Stredwick

Father Christmas I honestly don’t know why they called Mr. John, Father Christmas. I don’t know if was the colorful clothes he used to wear. Or maybe it was the three piece suits he used to wear along with a top hat. He would dress up, especially when he went courting. There was one time we were on this outing to the airport to see one of our villagers off to England. As usual Father Christmas was immaculately dressed. He sat beside a young lady all the way to the airport. When we were returning we stopped in Kingston to have lunch. Lunch was being served aboard the bus. When the man who was selling the lunches approach him. “Me have curry goat, stew peas, jerk pork, ackee and saltfish. Weh yuh want, John?” “A want go a me yard.” Clearly he was hurt as the young lady had rebuffed his advances. He was a thrice married man on the fringes of his seventieth birthday. The young lady whom he went courting was in her late twenties. About fifteen minutes later I saw him eating a

The Old Man and the Bottle by Austin Mitchell   The old man was grizzled. I remembered him now, he was Jake Burnett! He used to teach me at Mc Cauley High School. That was thirty years ago. Jake would be in his late sixties, I thought.  "Juicy promised to rent me a room. When we went there, the woman was still in the room. But as soon as she comes out he says I can have it." "How much are you paying for it?" Boyd asked. "Twenty thousand dollars." Boyd whistled. "That's a lot of money," he opined. I don't think Jake would recognize me since he had only taught me for three months. I looked at Jake again. He was sitting under a tamarind tree in front of the playfield at Mc Cauley High. His clothes were worn and his shoes just about to give way.   He took a quart bottle of out of his bag. White rum! It was half full. Boyd and another man, Justin, were soon helping themselves to some of the rum and boom. Justin had got