Hartley NeitaLast week, I told you about the girls from the village of my youth who caught the eyes of young men from Kingston and went away to marry them, leaving the young men of my village to weep at the moon.
There was tit for tat, however, as our young men had their broken hearts repaired by Kingston girls who came to the village with cricket teams from the city.
It was the train which made this romantic link possible between my village and Kingston.
For in the years of my youth there was a major world war between England and Germany and because England needed all the gasolene for its tanks and planes, the supply of petrol to Jamaica was limited.
In addition, too, the German submarines lurked in the Atlantic and torpedoed merchant and cargo ships, as well as oil tankers which might have been carrying this precious commodity for us. So cars had to be parked for the duration of the war, and transport was by buggies and bicycles. And, of course, the train.
It was during the construction of the US Air and Naval Base at Vernamfield in south Clarendon that my village became central to the operations.
All day trains shunted into the station. The first, in the early mornings, carried masons, electricians, carpenters, painters, welders and other tradesmen from Kingston.
From the station they travelled to the site by trucks owned by the Lawson family of the village. They returned for the evening travel back to Kingston in the late evening.
But during the day, trains kept shunting into the station carrying wagon loads of lumber, paint, wire, cement, glass, and other material to be transported to Vernamfield. The bar near the station did a thriving business during the day and in the evenings, serving the scores of men who came to the station. It was boom time for my village.
As children, the journey to Kingston by train was a big adventure. We climbed the steps from the station platform into the rust-brown coaches. The seats in Second Class were made of wood laths, and yet were quite comfortable.
The railway lines were smooth and the coaches rode on heavy springs. Members of the Legislative Council travelled free (it was their only perks - they received no salary), and they sat in regal splendour in the First Class coaches.
Their seats were padded and the windows had curtains. There was also a bar, a bar man, and a waitress on the train, and they served drinks, strong and soft, and you could also buy biscuits, sweets, ice cream, and cigarettes.
One of the long stops on the journey to Kingston was at Old Harbour. Vendors waited there with bammies and fish, and oranges. They would also peel the oranges for those passengers who did not have a knife.
However, while it was fun travelling by train, it had its tragedies. There was the Balaclava train crash while I was a child in which scores were killed or maimed. And later there was the big, big, crash at Kendal in which there were as many dead as there were survivors.
Other crashes included one on the line between May Pen and Chapelton in which the founding Headmaster of Clarendon College which was opened two or so weeks earlier, was killed.
Tragedy also almost entered my home, when a train hit and dragged my father's car in which he and two friends Dickie Vassell and U.T. Wolfe (now a Reverend) were travelling to a Masonic Lodge function in Kingston.
It was then I discovered the influence of Masons as when I rushed to the Kingston Public Hospital, over a dozen of Jamaica's best surgeons were there putting on surgical gowns over their formal black suits to treat and operate on them.
The resident doctors were not good enough that day and they were pushed aside and told they could watch and learn. And I was almost persuaded to join the Masons when I saw how they cared for their own.
So, Transport Minister Bobby Pickersgill has assured us that the train is coming back, baby. Mr. Minister, as Ken Boothe sang on his third hit record: "So long I've been waiting. Now the train has come for me and you".
Yes, the train is coming, baby. The train is coming now.
