Hartley Neita, Contributor

As I have told you before, I lived in Four Paths, a village four miles west of May Pen, Clarendon, whenI was a child.

As small as it was, Four Paths was well served by public facilities.

There was a police station, an elementary school, a railway station and it even had a public water supply. This was from a well - powered by a windmill - with two standpipes, one at the site of the well and the other half a mile away at the railway station.

The school and teacher's cottage were also provided with this water. There was no telephone service in our homes and no electricity.

A Meeting place

The post office was open all day. Mail came by the early morning train from towns in western Jamaica. In the evenings, the mail came by train from Kingston and other towns in the east.

During the day, telegrams were received and sent from the post office. Most of them were the sad news of the deaths of relatives and friends.

The post office was the meeting place for representatives of families in the village in the evenings. The mail came from the railway station, just 100 yards away.

It was carried by the postman employed to the post office. He carried telegrams to homes in the village, and also carried the mail to the Mocho Post Office in the mountains above Four Paths.

When I was a child, the road to Mocho was not paved. It was full of rock stones and it was hard going for the postman, especially when it rained. The hill was steep and he often slid with each step.

I recall him as an old man. He was at least 60 years of age when I was 10. His hair was pepper and salt - more salt than pepper.

The smile lines on his cheeks were deep. He was cheerful. His greetings to everyone were strong. He knew all of us children by name. I always wondered why the post office did not provide him with a horse. It would have been so kind.

There are still postmen who deliver mail. In St. Andrew where I live - and I guess in most towns today where there is house-to-house delivery of mail - you can still see them, not walking as my postman did when I was a child, but riding bicycles.

At month-end, when there is alot of bills for residents, the weight of the mail bags is heavy and you can see them pumping the bicycle, their heads bowed forward to give them a greater push on the pedals. They need motorcycles.

Mechanical people

To a great extent, letter writing is becoming less and less a means of communicating. As to telegrams, I have not heard of anyone receiving or sending one for years.

The telephone and cellular phone have replaced letter writing. There is also the fax, and more use is being made, too, of email.

One of the things I remember of my childhood was to hear neighbours shouting good morning to each other from one end of the village to the other.

If there was no answer from a home, something was wrong. Neighbours on either side would visit.

'Morning O!' has been now replaced by the ring of the telephone. We have become mechanical people.