I had only recently set up residence in New York, in the early 60s, when I eagerly accepted an invitation to lunch on a Saturday with my publisher-mentor Joe Weider, alas several years dearly departed. Joe had also offered me a postprandial ride to my Columbus Avenue apartment. We were approaching the traffic lights at a section of lower Manhattan known as the Bowery, when he raised the roof of his newly acquired blue Caddy convertible and then lowered its tinted windows.
I soon discovered why. The lights had barely turned red when, seemingly out of nowhere, a dozen or so black-fanged, hirsute and filthy zombies descended upon us. With clenched fists they pounded the vehicle, most of them clutching in their free hand brown paper bags out of which poked dripping beer cans and bottles.
“What the . . .” I shouted in panic as the lights changed to green. “What was that about, Joe? Who the hell were those crazies?”
He chuckled. “Welcome to the land of the free, Rickeee!” he sing-songed.
“And the home of the depraved . . .” I groaned.
Joe smiled. “Remember Janis Joplin’s ‘freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose?’ I wanted to give you a glimpse of total freedom. Rockefeller, with his millions, is not nearly as free as those bums. They could’ve smashed my windshield or spat at us or tossed their bottles at us . . . what would we do? Get out and challenge them? Make a report to the cops? To what avail? What’s left when already you’ve lost your soul, whether to drugs, cheap booze and hookers?”
Joe had this peculiar way of teaching me what he considered lessons to live by. If over the years I had forgotten a few, rest assured my long ago encounter with the worm at the heart of Mayor Lindsay’s polished Big Apple has stayed with me. And there it was once again, mocking me as I took in some of the activities to mark Saint Lucia’s 38th year as an independent nation. I couldn’t help measuring in my mind just how far we’d come since the Mother Country cut us free. Whatever else may have engaged us since February 1979, certainly we had retained in our psyches the tribalism that has always kept us at one another’s jugulars—with little time, energy or ambition to pursue the national goals that our leaders prated about anniversary after Independence anniversary.
It’s as if we had decided the best thing about freedom is that it allowed us to choose between reaching for the stars and spending our lives wallowing in the mud of mediocrity and what might’ve been—reminiscent of the lost souls earlier cited, the Bowery bums for whom freedom obviously meant having “nothing left to lose!”
How else to explain the widely publicized local efforts at inciting citizens to remove the government of Allen Chastanet? I was reminded of earlier times when a meeting of parliament came to an abrupt end, the House Speaker, fearing for his life, having fled the chamber to take refuge in a safer part of the building. Before his departure one MP had threatened to shoot a fellow parliamentarian “and make shit come out of your mouth.”
In the Speaker’s absence, chairs were overturned, members on the government side abused by hooligans planted in the gallery. Meanwhile their calculating instigators took liberties with the Mace.
The year was 1982. It may well be that Helen had already lost her cherished cherry on the night of July17, 1979—two weeks after Allen Louisy’s Saint Lucia Labour Party was elected in place of John Compton’s United Workers Party administration. The nightmarish details can usefully be revisited via my books ‘Foolish Virgins’ and ‘Lapses & Infelicities,’ both available from STAR Publishing or from Amazon. Following, a small serving:
Even as the crowd ran for cover the rocks kept coming. Everywhere there were the sounds of exploding store windows. More missiles rained upon the SSU, imprisoning them in their notorious Cage—essentially a black-painted prison on wheels. Finally it was their turn to get out of Dodge. Then the looting started. With the air thick with smoke from police tear gas, TV sets walked out of busted store windows. Cameras floated away. Refrigerators too. And stereos. And made-in-Taiwan plastic sandals, expensive leather shoes, ladies’ handbags, trays of earrings, men’s watches and other jewelry.
Also guns and ammunition from Johnson’s Hardware. An over-enthusiastic pillager reached too carelessly into a shattered Bata’s shoe store showcase and paid with his hand. Fellow plunderers rushed him unconscious to Victoria Hospital. By the time the Castries Cathedral clock struck midnight there was not a single establishment in William Peter Boulevard that had not been broken into and relieved of merchandise. George Odlum arrived around 1 a.m. A short time later so did the SSU. Their leader ASP Martin Carasco was briefing the foreign affairs minister when the Cage came under yet another attack, this time at close quarters. Carasco pulled his arm away just in time to avoid a Rastaman’s blade. When more rocks started coming from all directions the SSU leader jumped back into his Cage and sped off in the direction of police headquarters several hundreds yards from the war zone.
Kenny Anthony and Jon Odlum had disappeared some two hours earlier. Now the foreign affairs minister George Odlum was the only official in William Peter Boulevard. He had a flashback. He recalled a time a decade or so earlier, when he was a member of the ostensibly apolitical St. Lucia Forum and had come out in support of the government’s highly controversial education bill. He had confronted hundreds of angry, threatening protestors in Columbus Square and won them over. Although scared out of his wits he had nevertheless turned the tide with some well-chosen lines by the poet Thomas Gray. Oh, yes, since then, whenever the going got rough, George Odlum had relied on his gift of gab.
So now, in William Peter Boulevard, even though circled by an angry mob, Odlum again put his trust in words. “Brothers and sisters,” he bawled into his bullhorn. “You are helping the destabilizers of your government. Go home. You must protect your revolution.”
“Just give us de gons,” said a tall and lean Rastaman, eyes aflame with the weed of wisdom. He was by all appearances the leader of the pack. “Brother just give us de gons.”
“Irie, irie,” went his brethren. “Just give us some gons and we’ll take care ah dem oppressahs.”
The lead Rastaman said: “Yes-I. Scene, scene.”
Odlum spoke again: “You’ve got to stop the looting.” His tone now suggested a pathetic appeal. “I want some volunteers.”
“For what?” chorused a half dozen or so Rastas. Odlum explained that it would speak well for them if instead of making off with more refrigerators and stereos the brothers actually prevented more looting.
“But what about dem Babylon?” asked the group leader. “Dem fellas like to shoot first and question Rasta later.”
“Yes-I” went the Rasta chorus.
After a dozen or so had given Odlum their word that there would be no further looting, the foreign affairs minister gave them a clenched fist salute. Then he boarded his van. As he headed out of the boulevard, someone hollered: “What about da bread?”
“It’s all right,” Odlum shouted back. “There’s something I have to do. We’ll talk later. Vive la revolucion!”
The tall Rastaman said: “Irie. Da cool.”
The prime minister arrived shortly before 3 a.m. He had driven to the city from his residence in Laborie and could hardly believe what he saw. He held his hand over his nose, hardly a defense against the combined unbearable stench of tear gas and human feces.
“I came as soon as I heard,” he assured questioning reporters. “What happened here, exactly?” As witnesses proffered their various accounts, the Cage roared into the boulevard, then stopped a mere five feet or so from the prime minister. Three SSU officers jumped out, all in riot gear, all brandishing frightening high velocity shotguns.
Louisy calmly addressed their leader. “It’s all right, Mr. Carasco,” he said. “It’s all right. Seems the trouble has been contained.”
No one was ever more wrong. Barely two years after the boulevard disaster, in consequence of a power struggle between a so-called George Odlum faction and other MPs supportive of the prime minister, the Louisy government bit the dust. Finally, there was the premature 1982 general election that returned John Compton to office. But that is understating the horror that some who evidently cannot remember the past may be doomed to repeat!
This article first appeared in the January 2021 edition of the STAR Monthly Review. Be sure to get your printed copy on newsstands or view it here: https://issuu.com/starbusinessweek/docs/star_monthly_review_january_2021
