By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterFAST FOOD may be the side order of the day but there was a time when fries referred to sprat, 'Big Mac' would have meant the rotund Mr. McPherson and 'go large' would have been a request for bigger dumplings.
'Running boat' did not involve going on the water, but going into the open to cook a simple, hearty meal.
Polly Brown remembers the days on her father's farm when the boat was more of a ship, being a communal affair among the workers. The special touch was that all the ingredients came from very close by -- her father's farm.
"My father was a farmer. He had acres of banana, pimento, yam, badu...big farmer, y'know. He was also a butcher, with his own animals," she reminisced. "When we had a work day it was fun. Everything came from the farm - the escallion, the pepper - everything."
There were no fancy containers and plastic utensils. Although some would carry containers to eat from, for others, cocoa leaves did just as well and a sharp stick tripled as knife, fork and spoon.
"They used to set up the kerosene pans. They used to cut them, so they had a handle," Ms. Brown said of those days in Ginger Hill, a district at the border of St. Elizabeth and St. James.
"They used to put on the water and then go look the food, so that it was really fresh. They would dig the nice yellow yam and 'junk' them up big. And...they used to cook some big dumplings called Sawyer Man Dumpling.
"When the men bite it they would say 'phyllis quaw!' she laughed. To this day, she doesn't quite understand what that meant.
There was so much food that there was enough to carry home for those who did not come to the fields.
The boat running carried over into the nights when the adults were gone and the children were hungry. "There was no Kentucky and Popeyes, so we would run our boat.
"A good days. A good nice days," Ms. Brown laughed.
'COMPRE' DAYS
While Polly Brown's boats docked in the field, Patrick Campbell's sailed at school -- Herbert Morrison Comprehensive High (now Technical in Montego Bay), more popularly known as 'Compre'.
"They were putting up the new block we called Pegasus and the builders used to run boat. This was about '87-'88. The D-Cup boys and myself would 'touch them a money' to include us in the pot. We used to use cheese tin tops as plates and trim sticks from the trees as forks," he said.
While the 'meat kind' varied from run down, 'dutty gal', bully beef and ackee, the flour and banana were standard.
Of course these activities did not go down well with the principal, J. Lloyd Whinstanley, who voiced his disapproval in devotion one morning.
""Some of you boys are going over the construction site and a beg de man dem dem flour. I am asking you to desist from doing so and whenever these persons are caught they will be dealt with," he declared.
The threat did not stop Mr. Campbell or the other students.
"Nobody got caught in our time," he said.
But with the alternatives of a tuck shop and the, albeit illegal, across the fence vending, why did he risk serious punishment to eat from a cheese tin top with a stick?
"They prepared a very delicious meal," Mr. Campbell chuckled.
STILL 'ROWING'
In some communities KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut and other fast food joints may have knocked the wind out of the sails of this cultural tradition, but the boat hasn't sunk, believes Pamela Powell, National Culinary Arts Co-ordinator of the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC).
"It is done in a different fashion. People bring the boat home. They buy the food, for example jerk pork, jerk chicken, festival, take it home and everybody eats together. Because it is not done in the original way, people do not see it the same way," Ms. Powell said.
"And you still have the men who play dominoes, who tend to have their mannish water and so on going."
Running boat "was a way of socialising, of getting to know people around you better," she noted. She attributed this new format to the faster-paced lifestyle.
"People have become so occupied with their own personal thing that it is hard to get everyone together. In rural Jamaica the women would start the boat while the men were out in the field. Now, the women are working," she said.
Charles Hyatt, actor, writer, producer and one of Jamaica's cultural ambassadors, makes a distinction based on location.
"Running boat in Kingston and country is two different things. In the country fast food cannot really affect it, because when there is a day for planting or reaping people get together and running boat is a part of the activities. In Kingston surely it would affect it," he said.
Mr. Hyatt who wrote the book 'When Mi Was a Bwoy' remembered a time when a lady with a meal cart would serve men in some areas -- a 'drive boat' of sorts. A bill would be calculated and the money paid at pay time.
"Of course food money is the hardest to collect," Mr. Hyatt. "But those days you could be without money and still eat. Fast food places don't take credit!"
There may be another pattern emerging, noted Mr. Hyatt, but it may be just 'runnings' without the boat.
"The thing I hear of late is that the new strategy for beggars is to say they are going to run a boat, so they want money to buy a pound of flour and so on. I don't know if the boat is for them alone or the whole community," Mr. Hyatt mused.
