Scott Fagan's Mem.wa?

BOOK 4. A Thanksgiving with “Tutsie, Foxy, Mighty Whitey, and Captain Timmy”

(On Thanksgiving Day 2009, Tuts and Tim and Nicky and I took a little trip together up to Jos Van Dyke to see the Fox. We were talking with him and Tessa about doing a three-man concert there featuring Ruben, Nicky and Myself, that now sadly will never be. In this Thanksgiving post, I‘ve tried to capture some of what was so wonderful about that time together.)

From “Book 4. A Little Trip To Jos Van Dyke”…

Today is Thanksgiving and we will pass it it in a small sail boat called “Stargazer” with Tuts, Captain Timmy Carstephen, Nicky “Mighty Whitey” Russel and The “First lady of ALL The Virgins” The Good Lady Delia, ( of St. Thomas, Harlem, Haight Ashbury, and Tortola) We will be on our way to spend the day with our old friend “Sir Foxy”, (recently Knighted by The Queen Of England, honest) in Jos Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands.

We have been planning a trip to see our friend Philiciano Callwood aka “The Fox” aka Foxy. He has a beach front bar in Jos Van Dyke, that has become quite popular over the years. We are going up to see him about scheduling a concert. Tuts and Timmy and Nicky and I have each and all known him for many years. Tuts and I have known him the longest, in fact since we were all boys living in Bournefield in the 1950’s.. Philiciano (or Phillie as he was known then} was brought down from Jos Van Dyke to St. Thomas by his mother, who worked as a house keeper for Mrs. Creque and the three naughty Creque daughters.

They all lived in the huge pink Creque Mansion on the “Hidaway Road”. A Mansion large enough (people said) to contain both Heaven and Hell in equal measure, and according to he girls.. it certainly did.

That any of them survived the Creque Mansion is the kindest kind of miracle, and Foxy’s subsequent success may be proof positive that the long sufferin’ can earn and redeem good karma points. Knowing (and loving) the Creque girls as we do, Tuts and I can “vouchify and attest” that he earned ‘em, every one.

These many years later, we (and they) are all very happy for his good fortune. That good fortune includes falling in with the Lady Tessa, late of wildest Australia, who turned out to be his Ms,  his match and his mate.

 As I mentioned, our little group of travelers includes a lady who is also a legend in her own time, “Miss Delia” of St. Thomas, Harlem, Haight Ashbury and Tortola. Our little crew are all miraculous survivors.

We have been “adults” since childhood, which means our childhood lives were shot thorough with adult concerns and behaviors like “where are my cigarettes and where is my rum” and our adult lives shot through with the  behaviors and of concerns of childhood, like ”where are my cigarettes and where is my rum” (while Tuts and I got clean and sober long ago or we would be long gone, recovery doesn’t change the past or the depth and longevity of the connection between and among kindred spirits)

 We are intending to sail up to “The Foxes Tamarind” on Timmy’s 28 foot sail boat “The Star Gazer” Timmy (I should call him “Captain Timmy,” he’s had his Captain’s papers since he was 18) has been sailing these waters since he was a child. First on his family’s beautiful 48 foot, black hulled Ketch “The Shellback” and then on the mighty “Maverick” certainly one of the most beautiful awe and dream inspiring sailing ships to ever grace the harbor at Charlotte Amalia.

One of my very earliest songs was about the Maverick.

“Maverick Sailing On the tide

Maverick where are you bound tonight

With new born child below, blow ye winds oh blow

Keep them safe from rock and wave and blow ye winds oh blow

 Maverick, take me for a ride

Maverick, I need a place to hide

From things I should not know, Blow ye winds oh blow

Keep us safe from rock and wave, and take us where we want to go”

 We are all children of “Trader Dan’s” a St. Thomas, waterfront bar that drew and welcomed one and all, (including school children in our two-tone uniforms and empty book straps).

There was no minimum drinking age in the Islands in those days (I had been buying rum on credit at the local shops for my mother and stepfathers, since I was six) and those of us with a predilection, or as the recovery materials put it “a predisposition to alcoholism” were blindly (no pun, I mean it) demonstrating what early onset familial (genetic) alcoholism looks and sounds (and feels) like. We were having the time of our lives.

 As I’ve said, that any one of us survived (many, maybe most, didn’t) is really quite unexpected, but here we are sailing out of the lagoon, and east to Jos Van Dyke. We have all made this trip in many a vessel over the years.

 One trip found Tim and Tuts and I in an ocean racing Donzi with my little twins Lelia and Archie, and their beautiful Mother Annie. We stopped at Sandy Cay” on the way up that day, and had to swim ashore with the little ones. Archie rode on Tut’s back like the Ginge bread man, and Twinkle rode on mine (yes, yes, they were wearing their little life vests) still it was so exciting for them that they have never forgotten, (their Mother has likely never forgotten either), What a beautiful and exciting windblown day that was, and what a beautiful and calming day this is, as we sail on Timmy’s little “Star Gazer”.

The sea breeze is extraordinary; it’s coming down through (Sir Francis) Drake’s Passage and across Pillsbury sound bringing the coolest freshest air imaginable. Its way too easy to forget how good it feels head to toe, body and soul, to sail these waters and to sip this sweet sweet breeze…

Tuts is talking like he’s having a flashback to the swim in which he became the first native Virgin Islander in known history to swim from St. Thomas to St John.

“Look, look” he says, there’s the two poles on St. Thomas that I saw from the tip top of the giant wave, and there is the undersea cables that I told you about! And look, look how the current is trying to sweep everything southwest; out of the sound and into the sea, “De nex stop out dey is New Orleans m’boy, Wha? Not me again meson, not me again!” “But Tuts,” somebody says, “dem boy sae you ‘fraid!,  an das why yu ain’ gon do it again, dem boy sae yu ‘fraid man, yu ‘fraid! 

“Oy fraid? Oy fraid? Yu damn right ah ‘fraid”,  he says indignantly, “Who ain’ fraid a out dey, schipid in dey ass! Meson, yu don know dey got Shak out here big like de Bismark? Me bouy, de shak dem so big yu cou drive a safari truck on dem, in fact if yu wan tu know de whole trut, das de onliest way I mek it to Sain John.

 Off to the left are the beautiful gold and green islands of Thatch Key, then Congo and Luango. We see the remains of the old great house of the plantation on Luango, where the white overseer was dispatched by freedom seeking slaves in the first moments of the St. John uprising of 1733.

Beyond the keys, to the North and East is Jos’ Van Dyke. An Island  named after a Dutch Pirate Captain but settled by the Quakers and part of the British Virgins. When the English renounced slavery in 1833,  the Quakers on Jos’ gave the land to the  people that they had held in bondage there.

The Danes abolished slavery in 1849 consequently slaves in St. John were always trying to find their way to Jos Van Dyke and Tortola and freedom.  In fact there is a huge iron sugar cane boiling kettle on the sand in Jos’ that a St. John slave was able put his wife and children into, and  sail (or row) them safely all the way  to Jos Van Dyke and freedom. When I first came up to see the fox in the sixties,  the iron kettle was still on the beach.

We slide up to a new concrete wharf and head for the old wooden customs office only,  now it’s a new concrete customs office, where we discover that the gentle portly gentleman who had manned the post since salt met water, had been called away to work the customs house at the Pearly Gates.

As Delia and the current customs gent negotiated, I spotted our friend Ruben Chinnery sitting at a table under the trees in front of a little beach side café, We have all known Ruben for at least forty five years, and Tuts and I for closer to fifty, back then,  Tuts and Ruben and I had a little “Band” that knocked the living hell out of “Perfidia” I was the singing Sax man, Tuts played the Trumpet and Ruben strangled the guitar til’ it squeaked for mercy. Good lord we loved to play that song. it was also the only one we could play. Perfidia and nothing but Perfidia.

We have jammed together at Foxy’s many times since then, and we are here today to see about setting up a gig in which Ruben, Nicky, (Mighty Whitey) and I would be playing together all day long (maybe three sets each and one or two super long jams)

After speaking with Tessa and The Fox, it’s on. We will decide on the date at a future time. That done, we socialize… hug and smooch and then…we head back down Pillsbury Sound.

Between little St. James and the entrance to the Lagoon, Timmy (the Captain of the little ship) cuts the engine and announces that we aren’t going any further until he hears a few specific tunes. The mighty fine fellow hands me my guitar and says “The first one is “Mademoiselle”. 

 The boat is rocking like crazy and I am sitting on the roof of the cabin, so I jam a foot against a stanchion and the other against the life lines and, once properly “jammed”, I sing my friggin’ heart out. It isn’t everyday that tough, and weathered, beaten but not bowed, hombres honor me in this way. I am really touched that my lifelong tough guy compadres feel this way about my music, and I will fall overboard and drown, guitar and all before I will disappoint them.

Here’s a recent “LIVE” recording of Mademoiselle..

https://scottfagan.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/08-mademoiselle.mp3

 Now, says the Captain, Now let’s have Captain Creole!

(I am posting our recent “LIVE” recording of Captain Creole with  Nicky’s dedication in it)

We all knew the song.  I had first recorded it for BANG in 1966 and then again  for RCA in 1975, and Nicky is in fact on  the chorus of the recording (from “Dreams Should Never Die” lilfish records, 2006) posted here. We each and all  sang one rousing chorus after another, until we reached the dock.