Adolescence is a most crucial time in the development of the individual and, from my experience, the memories of adolescence remain vivid for a very long time. With this is mind, I will share some of mine with my KC brethren. Coincidentally, some interesting things, local and international, occurred during my sojourn at K.C.
A few weeks before I started in lower sixth-form, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I visited Jamaica. I was visiting Kingston, with my parents, to make boarding arrangements for the period of time that I was going to attend K.C. I remember standing on East Queen Street, in front of the Palace Cinema, completely mesmerized by the throngs of colorfully dressed Rastas traveling in cars and buses and on motorbikes, making their way from the airport towards Parade. Jamaica had never seen a motorcade like that one. (Queen Elizabeth II had visited Jamaica, a few months earlier, and her public reception was subdued compare to Selassie’s). It was the Rastas’ day; their God had arrived in Babylon and nothing could temper their exuberance. That intersection – East Queen Street and South Camp Road – is a location I often drive through on my visits to Jamaica. It brings back memories of walking to school at K.C. from McWhinney Street, Rae Town, where I lived before moving to Vineyard Town. Visiting that intersection conjures memories of the tobacco smell emanating from the Machado Tobacco Company (situated in the southeastern corner). Remember Four Aces and Royal Blend cigarettes!!!! I also recall a couple of bars in that area whose RockOla or Wurlitzer jukeboxes seemed to incessantly play Delroy Wilson’s ‘I’m In a Dancing Mood’. You remember the lyrics: ‘When you hear the beat you got to move your feet, you gotta clap your hands…I’m in a dancing mood, I’m in a dancing mood……’
Lower Sixth, then, was a time for maturation. Academic pursuits did not represent the primary objective (not the official line, of course). That was left for Upper Sixth. Music and parties were an integral part of our lives. Ska was transitioning to Rock Steady. Prince Buster’s character, Judge Dread, was sentencing the rude boys to ‘100 years’ in the slammer. Alton Ellis’ ‘Girl I’ve Got a Date’ was rocking the parties we regularly crashed on Friday nights. It was still fairly safe to wander around Kingston without fearing gunmen! The ratchet knife was the preferred weapon of the Rude Boys and feared cops like Superintendents Jez Marston and Joe Williams kept the crime within tolerable limits. The Sixth Form Association (S.F.A.) was very active and we sure had some enjoyable parties (a.k.a. sessions or ‘spots’) at the Y.M.C.A., Jacisera Park and Queen’s High School. I recall ‘renting a tile’ to the sounds of Tom Jones’ ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ and Lou Rawls’ ‘Love Is a Hurting Thing’. Motown was in its heyday and Diana Ross and the Supremes’ ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ was kicking. Radcliffe Butler of Radio Jamaica was the preeminent radio DJ of the day. This was the time when most of us had our first Red Stripe and, in my case, I sure had quite a bout of vomiting, on the day following my first encounter with the Lager.
By the way, Reggae did not hit the scene until September 1968, when I started my freshman year at the University of the West Indies. Seminal hits of the genre included Bob Andy’s ‘Let Them Say’, Rudi Mills’ ‘John Jones – Son of a Gun’ and Toots and The Maytals ‘Do The Reggae’. The latter song marked the entrance of the word Reggae in to the Jamaican musical lexicon.
Today, if you are seeking information you get behind your computer and access the Internet. Well, back in the mid-sixties we would jump on a Jolly Joseph bus and head to the National Library at Tom Redcam Avenue or the United States Information Services office on Caledonia Avenue. DNA had crept in to the ‘A’ Level Zoology and Botany syllabi but our textbooks had not yet caught up with the topic. At the time, a small second floor room of the Library had a few copies of Scientific American magazine that had beautiful illustrations of the structure of DNA. Kids from the sixth forms in Kingston essentially captured this room on Saturday mornings. It was a great place to socialize and my first bottle of cologne (Old Spice, of course) was a big hit with the girls from nearby St. Hugh’s and Wolmer’s High Schools. USIS was the place to get information on the SAT exams and U.S. colleges.
My first encounter with the concept of a computer was on a school field trip to UWI where a lecturer in the Physics Department asked for a birth date and the main frame computer would tell us what day of the week the person was born on. Back then students used slide rules and logarithm tables for computational purposes. We have come a long way baby!
The SAT exams were given at the Alpha Academy and on the day I took the test there were only about a hundred of us from the entire island. It was our first contact with multiple-choice exams in Jamaica. With no preparation, it was certainly a challenge but by evening when most of us did the three subject-specific Achievement tests (now referred to as SAT II’s) we had gotten the hang of it and things turned out OK. The SAT and the UWI Scholarship exam were practice runs for the Cambridge ‘A’ Levels. Back then, at the high school level, there were no extra lessons or prep courses for anything in Jamaica. If your teacher did not teach the stuff, you bought a syllabus or get some past papers and taught yourself!
Two famous U.S. citizens were assassinated while I was at Kingston College: U.S. Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King, and Attorney General and U.S. Presidential-hopeful, Robert Kennedy. A few of us in sixth form wore black armbands when King was killed as some sort of solidarity protest. It was the first time many of us became aware that we were black (in the context of the U.S. sociologic black-white construct). The Black Power/Black Awareness thing reached its zenith in latter part of 1968 when Guyanese and UWI African History lecturer, Walter Rodney, was prevented from re-entering Jamaica after attending a Black Writers’ conference in Canada. UWI students, including myself, demonstrated in protest and civil disturbance ensued in Kingston. The then Prime Minister, Hugh Shearer, labeled us as hooligans. St. Vincent’s current Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, was the President of the UWI Guild of Undergraduates and Arnold Bertram, a former Jamaican Government Minister, was the Treasurer of the Guild.
At the end of each term, many of us from the country towns would return home using the Jamaica Railway Corporation’s diesel trains. The ‘Diesel’ was a two-car train, which only carried passengers and was faster than the regular trains, which carried both passengers and freight. Each day a ‘Diesel’ would leave from Montego Bay and Kingston simultaneously. They would pass each other somewhere in mid-Jamaica. The first to arrive at the passing point had to wait for the other since it was a one-track rail system and passing could only occur at this predetermined site. The Railway station on Barry Street was where we would board the trains, dressed in our high school uniforms. We certainly had a lot of memorable experiences on those trains especially when they broke down, as occurred not so infrequently, in places like Maggoty and Balaclava. On the Sunday before the high schools reopened we would do our ‘Diesel ‘ trip in reverse. I do not recall the presence of mini-buses in Jamaica at the time. Public transportation in Jamaica was much more orderly than it is now. Rich, poor and middle-class students had no qualms about taking a J.O.S. bus or a ‘Diesel’. I hope the Government of Jamaica will see fit to restore the Railway, which was, I believe, the second built in the Western Hemisphere. I would like to take that scenic ride across Jamaica’s interior one more time. Highway 2000 (The Toll Road) will never be a satisfactory substitute!!!! Take note K.C. alumni who are politicians.
On that note, I will say goodbye, for now.
Fortis.
Norman Foote MD
California, USA
nfoote@hotmail.com
