OfThese Changing Times
By Will Jackson
Full well do I remember the Cayman of 75years ago. I always hear those times spoken of as being the goodold days and no doubt they were good days for those who livedthrough them. At the very least for them they had no idea of thehustle and worries that must be endured to survive today's demandsof living.
The people lived leisurely though they workedhard with no modern equipment to work with; whatever they accomplishedwas with their own bare strength and their own simple ideas.
The average man of old times lived in his own life by doing hisown thing. The main occupation of the land-Lubber was their cultivation.They lived entirely by the produce of the soil and the creaturesof the sea.
In like manner there were those who calledthemselves seamen. They made two or three voyages per year onfishing trip with the schooners. Some of them travelled to KingstonJamaica and as far as Mobile, Alabama to sell their turtles, thinkingthey had done a whole lot of travelling. Anyway, they did returnto their home routines no matter where they went and returned.Farming and fishing were the ways of living then.
The men folks usually did their thing, whetherfishing or cultivation in the first half day and relaxed duringthe afternoon hours, taking their naps then going for their eveningwalk to talk about their gain and losses of the day. The womenwere not all that blessed. Life for the females at home couldbe very exacting.
Although, they did find, or make, time tovisit the sick and the helpless ones of their Community - thisis one of the great virtues of that day and age. There was alwaystime to help the helpless and the needy ones. Mostly everyonewho got sick either recovered or died at home: it was a communitycase.
Back to the housewife's role in the family,she had a massive task to perform on a daily basis. On her dependedthe family's sustenance by her cooking whatever there was to becooked. There was the laundry to be washed without the benefitof a washer or modern washing equipment-no soap powder, no bleach,no rinsing liquid but only a wood tub and a wash board and a pieceof Jamaica brown soap.
Then she had to iron the washed clotheswith a coal iron. There was the house to be kept clean, the floorswere all of wood and had to be hand-scrubbed every week. The childrenwere something else to reckon with, there could be ten or twelvein only fifteen years. She bore children as long as age allowedher to. Well, you are asking me what was good about those times?
Forgetting the negative the negatives, itwill take a lot of telling just to cover the positives that madethe good old days memorable for those who knew them.
There was little or no money to throw aroundbut no one missed what he wasn't accustomed to. A student recentlyasked me to tell her of my youthful days, and how I spent them?Of course those days of mine will require a book to record them.
As how I am writing I see a great numberof youngsters, boys and girls together having a nice time in thesea on their first day of summer vacation from school.
That vividly reminds me of my own days.We looked forward with keen anticipation to four weeks of holidayfrom school and enjoyed gang swimming. But on the other side ofthe coin no on remained idle.
During those weeks, we had our duties assignedeach day. Here is where mother got that much need help at home.There were those of the less fortunate ones who used the timeto make ropes to obtain their own little necessities for nextschool term.
Boys had their place in the family's cultivationand among the cows from day to day, more so when daddy was absentat sea. As for me, quite often I was master of my own show sinceI was the only child and my dad was a seaman in every sense ofthe word.
I did not really have too much time to playbut I loved what I did rather than play. I guess that it mademe feel like a man while still a boy.
The good old days left no one with financialburdens. We never had the kind of modern houses that today's youngpeople are brought up in with all the gadgets and equipment butthe beautiful positive was that no bank owned any Interest inthe family's estate.
Dad could sleep soundly and contentedlywhen he laid down his banana leaf bed. He knew when some one knockedon his door it was not a police or the creditors. Free living,what a beautiful feeling!
There where no televisions in those days,so moral corruption and crimes were strange happenings. Juveniledelinquency was reserved for the late 20th, Century.
With the advent of movies and televisionscame, corruption that changed the face of a beautiful countrypreserved, and handed down to us by our fore-fathers'. The goodold days are only times to be remembered by those who are tooold to remember what year they were born.
God bless all the oldsters, may they goto their graves in peace comforted with the knowledge that theylived in the good old hard, but lovely days.