Dear Editor,
An old-timer friend of mine, who liked the articles on the “Old Sandy Ground” I sent you a while back, has requested that I share some more “remembering” with him and other readers of The Daily Herald; that’s the impetus behind this effort.
I’m trying to please my old friend, but to be honest with you, as I was with him; I don’t think readers, today, care much for recollections, particularly those they do not relate to; and so I feel that I’m imposing my old “stories” on folks who have other more pressing concerns, and no time for this kind of talk. But my friend and a few other old-timers will no doubt relate to my telling; they’ll recognize things, places, and our long departed “MannyBustUp,” and hopefully, this modest effort will strengthen our bond.
Experience has led me to believe that we are our memories: the “stories” we tell ourselves and can share (among ourselves), and with others. Our memories (Real and made-up stories) are our History. We have our own, personal, private memories; some of them formed, experienced in common with others; and like with private family issues, some such mental impressions are the “secrets,” the cement, the Gorilla glue that binds us; they make us different from others – not better; not worse. There is no plus; no minus sign alleged here; none implied; just difference: “different and equal”. Difference is the key word here, particularly nowadays when so many, in their quest for utopia, are trying to rub out all differences, all singularity.
“Recall” and “remember” are often used interchangeably, but they are not synonymous. Most of us old-timers discover gradually that we remember more, much more than we can recall, retrieve: bring back to mind, so to speak. I remember –in no particular order – rather, I remember in much disorder, when Marigot (Old French word for swamp, wet land), Sandy Ground, Saint James, and surroundings were full of crab holes. In the rainy season, the creatures crawled up and out of their water-soaked burrows to forage about, and do whatever else Caribbean blue crabs did back then; whatever else the few of them that exist on the island still do; I don’t think the species have changed in nature.
When I recollect those carefree days in Sandy Ground and surroundings, one of the most recurrent and imposing “characters” that fades in from that past, and fills the screen of my picture story is “MannyBustUp”. To this very day, I don’t know his real (full) name, and I’m truly sorry about that. Manny (Emmanuel?) was so strange looking, so different in appearance and demeanor from everyone else, that children cried, and ran away when he approached them. His laughter was a loud sort of hiccup combined with a grin that made him frightening to behold. His body was broken, twisted; busted up, and his gait so irregular, so crooked, that he would have been the perfect, the ideal Quasimodo in any representation of Victor Hugo’s famous play; a Black Quasimodo, of course.
Some of my friends enjoyed teasing Manny, and it didn’t help matters that he grew angry at them, and cursed them off, thereby fueling their mockery, their provocation. I don’t recall ever taunting him, but I took part in the teasing nonetheless, for I would join my friends in the laughter; and I don’t remember ever doing anything to dissuade them from their hurtful mindless teasing. As I remember him, Manny never bothered anyone, people bothered him; and despite his obvious handicaps, I don’t remember him ever begging anyone for anything. “MannyBustUp” worked hard, regularly, and persistently at his mean activity: crabbing. He must have had his clients, for I can’t imagine him eating all the crabs he caught.
Manny’s “crab catching” was not the kind most of us did: at night, in the rainy season, with kerosene fueled torches; in the mangrove, down in Nettle Hill and the Bluff areas. Manny spent most of the day digging crabs out from their holes: one creature per hole! All the blue land crabs in Sandy Ground and surroundings started trembling in their holes when they heard “MannyBustUp” above them prospecting: checking; probing holes with his long cedar stick. Unlike some of us who once spent the best of a day digging empty holes, Manny had his way of making sure that there was a crab in the hole he was digging. Sometimes, he would almost disappear in the hole; and when there was no movement of his legs and feet, we feared for the worst; but motion would eventually return, as if Manny was taking a break or had fallen asleep in the hole.
I was abroad when Manny died (I don’t know when). Had I been present, I would have remembered the event, and I would like to think that I would have walked slowly and silently behind his casket down to Perrinon’s estate. Some years after his passing, I inquired about him, and someone (I don’t recall who) explained that Manny, our future master crab-digger had left Saint Martin a healthy, handsome young man, and when he got back home, he was all busted up from the War (World War Two?); and that he had collected a disability pension from the French government. I can’t vouch for this accounting; I’ve not verified it.
Gérard M. Hunt
