Tony Deyal | Siparia: The beat goes on

I was reading The World’s Best Book and found what they considered the most amazing people: the Living Man, the Tallest Man, the Animal Lover, the Shortest Man, and even a Tallest Woman, an Oldest Person, Hairiest Ones, Fastest Humans, and the First Strongest Women and Men! I looked at this group and laughed.

I had moved from where I lived in Carapichaima, Trinidad, to Siparia in the south. We had to go, but it was very scary. Everyone kept telling me that I was heading into a place deeply rooted in spooky tales of forest spirits like the “Douens” and shadowy roadside phantoms. Fortunately, it turned out to be about “sand” as well as “courage”, “stamina”, and “perseverance”. But nothing is better than where I was going, and nothing from the “Best Book” would come even close.

At the same time, the great humourist Mark Twain said, “She had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my opinion she was just full of sand.”

Siparia was the administrative capital and downtown centre of the Borough of Siparia, and its nickname was “The Sand City”. In my case, the honour of being an “Old N...” was bestowed on me by my newly found friends in the community of Cassava Alley, which later was also known as Peyton Place. This was because Grace Metalious, an American author known for her novel Peyton Place, dealt, as Wikipedia said, with “incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder”. To that list we added “stealing, assault, battery, gambling, and various other petty crimes and misdemeanours, including harbouring people who were wanted by the police”. Our reputation in the village was, therefore, not unwarranted.

Some geological quirk had made Siparia a zone of sand surrounded by the sticky black clay we called “sappatay” dirt, with some areas of red clay interspersed. There is the story of Miss Popelee, a shrewd old Indian woman, who suggested to us that a piece of unused land she owned could make a good cricket ground if cleared.

When the boys had got rid of the bush and went to fetch the red clay used throughout Trinidad for cricket pitches, Miss Popelee declared angrily, “Corn can’t grow on red dirt!” And so we lost our field of dreams.

There were others in Siparia who were real characters. There was Nolan, the cattle thief, who, when caught, told the police that he saw this piece of rope in the savannah and picked it up intending to use it to “tie” his goat. He did not realise there was a cow at the end of it. What was funny was that Nolan did not own even a second pair of pants at the time, much less a goat.

There was Ivan “Rabbie” Marchan, the captain of our Peyton Place Club, whose boast was that all his charges were for wounding. Then came Vin, tall and quiet, who ran Siparia’s women’s netball team.

Next was Moses Saney, who ran the club, which Ghost Rivas, the bad-john and hitman, sent his thugs to mash up after Moses refused to send money to the paralysed Ghost. As it was, Ghost sat in a rented car on Coora Road waiting for “his” money and not only got it but had the place broken up.

Next was Ellis Knights, who started Siparia Deltones, initially on Grell Street in front of our house. He was succeeded by Terry “Throat” Wallace, who travelled on the bus with me most mornings to secondary school in San Fernando.

I can’t forget Dadoi Lake, for whom the prison gates were a revolving door, and Big Red Campbell, who cuffed down a donkey and killed it.

But it was not only men who achieved fame, or flame. There was Vicky Boodram, also known as “The Great Espace”. She was the holder of the award for the most fraud charges against any one person in the history of Trinidad and Tobago, about 175, involving crimes that included the fraudulent acquisition of a Mercedes-Benz and a $2-million house in posh Palmiste.

Vicky grew up on Gambal Street opposite the fire station and next to the panyard that produced Deltones from young men in Siparia. I lived on Grell Street, just a longish stone’s throw away, when Rabbie, Bread-Boy, and the rest of the guys wanted to terrorise someone.

Bread-Boy, also named Bren-Gun after the famous weapon, was such a good pelter, even better than fast bowler Franklin “Peltorick” Julian, that during a fight inside the T&TEC Club in Syne Village he was able to hit one of his attackers with a beer bottle just as the man lifted his head to peep from behind a table and see where Bread-Boy was.

Together with my friends like Bread-Boy, Rabbo, and others, I had nothing to do but hang out, or lime, under the street lamp where we gambled, told dirty jokes, and picked the team for the next watch.

We constantly teased the girls passing by with endearments like “Darling, of all my sugars you are my granulated” or threatened their boyfriends if they were not from our neighbourhood.

Because we were in Cassava Alley, which had no streets or lights and had many fugitives from the law, we always had plenty to talk about, including how to hide from the police.

Too late, though!

I heard shouts of, “Police! Police!”

Worse, they had bull penises (also called bully sticks or beef pizzles), and I was running as if the Dogs of Hell were behind me. I was sweating, blowing, and about to collapse when I ran up the steps of a house and begged for help.

“Mah! Please! Please hide me. The police are coming for me!”

The owner of the house made me sit on a chair next to her two grandchildren, put a cup of coffee and a plate in front of me, and advised, “If the police ask you anything, tell them you are teaching the children English.”

By that time, I was one of the leaders in the group. However, because I was still seen by a few as “a Coolie man”, one person tried to take my place as a leader.

The others and I laughed when I made a joke at the man’s expense. He grabbed a large weapon and was so angry that it was clear he would kill me if he caught me. I was heading for our yard, and the man did not care. He was so angry he would beat or kill me there.

Unfortunately for the man, he did not know my mother.

In her days in the forest where they lived, she had a gun that she used to get food every day. She still had it in our house.

She came out with the gun and told the man, “If you come one step more, you dead!”

The man ran away, and we never saw him again in our area.

Tony Deyal was last heard saying, “If you like cricket, football, fighting, reading, and jokes, you’re right up his Cassava Alley.”