Almost there
Will Jackson
Looking back into the long ago times, one might be tempted to say, the old folks had nothing to think about other than Christmas.
The month of December was truly important to the fathers.
They white-washed their wall houses, or painted their lumber ones as best as they could, to make them look good for Christmas.
Some people, you know, lived a little better off than others did.
In the town area and in West Bay there were not so many wattled and daubed, thatched houses as those found in East End and North Side, since the people who lived in Town and the West tended to have better shipping than did those living in the country parts.
The country men always seemed to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the master's table by lack of their communication with town and what went on down there.
A lot of younger men of the districts had to go to town in November and the first two weeks in December to find work in cow pastures, and cleaning yards to find and earn a little cash for the Christmas season.
That was no vacation for those men with the rough conditions under which they had to live, sometimes just short of sleeping under the trees.
That is a part of life I really don't like to talk about, but as the most of the men who were caught up in such hard times are already gone to their peaceful rest, I may not be hurting anyone's dignity just to remind my readers that such men as those of my age and older experienced hard times to reach our ages. Though times were tough, and living so very mean, I take pleasure in saying now, I never ever heard of one young man from the country ever being accused of stealing one shirt or one penny from any one.
We earned about twenty-five or thirty shillings per week, six days working. We were paid five shillings per day now being measured to fifty cents per day.
Our diet had to be bread and buns and brown sugar lemonade, and that was without ice, until about 1938 or 1939. There was no motor vehicle to ride to the districts, so normally we young men walked into town on Sunday nights to be at work Monday and stayed there until Friday or Saturday.
Before the event of trucks on which to ride on some days, a vehicular road of sorts having been in 1936, was really the greatest blessing ever poured out on those districts. From there on life became a little easier for the country dwellers.
We were able even to take our farming produce to town on weekends and sell, or exchange for more needed goods.
The women folks could go to town with the little Christmas savings they had laid up during the year to do shopping for the family.
The middle aged and family men normally had about two weeks work in December in the cleaning of the paths between Frank Sound and the districts and right on through the districts, of course a head tax for the year was always collected for the government, which was the government's income, along with a little postage and stamp fees or a little import duties.
Talk about government in distress!
The people were poverty stricken and the government was one open poor house.
The people lived primarily from cultivating the land and the bounties of the sea; those who owned enough lands to cow pasture raised a few cows, always endeavoring to have one cow ready to butcher or to sell each December.
They normally kept hogs, which no doubt they could butcher, at least two each year.
There was never a shortage of pork meat in the districts, even lots of salt pork to be had, beef, of course was usually reserved for Christmas times.
Each family usually secured fifty or sixty lbs of beef for the Christmas, plus their pork. Christmas of old had to do with eating and drinking, cooking and feasting which we will talk about next week, were just about the amuse mint's of Christmas day and boxing day.
The first and second week of December was in every sense the preparation weeks for the Christmas season with the houses being painted on the outside, while the housewife did her thing on the inside.
The yards were weeded clean and sanded, that being the task of the young people, a job which they took delight in doing, which meant going to the nearest beach and filling up their baskets with white sand, which they carried on their backs to their respective yards, leaving the white sand in little piles to form a decorative look along the front entrance to the house.
Then, the young men of the family would be gathering and stock piling fire wood, because no one wanted to go wood hunting during the holiday season.
The old folks, you see, kept one full week of holidays, from December 25th to January 1st that was their interest paid to themselves for one year of hard work.
They used that time to recharge their batteries for another year, which they had to face, with its problems, and quite often there could be more than enough troubles and problems before the next Christmas came.
There was hardly any amusement for old or young in those days. The real old time good timers sometimes had kitchen dances on Friday nights, which I have been told was a custom island-wide.
They didn't have any musical band such as we know today, but there was always some one in each community who played the violin, they called it the fiddle, then there was a drummer who beat the cow hide, homemade drum, while another scraped on an old tin grater.
This of course sounded very amusing, I dare say far excelling the kind of thump, thump I hear called music today, if you doubt my estimation by a tape of Radley and the happy boys and listen to it being played, that is fully and East End performance.
Well that is the kind of music the old folks enjoyed while they shook out the arthritic pains from their hips and shoulders.
We had no radios or television in those primitive days.
Various people who got here only in the times of the changed and changing Cayman have frequently asked me, what did the young people do to survive stress and boredom during the year through which they lived?
Well, I answer, that which the mind doesn't know about, the heart never mourns after.
Young people of my days had nothing to educate their minds toward fast living as do the youth of today we lived clean lives with Sunday school as our greatest informant, we saw no western movies or heated love stories, and we were kept busy at home doing things to help our parents in whatever way we could.
Every young person of those times looked forward with the keenest of anticipation for the Christmas, and all had a little something new to wear for Christmas, home sewn of course, because we didn't have access to ready made clothing, so mother always secured cloths to sew something for herself and each child in the family, whether boys or girls.
Girls were thought early on in life to sew their own clothes, the older ones perhaps making clothes for the younger ones.
They were thought to cook and keep house, while the boys helped dad with the cultivations and the animals which most of the families reared to help out in their income.
Home life for the youth was much different from those of the present age know it, but children then did not wander around and get in troubles like many kids of today.
Personally, I am happy for my strict and tough upbringing.
The grandfather who reared me was indeed a hard old disciplinarian, but he made a man out of me like many others of my age and time.
So then, next week is the time that we have been waiting for we are almost there.
My group is looking forward to the 24th night. We can't wait for that date that was really the whole sugar candy for us.
Watch out for the Christmas event as you celebrate in today's fashion.
Will Jackson
Seafarer and noted
Caymanian Historian