Tony Deyal
"IS THIS your first visit to Pair-ah-dice?" the Montego Bay immigration official asked me. I wanted to tell him that the only pair-ah-dice I knew were either in Monopoly or Craps, but seeing that I wanted to pass 'Go' and did not want to go to jail or straight to jail, craps, singular or plural, I decided to keep my mouth shut.
However, I knew immediately what precipitated the paradise business. It is like every country that wants to make money from tourism goes to the same agency which has a cookie cutter template for tourism advertising. For a long time the buzzwords were 'nature's best kept secret'. They spun it off to country after country, including Trinidad and Tobago, which certainly doesn't qualify. They even sold Seychelles on the seashore. Everyone is indoctrinated in the slogan of the moment, hence the paradise business from the immigration man.
He asked me again, not content with my lack of response. "Did I get on the wrong plane?" I wanted to ask in mock horror. "I thought I was coming to Montego Bay, not Paradise Island in the Bahamas." Again, discretion was the order of the night, seeing that it was late in the evening and day-o had long left on Belafonte's banana boat. But the tallyman was not finished. Stamping his stamp and doing his do, he bid me adieu with, "Enjoy your visit to paradise." "Lord, have mercy!" as my Jamaican friends would say.
The poet Keats had written in his incomparable 'Hyperion', "Fanatics have their dreams wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect." After such a long, tiring plane journey, neither sect nor sects could keep me from my dreams, so I ran away to the paradise of Runaway Bay further along the north coast, east of MoBay but west of Ocho Rios, St Ann. In Trinidad, the home of the mentally agitated is also in St Ann's. In Jamaica, it is the parish of Garvey, Marley and Columbus.
It is said that when Columbus first collided with the Jamaican land mass, it was in St Ann's harbour. The Taino tribesmen on whose property he had trespassed eschewed the 'prosecution' that is the normal threat posted on signs throughout the region. Instead, they made no bones of their intention to eat him and his entire crew of hardened and veteran sailors.
DIETARY SUPPLEMENT
A modern investigation of the insistence of the native Jamaicans on having Columbus and his posse for dinner would find that the Tainos were probably constipated and needed some old salts as a dietary supplement. Anyhow, according to some historians, he hauled up the anchor, set sail and headed into the wind.
Other historians disagree, saying he was so scared, he headed into the anchor, broke wind and hauled his sail. Whatever happened, he ended up high and dry in what was the Spanish equivalent of Dry Harbour but which has been renamed Discovery Bay in spite of the argument that we were not discovered by Columbus or anybody else, including the IMF.
Believe it or not, as Ripley would say, I ended up in Ochi with upstanding citizens from St. Ann, including the Chamber of Commerce; and Restoration Committee, to discuss the construction of a library and cultural centre. I was intrigued that there are still people who value books and want to have a place where they could be housed in the care and comfort to which they are entitled, and from which they could bring joy to all that hold and behold them. Even as I made the journey to Ochi, I had already found a candidate for the stacks.
THE SIGN
Columbus might not have seen the sign, 'NOTICE. TRUSPISIS WILL BE PROSECUTED BY ORDER' or 'TRESPASSIES WILL BE PROSECUTED BY ORDER MRS LADYTHEWELL', but Canadian-born Dr. James W. Lee observed and photographed them over a 34 year period. They are included in a hysterical two-volume collection called SIGNPAITING in Jamaica, with the original signs highly enhanced by Dr. Lee's own wit. There is a sign saying, 'PLEASE don't PEA here' and another 'Please don't urinate (PIST) here. Thank You. Man Cool'. Another highlights what Dr. Lee calls 'Assorted Liquid Refreshments' and advertises, 'JUICES Special. Power Plus & Stagga Back, Egg Punch & Perup etc.' Like Dr. Lee, I, too, wonder about the 'etc'. Dr. Lee's comment on a sign advertising a 'bear' joint is 'not really topless nor at the zoo, but just a spot to sip your brew'.
There is the village bulletin board where Rudolph Roberts says, 'Take up my Yoak, My birding is light, God says'. Body repairs are called 'beet out' and one professional painter adds to his repertoire 'spraing'. A garage advertises 'spear' parts for 'Hillman' cars prompting Dr. Lee to wonder whether it was for the 'Hunter' series of the Hillman. Certain occupations are more troublesome than others, like 'uphoistering', 'upholestring', 'uphotstery' and 'upholetery'. The Jamaican penchant for adding and subtracting the letter 'h' is celebrated in 'God his alive' and 'Clarke Hart Gallery'. If you're browsing or looking, you too would wonder about Watson's Woodcraft which specialises in 'Antique Turning And Curious'. Is that what kills cats or is such a fate restricted to those who are merely curios? Certainly it is better than being a fence 'pose'.
Tony Deyal was last seen commenting on the library's architecture, which in contrast to the minimalist expression of the exterior, the roof space will be an exuberant mess of entrails and structural members. Fortunately, it will also have a dictionary.
