Peas be unto you
YOU COULD hear the ‘mike’ from a mile away. True, what you were hearing was the ‘ mike’, or microphone, through the very loud horn-type speakers mounted on the top of an old jitney or van, but in the same way Nipper, the RCA dog i n the gramophone advertisement listened to His Master’s Voice, we listened for, and to, the approaching vehicle advertising the latest movies showing at the Jubilee Cinema in Chaguanas.
We were not interested in hearing about the Indian movies or the songs from them. That was for our parents. What interested us, the boys of all races and even ages, were the announcer’s special delivery and jargon, the pamphlets which we ran crazily about gathering as they fluttered out of the window of the van, competing with one another to see who could collect the most, sometimes fighting off the other boys from nearby who had either jumped the gun and reached in our area prematurely, or others from where the van had already passed but who kept on chasing it even though they knew they were trespassing, and angry words, as well as the occasional blows, would pass.
Sometimes the odd girl would try to join the melee and was either told, “Weh you doing here? Dis is not a girl ting,” or we shouted, “Susan mudder. Look she on de road fighting for pamphlet.” This inevitably brought out an angry parent and Susan had to slink back inside to wash the wares or help with the evening meal.
Those were the days of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lash LaRue, Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe and, later, of John Wayne and Audie Murphy. It was also the era of the action-packed ‘serials’ like Spy Smasher, Nyoka and the Tiger Men, and Fu Manchu.
‘LICKS LIKE PEAS’
Because of the many fight scenes in these very popular movies, the announcer on the mike always made the point, “Licks like peas!” We knew exactly what he meant by “licks like peas”, not just in the movies but at home or even in the street if a neighbour caught us doing something wrong.
We knew how plentiful the licks were because we all grew peas and after every large harvest, sometimes weekly, we had to help shell them. We had podcasts long before the Internet. My grandmother and, later, my Aunty Moon would preside over the ritual. All the peas we had helped to pick from the many trees in the yard, the back and the garden, every single pod was cast into a huge basin and we all had to sit and help.
I was born a couple days after the Second World War ended, but I experienced shell shock every week when peas were in season. Complaints or tantrums were not allowed and prompted swift action, so we had to watch our peas and Qs. Supposed trips to the toilet were frequent. It was like the story about buying a tin of Campbell’s alphabet soup and getting a hot ‘P’. Since we lived next door, I heard my mother or father calling me frequently. But that cut no ice with anyone, and I knew if I persisted, it would be licks like peas for me, too, not just the bad guys in the movies.
Basically, we were dealing with what we know as ‘pigeon’, aka gungo, peas. Nobody is sure why this regional staple was named after the bird family Columbidae, but to justify the name by saying pigeons used to raid the crops from the early days in India where the peas originated does not make much sense. It is like chick peas or what we call channa. In France, the peas were called pois chiche, which means ‘pea pea’, but the British heard ‘chick’ and so the stupid joke was born, “Why did the carrot get embarrassed?” Because it saw the chick pea.
What I know is that my family used to curr y the green peas with potato, sometimes with shrimps, or cooked it up in a ‘khicharee’, or ‘kedgeree’. Even though we never dried the peas, we now buy canned, dried pigeon peas and use it in our pelau, or peas and rice. The peas came to the Caribbean as part of what is known as the ‘jahagi bundles’ brought by the indentured workers. They also brought lentils, or what we knew as ‘lanty’ peas and black-eye peas.
During the war, the sugar cane workers grew pigeon and black-eye peas, yams, dasheen and other ground provisions among the cane-roots to help feed the local population and reared their own ducks and chickens. Split peas was a staple but was rationed, as were rice and flour up to about the mid- or late 1950s. I suppose this must have accounted for the question, “What is the difference between fry chicken and pea soup?” The answer is that anybody can fry chicken.
What is little known is the part the humble peas, both green and yellow, played i n our understanding of genetics. Johan Gregor Mendel (18221884), an Austrian scientist and priest, crossed green and yellow peas and found that the ‘offspring’ were all yellow. The green had disappeared. Then he allowed the yellow to self-fertilise and 25 per cent of them came out green.
This l ed to the eventual understanding that mothers and fathers both contributed to the traits of a child and not, as believed by many people previously, if the sperm came from the father’s right testicle the mother bore a son, and from the l eft testicle, a daughter.
Mendel’s experiments f orm the ‘centrepeas’ of our laws of heredity. Now, almost 150 years after Mendel’s ‘masterpeas’, peas in a pod are back in the news. This time in space. Space Daily recently reported that an international research team has discovered that exoplanets, or planets that orbit a star outside the solar system, tend to be the same sizes as their neighbours. In fact, as the team l eader, astrophysicist Dr Lauren Weis, said, they tend to be the same size and regularly spaced, like peas in a pod.
What this means is that if the deciding factor for planet sizes can be identified, it might help determine which stars are likely to have terrestrial planets that are suitable for life. In other words, we might soon be growing peas, both green and yellow, and sowing other seeds in outerspace.
‘I was born a couple days after the Second World War ended, but I experienced shell shock every week when peas were in season. Complaints or tantrums were not allowed and prompted swift action, so we had to watch our peas and Qs.’