When last you hear cock crow?
Where I live in rural Jamaica we used to be awakened in the morning by the roosters crowing all around the village. It was a symphony that ensured you didn’t stay in bed. It got so that we could even identify whose roosters — Carlton’s from Top Bay, Jackie’s from Farm Town, and Mr Miles’ from some miles away.
The concerto has faded over time and this morning I realised I wasn’t even hearing one bird. Couldn’t tell the last time ah hear a cock crow. The roosters have drifted away from suburban rural and gone into deep rural in scattered districts, where sensible people still raise their game fowl.
My father kept chickens in the yard and as children we had fun searching for the eggs hidden in the bushes by the protective mother hens. Each evening he would summon them with the “coop coop” call and scatter corn grains for feeding off the ground. Then, at around 6:00 pm, they would unfold their wings and flutter upwards into the cashew tree, where they would roost for the night.
It was a sight to see them clucking out territorial bed space on the tree limbs as they settled down to sleep. Sometimes the local ‘fowl tief’, called Duppy Photo, would come calling, but to his chagrin the fowls would always prove to be his worst nightmare with their built-in burglar alarms. The tree would come alive with loud cackling, sash windows would be pulled up, doors thrown open, and the entire family would race outside to confront the visitor.
This was the age of the innocent, so no fear of guns or any form of retaliation, Duppy Photo would just show a clean pair of heels and disappear. Invariably he would abandon his crocus bag, and this was all the evidence needed by the police constable. By mid-morning he would be taken to the station for questioning, served the usual warning, and deliver his sworn testimony never to do it again. But, as far as he was concerned, his admission of guilt applied only to Teacher’s cashew tree. After all, there were other fowl roosts to conquer.
And so the cycle of the tree-to-tree visits continued, providing much village fun and a live mystery and entertainment series.
Later on the business became more sophisticated with the building of a coop in the backyard, and several years later the launch of the Four Paths Poultry Co-operative, headed by my father, with the new imported breeds of Rhode Island and Leghorn introduced into the roost.
Naturally fowl language crept into our lexicon. Not the four-letter type in this instance, but if, for example, you needed an early morning start, you would be warned to get up before cock crow. My wayward aunt from deep, deep country took that one a bit further with a mischievous, “...before cock say weh mi draws” — much to the disapproval of my father.
Cocks were our alarm clocks. They rivalled the railway train that blew its horn promptly at 6:00 am as it pulled into the Four Paths Railway Station, which itself had a clock that was famous around the island for its accuracy.
According to village storytellers, gentlemen who took pride in wearing their watches attached to a gold chain and placed in their fobs would pay the station a visit at least once per month to synchronise their watches with the ‘master of all clocks’. It was the original on-time train line.
The kauchie also played its part. The kauchie was a siren that maintained time schedules at the Fruit House, the largest employer of labour in the village. It was blown several times during the day; first at 8:00 am to call the workers to labour, then promptly at noon to call them to refreshment, again from refreshment to labour, and finally at 4:00 pm to signal now the day’s end.
If for some reason you couldn’t hear “when kauchie blow” — and its mournful spread could be heard for miles — there was always the school bell at precise intervals; starting when “school call”, then recess, lunch, afternoon recess, and “going home time”.
To The hills...
I never thought of our low-lying hills around Discovery Bay as a mountain range. Locals traditionally consider the Dry Harbour Mountains to be north of Brown’s Town and stretched across the range that straddles north-western St Ann. Nevertheless, the geological surveys say otherwise, “The Dry Harbour Mountains start in Discovery Bay.”
Former and late chief union delegate for Kaiser Bauxite Laurel “Willy” Wilson, who worked in the mining areas located in the upper mountain range, would leave the sports club at Discovery Bay with a parting jest whenever he lost a six-love to his domino rivals Frazer Perry, general manager; and Leo Mullings, mines manager: “I will go back to the hills from whence cometh my help,” he would say, as he took up his marbles and stormed out of the club.
Legend has it that Willy would sometimes retaliate to a six-love from his management friends by calling a strike. Not true. “The Chief” enjoyed mutual respect and friendships between himself and management, with management respecting and even sometimes fearing his strident defence of workers’ rights under all circumstances.
Willy was an extraordinary leader, who is still the only active worker delegate to simultaneously hold the post of vice-president of the National Workers’ Union. He had the listening ear of all the powers that be in the union, including the president, Michael Manley. He also had the respect and loyalty of the hourly paid workers. He had a great sense of humour, and Edgar Kaiser, the owner of the Kaiser Corporation, would head for Willy’s workstation on every visit to Jamaica to chat and exchange stories as old friends.
He was a veteran who served the bauxite industry both from a career perspective as well as his contribution to help with the modernisation of the country’s industrial relations process. He followed in the footsteps of another industry figure and the first general manager of Kaiser who shared his bauxite management and business expertise with the country when he came to the rescue of the Jamaica Railway Corporation in the late 1960s as its board chairman, helping to steer it out of the red and into efficient on-time performance.
Recall, too, that Alcan’s Ted Tatham was asked to chair the Project Land Lease programme introduced in 1978.
In an earlier column I referred to a former Alpart worker’s description of that company as a university “with on the job training that equipped people to work anywhere in Jamaica and in the world, as evidenced by the many persons who are working globally now using the competences garnered at Alpart”.
The true contribution of a company to a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) should not be measured only by its economic and social value, but also the quality of work attitudes and behaviour, and code of business ethics instilled in and demonstrated by its employees.
“It must not be overlooked,” declared the Alpart missive, “that each person in your respective roles created a corporate environment that rivals many Fortune 500 companies.”
The Grinch who stole christmas
The Christmas parties are getting further and further out of reach, and the COVID-19 Grinch is taking roost in the Christmas tree. As suggested earlier, the Government should consider declaring an Anti-COVID-19 Month or some such period to consolidate all strategies and steps being taken to fight the virus, and to get the nation united behind the ANTI-COVID drive.
An ANTI-COVID-19 Month calls for a deliberate, emphatic, persistent, and concentrated mass effort to get every single Jamaican to understand the importance of adapting to the preventive methods for fighting the virus, hammer home the consequences for non-conformity, and demonstrate the seriousness of our intention to save lives.
Somehow, somewhere we need a strong wake-up call to warn our people that the Grinch is going to steal Christmas and that we are in a war to save it.