving response, Philippe (with no stutter in his thinking) had the presence of mind to fly through the front door, down the road and into the night.
As Mud and them, rushed me into the bathroom to get a look at the damage, a raging Norris showed up waving a foot long carving knife, and screaming “Ah gon kill im! Ah gon kill im!” In that instant Tuts slammed the bathroom door and flipped the eyehook. The knife came flashing through the door jamb and started slamming up and down against the hook. In two seconds it was undone. I was still stunned and stupidy and thinking I should fight, but Tuts (with his whole body flung against the door and keeping it from flying open) Anibal and Mud all flashed at once on the narrow little window high up on the wall above the tub, as the solution.
First Anibal flew up and grabbing the center post jammed himself through, then Mud climbed up and through (all this while Norris is flinging his six foot, 180 pound body against the door and bellowing as only the truly flipped out can) by now I had realized that this was what you call F**k City and if I didn’t want to get pummeled, sliced and stabbed to death in the next minute, I’d better get the F**k out of here too.
As I was up and on the way out, the last thing I saw was Norris come bursting through as Tuts literally flew, with one step on the tub, from the door up to and then through the window.
Now we were all out side, but only feet from the kitchen screen door, which is where Norris would be in moments. We turned and fled into the jungle, along a natural rain gut, and eventually came out of the bush close to Tuts’s house. Tuts’s Father Charles, kindly drove us all the the emergency room where six or eight stitches closed the wound.
However, there were no stitches to close the wound to Mud’s psyche and soul.
After we got back down to Tuts’s house, Mud asked if I could stay the night with them .They said yes and she and Anibal went back to Bournefield, he to his parents house (a comparative island of calm this night) and Mud went home. Norris was not there, Larry and Lonnie were somehow safe and asleep, and she contemplated her life.
In the morning Tina, the maid (yes we had a maid even though we were as poor as piss ants, she was needed to take care of Larry and Lonnie.) came rushing up to Tuts’s house to say that Mother had tried to kill herself, she had slit her wrists and blood was all over the place. Tina had found her and called the ambulance. As this was a school day, I had to decide, whether or not I would be attending classes, I thought perhaps not today,
I went down to the house, more than a little shook up and tried to formulate some idea of what the heck I was supposed to do next. I decided I’d better go see Mother and see what if anything I could do to help this situation. I, for whatever reason, put on my shades and my beret and the oddest mismatching shirt and pants that I could find and set out to the “crazy ward” to see my Mother. When I got there and was admitted to her room, the first thing that I noticed was that someone had “walked” footprints all across the ceiling. I didn’t get what kind of loco psychology that was, but then again, things are different in the Islands.
Me poor Mudder dear was so tired and so so sad. Her wrists were neatly wrapped in clean white bandages, which looked cool and crisp and were the only thing in the world that seemed to be down right orderly and under control
I told her that the boys were ok they were with Tina, at her house.
After a few moments, Mud asked me to go find Norris and tell him what had happened and where she was.
I must say it was a frightening prospect, I weighed 85 pounds and though I knew my self to be next to invincible, last night had put a small dent (or crack) in my confidence. However, I was very used to doing things that I was afraid to do, in those days, it was a way of life,
Mud thought that Norris might be staying with ED at a rooming house up in Savan
Savan was then, and is now, a classic 300 hundred year old West Indian ghetto. Tightly packed shanties, crowded by ancient wooden row houses with oddly tilted tin shacks containing a jukebox and some rum bottles in between, You walk in the middle of the street for your own safety. Everybody knew (and so did I) that with out debate, Savan was not a place for white people.
So I was feeling somewhat stressed as I searched deeper and deeper into Savan for Ed and the unknown rooming house. I was being given some sort of grudging respect for having made it this far. I did have my beret pulled down to my eyebrows, my collar turned up to my beret, and my super shades jammed on to seal the deal. I must say, in defense of proper and careful costuming, that while I was clearly a white boy, I was also clearly not a tourist, and obviously crazy.
Some bar flies recognized me as “the white juke box boy“ one of those kids who sang at the top of their lungs with our ears jammed up against the booming speakers while having our brains magnetically massaged and rewritten, at every opportunity by every juke box, in every juke joint around, And yes I had visited the juke boxes in more than half of these joints but that was different because, it was night, we were drunk, and as everybody knew, you were safe when you were singing
Still, it’s only God’s grace and the kind compassion of the broken hearted for the broken hearted, that got me to Ed’s door.
This is not cool, is what I was thinking, as I knocked on the door. Who’s there? And I said “It’s Scott” Ed opened the door quickly, and just behind him stood Norris, de steamed and deflated to the bone, freakin’ pitiful.
Ed saying “abba abba abba” as I spilled out my message and prepared to flee. Norris echoing “abba abba abba” and before you knew it we were in Ed’s car and headed for the hospital to see Mud.
BOOK 1. Mud’s Birthday…Jazz Heaven…The Great Tanasha.
BOOK 1.
Mud’s Birthday
Today is my dear Mudder’s birthday, she died on November 17th 1977. She is alive in my heart. I miss her and I love her.
Mud was an identical twin, born in Green River Wyoming in 1924, that would have made her/them 89 today.
Lelia, ( Le-le ah) my Mother, and Lea, my Aunt, had a fairly rough time in their childhood, their Father. Frank Kelly, worked for the Union Pacific Railroad in Green River Wyoming, and after he lost his job in the depression, he stopped his car on the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train. Why? Depression? Alcoholism and Depression? Ultrawackizoidism?
I have recently been given photographs of Mother and Lea when they were little girls and they are so beautiful and vulnerable looking. It breaks my heart. And I know that my heart-break is only the most distant echo of their own.. Dear God Awmighty what a thing.
Mud and Lea graduated from high school and left home at 16. They moved together to Washington DC to go to secretarial school. They had been living in Kansas City and were musically, pretty hip girls. In Washington, they gravitated towards the Jazz scene and in that scene, Lelia met a good-looking young tenor player from New York, Frankie Fagan. They fell in and poof! Little Abigail was born. By then the four jazz babies (Lelia, Lea, Abigail and Frankie) were in Chicago, and shortly after, New York.
Frankie was born in Harlem in 1921 to a 21-year-old barroom singing orphan girl, from Scotland by the name of Sally (or maybe Sadie, we don’t know) Travis.
His biological father was a married small time Irish politician from the Bronx whose name was Frank Galvin. Galvin denied that the child was his. An Irish longshoremen by the name of Fagan came forward an offered to marry Sally so that her child would have a name. Sally died on welfare island of tuberculosis at 26, leaving little Frankie with no one to take care of him.
The Christian Brothers took him in as a charity case. But Frank Galvin’s mother wouldn’t stand for it. She brought him home to raise him in her apartment in The Bronx. Her oft-repeated statement to her own son was “Of course he’s your kid, you stooopid! Look at him!”
She was a hundred caret character herself having grown up as one of eight in a candy store in Hells Kitchen. Her Irish Mother had been a Novice Nun in the convent of “The Little Sisters of Charity” in New Orleans, her father was a sailor from Marseilles, working as the Convents gardener. They fell in love and fled the convent for Hells Kitchen , where they had eight children and ran an old-fashioned New York City candy store.
My gather Frankie spent the greater part of his life trying to be accepted by his father Frankie and his family. He had his name changed legally to Galvin in his mid forties and gained some acceptance from his brothers later on in life.
He was always after me to change my name to Galvin but there was not one chance in hell that I would change my name to the name of a man who was so scared of his wife that he would deny his own child. Of course that kind of righteous, self-righteousness can come back on you in many ways, and of course, it does, it do, and it has..The question of name changing was a sensitive issue for me well before the Galvin tangent.
Mother eventually married eight times, and I would have been Scott Fagan, Smith, Hodge, Lindqvist, Wilson, Somethingoranother, and Somethingotherorother, McTiernan, Galvin. It happens though, that the name “Fagan” (which I thought was my father’s name and connected me no matter what, to my “real” father), was often the only thing that I had to hold on to in the world.. I was so unhappy to hear this bs about changing my name to Galvin after all that I had gone through to hold onto and to “be” Scott Fagan.
I was born on to Jazz Heaven (West 52nd street) in what they say was an exceptionally good year for Jazz and Jazzing. 1945. Frankie was up and down playing with his heroes Lester Young and Chu Berry, and with another singer who had struggled with the name Fagan, Billie (Eleanor Fagan) Holiday. Gale was baptized at St. Malachi’s (The Actors Chapel) on West 49th Street. Dizzy Gillespie was her Godfather.
My first conscious memory is standing in a hospital crib at 2 years old, watching Mother, Frankie and my sister Gale walking away and leaving me. I could not understand why they were going and why they wouldn’t take me with them. It had never happened before and I just couldn’t understand it. I was so sad. (However, I would have been a lot more than sad, if I had known what was coming next. I was there for surgery to repair an un-descended testicle) I then remember riding the bus uptown in Frankie’s arms and coming home to our hep “Jazz baby” basement apartment.
Shortly after that, Mud and Lea and Gale and I, moved up to 82nd east of Amsterdam, and Frankie wasn’t around as much anymore. 82nd Street became a real “Jazz baby” pad. I remember the living room furniture was nothing but stripey mattresses all over the place (I’ve since learned the stripey stuff is called “Ticking”) and Mud had some pants and shirts made of the same material. It seemed like it was party time all the time. Jugs of wine, Jazz and jive talk The joint was “swinging” and Gale and I of course, were often on our tippy toes peeking out of our cribs to see what was going on.
When not peeking at the party, We spent a lot of time sitting on folding chairs at the modern dance studio watching Mother and Lea (and lots of other young women) in black leopards doing variations on a Swahili fertility dance, or Martha Graham movement exercises.
Alternatively, we spent a lot of time sitting on folding chairs in rehearsal halls where Frankie (and lots of other young men) were doing their variations on the latest be bop riffs. It was all very interesting for two or three minutes and then…but Gale and I were very well-behaved, and well-mannered “good little children” I don’t know why, we just were.. (but stuff like that takes it to the limit)
How I wish that I could sit there and watch it all again, not only because they are all gone now and I miss each of them and would love the opportunity to be with them in any context, but also because I’m much more interested in the dance and the Be Bop than I was, and I would be intrigued and excited by it all. I would love to say Wow Mud that was beautiful, or Wow Pop, that was amazing!, or Wow Gale what a wonderful girl and a wonderful sister you are..
I miss them each, and spent nowhere near enough time listening to who they really really were (although I will argue that at one time or another I feel who each of them really really were, in me, in the way I feel) it’s very odd to be in the world without them. Though we were never really a family under one roof, we were. We are connected in a deep and timeless way. I hope they knew how much I loved and love them.
I feel like I did when they left me there alone in the Hospital, except this time they didn’t all leave at once and I know, they didn’t go on purpose.
And now Dejavu all over again today (next day) is my brother Lonnie’s Birthday (Mahlon Lindqvist) aka “The Great Tanasha” or simply “Beloved”. He would have been 49 he died at 43.. He is buried in the Cemetery directly across from the recording studio, in a grave that waits for its stone. God willing, “it soon come”
Lonnie is the second of two children that Mother had with Howard Lindqvist, Howard was the only son of Mahlon Sr. and Grace Lindqvist. The Lindqvist family (at that time) was one generation removed from greatness and one generation ahead of losing it all. They were the wavy haired, golden skinned, golden children of the Cinnamon Bay Plantation and the House on America Hill, on the Island of St. John.
Mahlon Sr. had fallen from a horse as a young man sustaining a chronic injury that manifested as a bent back and hunched shoulders, on the other hand, his brother Louis Lindqvist, was a tall dashing fellow with long streaming white hair. Louie looked for all the world like a bronze Buffalo Bill or a Kentucky fried, Colonel Sanders. Larger than life Louie, owned the Ford dealership in St. Thomas.
Louie had two children, a son Ken and a daughter June,
Mahlon Sr. had two children, a son Howard and a daughter Dorothy.
Somehow the family’s extensive land holdings (actually an enormous ranch) on the east end of St. Thomas (a stones throw across the channel from St. John) were in the hands of Louie and his children, while a respectable three-story Danish brick house in town was what Mahlon had to hold and where he and his children lived.
Louie’s daughter June became a spinster librarian, at the Edith Baa Public Library in Charlotte Amalie, and her brother Ken an egomaniacal alcoholic who first ran the dealership into the ground and then actually lost every square inch of dust that had been the Lindqvist families pride and joy. (Ah..I hesitate to say it, but after Ken was no longer my “Uncle” we actually became good friends)
Howard, was also an egomaniacal alcoholic with nothing to run into the ground but his potential as a graduate of Howard University (where I thought I would go when I grew up) with a degree in Civil Engineering and his reputation as a human being capable of delivering a full days work. . (Ah..I hesitate to say it, but after Howard was no longer my “Father”, we actually became good friends)
Howard spotted Lelia in her bikini at “The Lindbergh Bay Beach Club” and made a bet with his friends that he could “get the white woman”. He may also have known that Mud was already.. at that moment, married to his next door neighbor Jerry Hodge. Jerry was a very cheerful finger clicking younger fellow who played the squeeze box, ah..ok, Accordion, Gale and I liked him well enough for having seen him only once or twice before they married. At the time, Jerry was away in the army.. (Mud had married Jerry perhaps a year earlier, and Jerry had gone off to “get his education” in the service.)
Jerry was stationed in Georgia and being trained as a cook. One day in the kitchen, Jerry (who was very dark-skinned) whipped out this photograph of his white wife and children back in the Islands (Mother and Gale and I) a southerner soldier, freaked out and threw a meat cleaver at Jerry’s head. When Mud first told Gale and I what had happened, I remember thinking to myself “Boy, why would he do something like that?” .
I vaguely remember meeting Howard, he was just one of many who flocked to Mother whenever she showed up wherever..he just seemed like another insincere bs artist trying to impress her. I guess he did because before we know it, Mud was asking Gale and I whether we thought she should marry Jack (her current boy friend) or Howard.
I think Gale and I were caught a bit off guard, she had already married twice since Frankie, without consulting us (While we were living on 82nd Street Mud had gotten married to a fellow by the name of “Jack Smith” a “war hero” with a drawer full of combat medals and beautiful silk ribbons). They got married at the “Manhattan Towers” a hotel on the West side at 76th and Broadway, made famous by a suite of romantic music by the same name.
It was a big to do..after the festivities, Gale and I were sent up to Connecticut to stay with his Mother and her big licky, scratchy, hairy, scary dog (In fairness, I have to say that after the hospital event, I was scared of everything, but most especially, thunder and big licky scratchy, hairy, scary dogs) in her trailer, while they went away to honeymoon. Shortly after, it came to light that Jack Smith, was a big fat liar,..ah I mean a pathological liar, and that poor Mud had been had, her money and her love.
Nevertheless when she was asking our opinion on who she should marry this time, I distinctly remember thinking, “why is she asking us, certainly she knows what to do about these things”..We didn’t have much time to make up our minds so because we knew Jack, and he had taught us how to play poker, we said Jack. To us, Howard was just another insincere guy being nice to her at the beach.
In retrospect, I think that Mud just deep down fully believed that if you were intimate with someone, you were obliged to marry them.
Needless to say, Mud divorced Jerry, jumped over Jack, and married Howard. (Jack would later marry Muds’s twin sister Lea, and stay with her the rest of their lives…However, Lea had no bed of roses with Jack as evidenced by the fact that after moving from St. Thomas to Jamaica, to New Orleans, they lived in Vegas for over 20 years and their ashes are buried under the infield at The Delmar Racetrack, in Delmar, California. Yep.
BOOK 3. A Birthday…
BOOK 3. A Birthday…
Yesterday I fully realized and understood precisely why and how the best minds of ancient Greece, after centuries of the most serious inquiry and consultations concluded that the Gods made humankind, our suffering, our dashed dreams and disappointments, our wretched afflictions, our snot riddled grief, our eyeball popping, hair tearing, spittle soaked screeching, and soul wracking sobbings, just for laughs, just for their amusement and delight.
Yesterday was nothing but laughs. But today?
Jeff Medina “el maximo guitarra” (Of Trinidad and St. Thomas) is coming in from Las Vegas where he is gigging, to do leads on what we have managed to record to date. As I mentioned before, I am very disappointed with the quality of the recordings and I will have to find a way to redo many if not most of them.
I will have Jeff listen and select the ones that he thinks he can work with and we will move forward from there. I am on my way to the UVI library to see if there are any last-minute emails from Jeff before his flight is scheduled to leave Las Vegas. I’m scheduled to meet with Derrick at the studio at Eleven AM. We will be looking at what Dan has left us to work with in terms of tracks and track information and I will try to discover how we will proceed and with which engineer and so forth.
When I first imagined creating a musical of the “Virgin Island Songs” it occurred to me to utilize the original tracks from “Dreams Should Never Die” (The V.I. Songs VOL.ll) and I asked Dan (the co-producer and studio owner) to find them. He said that he would. I have checked with him all along the way about the progress and he has reassured me that he and his partner Derrick were steady on it.
At our first “production meeting” this morning, I asked Derrick if they had found the remaining tracks and was amazed to hear him say that he knows nothing at all about those tracks, and that he and Dan have never searched high OR low for the tracks, at all… ever.
Aside from the fact that Dan lied about this important element of the project, if some or all of them are lost, it throws into question the possibility of using those tracks at all. (Which in my mind is half of the score) this is a big big problem.
As the meeting went on, it came to light that Dan may not have left any tracking notes, or written information about what was what. That is extraordinary, and means that someone with the expertise to run the board and the recording program (a recording engineer) will have to sift (along with me) through everything that we’ve done to identify what is useless and ought to have been deleted during the recording process and what works.
We have fifteen additional songs, each consisting of many individual tracks (the drum tracks, snare, kick, tom tom, hi hat, and so forth, the Bass tracks, take one, take two, the Guitar tracks, the Iron, the Congas, the Guiro..The Vocals) the time that it will take to do this work is one thing, the out-of-pocket cost for the engineer, is another. These are dollars that Derrick does not have and neither do I.
I have made quite a serious mistake, in that I gave Dan all the money up front in exchange for his commitment to see the project through to completion. My understanding was that the studio was in trouble and our money would be very helpful. I was happy to do it. One, because I was so jazzed to have a working studio in St. Thomas and Two, I had a commitment from the studio to “see it through”. This kind of commitment from someone in the Islands has always meant hell or high water, shoulder to shoulder, til’ death do us part. And that is what I took the commitment to mean.
However, our off island friend is not grounded in these absolutes of local culture, and has his own cultural interpretation which in retrospect appears to make an absolute commitment conditional, and dependent on factors held secret until the shif hits the shan. Very disappointing development.
Derrick and the studio are in a tough situation, sinking in unpaid debt with at least five uncompleted projects.
I have been telling Dan and Derrick that Jeff is coming from Las Vegas for months and we were scheduled to start this morning, however, (not surprisingly) Derrick has been having arrhythmias and his Doctor has scheduled a stress test and then wants him to rest.
Jeff and I will go over what we have to work with this afternoon and start in the studio with Derrick tomorrow at 9AM. Additionally, Derrick’s wife is scheduled to give birth in two days.
Jeff’s arranged sleeping arrangements have fallen through, and we have spent the day looking for a place for him to stay, we have visited a number of hotels (five) and we are looking at a small boarding house out East called “25 Bolongo”. I smell “arroz con habichuelas” (rice and beans) con sofrito, in the air.
A smell that I know well because after all, I am “El Gringito De Las Virginas” It smells good good good and I’m wondering where it’s coming from when the nice “down de island woman” that we are transacting with, advises us that the only difficulty that Jeff might encounter could be the minor distraction caused by the number of young women also staying there.
A double handful of young women, that turn out to be the current batch of strippers and pole dancers from the notorious Club 75 in town.
We get a look at some of them hanging their wash on the clothesline outside, wash consisting of little more than soap suds, and perhaps a 1/4 ounce of hot tropical Day-Glo paint on a string and “wispy little gossamer dream halters”
Beautiful young calente Dominicanas, who look pretty sharp and pretty sharp. More than anything the impression is of zoftico y calente doctoral candidates. Any doubts that Jeff or I had about the suitability of the accommodation, has of course vanished. He takes the room, and I take my leave.
There is no sign of life at Tut’s house “Consuelo”, so I conclude that I had better see to something to eat. I’d like something wonderful considering that it’s my birthday and I’ve been completely broke for two weeks and today I have a little digit. For some reason I’m thinking rice and beans con Carne, with a little platano maduro and a big fat beso on the side, OR perhaps a plate full of good church picnic macaroni and cheese.
With that in mind I go into a local “Southern Fried Chicken” franchise at Nisky Center and having the opportunity to survey the menu for more than ten minutes (because of the length of the line) and time to reflect that in every single instance that I have bought stuff in this particular franchise, I’ve been completely disappointed, I actually turn around and leave.
This must be the first obvious benefit of becoming 64, because this pro-active discretionary behavior surprises the heck outta me. However, I can’t really give myself too many points, because everybody knows this particular outlet lost the Captain or Colonel’s magic recipe long ago, and even the poultry is suspect.
It’s almost universally accepted that most of these birds were drugged and dragged out of the pigeon flocks that populate the bus Plaza in Old San Juan.
I’m thinking that Tuts and Mary may have made some thing special, but they could also have been called away on a mission of some kind and I am starvin’ hungry. I don’t want to eat something and have had them waste their time, intention and food…so I get a cold cut sandwich and go back down the road. When I get home, I put the stuff in the fridge and go to see Tuts. He says that Mary had prepared something but that she is now stuck in a seminar at UVI…I am touched and want to hold off on eating so we can all eat together. She calls and insists that we go ahead, we do.
A sample
Listen to a sample from the from the “The Virgin Islands Songs” The Musical.
Surrender to The Sun
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 