The telephone came to our home in my early teen years. It was a red, box-like rotary-dial desk phone, occupying the same corner of the living room where my father’s precious table-top radio set occupied, the radio that he brought back with him from London in the early 60s, which beamed out the BBC World News and play-by-play West Indies cricket commentary; cricket that once sacred and beloved of West Indies sport that symbolized the very essence of the West Indies or the best of what the West Indies could be.
The telephone, like the radio, was no child’s play. The corner they occupied was sacred; it was like an altar to knowledge, culture, communications, progress, and advancement. No other part of the house epitomized my father more than this corner. Although my father was in a constant bread-and-butter struggle to feed, clothe, and educate his family, he spent daily time in that corner, catching up with the outside world and following West Indies cricket. It was something to see my strict Seventh Day Adventist father violate his sabbath, behind my mother’s back taking a sneak listening to cricket on Saturdays when he couldn’t take the suspense any longer.
In much the same way my family was among the first in its immediate neighborhood (if not in the whole of Vieux Fort) to own a radio, a refrigerator, and a vehicle, it was one of the early adopters of the telephone, yet another possession that suggested that my parents were progressive and ahead of their time, and that made Vieux Fortians believe we were rich, even though I didn’t know any other family that worked as hard as we did and I always use to wonder if we are so rich how come we working so hard?
As to be expected, the telephone served not just the family. Our neighbors and parents’ friends came to make and sometimes receive calls, so too did my mother’s sisters, nieces, and nephews from the countryside, who sometimes made the seven-mile bus trip just to make or receive overseas calls. If I remember correctly, my ever industrious and proactive mom even added telecom service as yet another one of her enterprises to help keep the family afloat.
The author, Anderson Reynolds, is in the process of finalizing the second installment, My Mother, of his memoir trilogy. The first installment was My Father Is No Longer There.
Other recent blogs by Anderson Reynolds
The Constitutional Review Committee, Is This a Case of Déjà Vu?
George Odlum and My Visit to Bristol University
The Nobel Laureate Tour
Other related blogs
My Father and the Mango Palwi Tree
I Remember
Renewal
My Mother’s Most Precious