go back and fetch it

Something about being retired causes a person to want to dwell on the past and make comparisons to the present. Elation is the only reason I can imagine why a number of retirees seem determined to go back and fetch the past. At the risk of having someone down strive the old dotten fool, I hasten to say that it may well be more about connecting with one’s true self.  Perhaps the fact that you cannot have a present if you didn’t have a past is all part of why we regale the past. I hope no one will fought me a lick for writing about these things cause it aint like I putting them business in the broad pa.

Stories about boiling sweet potatoes in the butter pan on fire rocks, the purpose of the brown paper covering the boiling potatoes notwithstanding that the cover on the pot is air-tight, drinking hot bush tea first thing in the morning to clean out your stomach, Ravishing the cocoa plum trees on Meads Bay on August Monday or the grape trees in the Cove during the school picnic. Some retirees go back to fetch it so far that they insist that moon light excursions, poppy day and cold butter and sugar sandwiches, the cold powder milk served at school was the best they ever had. For my part I think of being a Brownie and standing as part of the Parade on the Park in that hot sun on the Queen’s birthday unable to sit as I watch some of my peers drop in a faint. I think of the hot cross sticky buns from Sidney’s bakery kept in the little brown valise that the Catholic Church use to give the children after Sunday School, of spending the day in the fork of the tamarind tree reading the bag of books I got from Maureen Daniels. The annual dose of Epson salts chased by red soda just before the new school year began. I remember resenting my father for not being a better father, insisting that we fetch water from the standpipe daily to water the coconut trees that never bore and especially for taking away my puppy, George gave me, to give his paramour. I recall how I walked from East End to the Valley snot running down my face crying, only to be ordered back home without my puppy. Cleaning the sooty lampshade for the kerosene lamp for grandma was one of my daily chores.
 I still love the cakes from the pot outside.
 I could go back to fetch more but that would require a different blog. Reminiscing about this stuff makes me laugh now, so there must be some value in going back to fetch it. Not sure if this post will satisfy the thirst for nostalgia among the retirees but it’s a start and hopefully has evoked some fond and pleasant memories as you make your comparison to present day. Go on, go back and fetch your own experiences.