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At Jubilee Market
Daily Gleaner 1911 September
9 page 6
FAMILIAR STREET SCENES -- WAITING FOR A JOB
The sun’s rays had about scorched the last breath of coolness from the stifling streets
as I wended my way through the crowded avenue round the Jubilee Market Square. The people in the building panted for air.
Languor was on every hand. Still I pushed on through the perspiring, suffocating crowd outside, listening to the vast volume
of shouting which is one of the characteristic sounds of the market at mid-day. And coming out of the crowd I saw my man patiently
standing up waiting for a job.
“Hello, Dick,’’ I hailed him, ‘‘do you expect something?’’
His face brightened as he looked at me. Then he smiled broadly. And as the smile grew into
a grin he asked if I had anything to carry.
“Anything to carry?” I repeated. “Don’t you think it’s hot enough?”
“Hot be blowed,” he remarked “Call this hot? Why, yesterday rain fell, and you call it hot? Eh! If you have anything
to carry, say so, but don’t talk about hot.”
“I have nothing for you to carry,” I said, “but tell me, do
you do much of a business this way?”
“Stop, I want to ask you just one question. How you know I name Dick?”
“Look here, Douglas,” I replied, I know you very well. Know perhaps more than you think.”
“You talking chupidness me friend, I never remove you yet!”
“You haven’t,” I answered, “but that’s the thing I want to talk to you about. Could you
come under the “big tree” a minute?’’
“Well you see, it’s just like this, every [street]car that come down to-day mean money.
And if you want to make me leave business to talk to you, then you have to pay me.”
“I agree’, I answered.
The reply was not polite enough to be printed. Anyone who has had to do with
the handcartmen of the city will readily grasp what was said. I asked him, however, what he expected.
“It’s jus’ like this,”
he replied; “sometimes plenty, sometimes scarce. But Saturday you can always
look out for rice and peas money. Wait me fren, car dah come!’
The car came and passed him. Another followed quickly in its wake.
“Cho!” he said, “de East Street car fe Railway bound fe bring
something.”
‘‘But the East Street car for Railway,” I ventured, “can bring you nothing as the car stops in front
of the Station.”
“You young my friend,” said the hand-cart-man. “You don’t know how mountain-man fool. Him think it shorter if him come off here and go to Railway.’’
But the East Street car brought nothing.
“Well,” I said, “love’s labour lost. Come and talk to me.”
“How much you goin’ to give me?”
‘‘A drink’’, I said.
“What you call a drink?” he queried, laying great emphasis on the “you.”
“A rum’’ I replied.
“Good man,” was the answer, and he pushed his cart into
the shade.
TOLD HIS STORY.
By dint of a series of questions in the vernacular he told a tale common to all hand-cart-men. It didn’t
matter to him whether he was called the cart-before-the-horse, whether he was said to be a dray-man-enemy, or whether
in pushing his load he was cautioned against spavin.
“If a man follow Kingston people, sir”, he summed up philosophically, “you go to jail. But cart-before-the-horse
or no cart-before-the-horse, I earning a honest livin.
“Take a lady want fe move in the night. Where she gwine get cart? Besides, she don’t have enough to make
one good load. And drayman so forward, sah, because him drive beast, dat him go on like man tek foolish powder.”
“Foolish powder, what is that?” I asked him.
“Don’t
you born yah?” he asked.
“Yes,”
I said “but I don’t know what is a foolish powder.”
“A’right then,”
remarked my man somewhat contemptuously, “if you born yah, and don’t know ’bout foolish powder well all
I can say is you da play white.”
I would not push the ‘foolish powder’ proposition, but I
asked him to tell me of something that stood out in his experience. How he had beat the bailiff, or better yet,
how he had hoodwinked the landlord.
‘‘Ah, me fren! when the moon shine bright in the night, when it brighter than electric lamp that car company burn, then I can fix
people business. But me good sah, I tell you something I make more from landlord than tenant.’’
“How?” I enquired.
“Cho, you young my fren” he again remarked. “Suppose
I charge a female one and six for the job and she bate me to a shilling, I ask her to give me an advance. Of course I get
a “ten”, then I have a talk with the landlord and I get a bob. I go to the yards and as I begin to load the landmaster
come, and, well, I have to get pay don’t care what happen.”
“I see,’’ I said.
“You don’t see nothin, come wid me one night den you see something.”
MUSIC HATH CHARMS.
Strains of music wafted, and sounds of distant laughter greeted my ear as I trudged along a well
known lane a couple nights later with the man behind. I came abreast of the house
from which the music sounded, and I saw a group of people standing up looking on at what was proceeding inside. Men in their
shirt sleeves, women in gossamer white fabrics were going round to the rhythm of what is locally known as a “Country
Dance.” It was the piece before supper and as they whirled past to the langourous music, I could not help
stopping to have a look in. The clarionet player was vieing with the man on the cornet, whilst the fiddler drew his bow
as if everything depended on him. Then in a grand finale the bass, violin, cornet and clarionet blended in
a clash that would have done justice to a local orchestra.
I left the hand-cart man to pursue his journey and I will later on tell the story of what happened.
W.
A. S.
Comment:
The reference in this piece to ‘foolish powder’ is intriguing. The hand-cart-man’s reluctance to
explain the term seems curious, but the fact that the term is today a street term for cocaine, may explain his reluctance.
I have found a use of the term ‘foolish powder’ in a US publication from the 1890s in a context which makes it
possible that cocaine was meant. Of course, at this period the use of cocaine and opium was not illegal, and I have come across
references to the use of opium in Jamaica, especially by the Chinese community. I wonder if anyone can confirm, or otherwise,
the use of cocaine fairly commonly in Jamaica around 1900; or was the hand-cart-man referring to something quite different?
Joy Lumsden
joyousjam@snail-mail.net
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