Miss Lucy

Lucy Smith-Prince, known to all as Miss Lucy or Mama, was, to the best of my knowledge, born on St. John while the islands were still under Danish rule and was perhaps a year or two old when they became an American possession in 1917. She knew a great deal about the history and loved telling stories of growing up on the island.

She was the first female taxi driver on St. John. I wouldn't be surprised if she started driving tourists and people around as soon as the first jeeps arrived after the first roads were bulldozed in, sometime in the early 1950's. Her jeep was the first to have a one-of-a-kind hood ornament; a pair of ram's horns which she stuffed with fresh hibiscus, oleander and/or bougainvillea each day. Every morning she and her jeep could be seen in Cruz Bay down at the dock waiting for the ferry to come it. Tourists who got her as their guide were for sure going to get a good tour and go home with many memorable stories.

When she laughed, her whole face and head took part in the action. Her eyes would crinkle up to into tiny slits which made you wonder how she could see. And she had this thing she did with her chin. It would sort of move towards her neck, and like her eyes, almost disappear.

Whenever my best friend and I were hiking between the beaches, if Miss Lucy happened to pass us on the road and she had room, she always stopped and gave us a lift. This always provided an opportunity to gossip and pass on news.

Miss Lucy was, like Miss Meada and Roy Sewer, a person my mother knew from her childhood, someone she loved and respected. That love and respect was passed on to me and my sister.

In her later years, she opened a restaurant at her home in Estate Friis, a rocky beach on the south side of St. John, past Coral Bay and on the way to Salt Pond. She was an excellent cook and her cuisine was local; fish and fungi, pigeon peas and rice, fried plantain and coconut tart. Below is a video I found taken by visitors to her Sunday Brunch. (You can hear live jazz being played in the back-ground.) It mostly shows the beautiful view from the beach. A view of Coral Bay, and the point of land called East End. When it pans to the right, the British island of Tortola can be seen in the background. But it also shows where people sit at tables outside, under a huge old seagrape tree.

Miss Lucy died at the age of 91 in 2007. One more piece of the past gone from us. I for one am glad/happy/honored beyond measure that I knew her personally.

As of February 2009, her restaurant was still open.

My First Lesson in Social Etiquette

I’m not saying I didn’t get taught things at home, I did. But this is the first lesson I can really remember. It happened when I was about six.

At that time, on St. John, there were less than a thousand people living on the island. Everybody knew most everybody. And everybody knew whose kids belonged to whom. We kids couldn’t get away with much. It was accepted that any adult had not only the right but the duty to reprimand, teach, or instruct an errant child.

It happened this way. We were up at the Julius E. Sprauve School. Something was happening as there were parents mingling and kids running around. I was one of those kids who was running around.

Roy Sewer was a teacher. He was a tall, handsome man and there was something about the way he carried himself that spoke of royalty. It wasn’t that he was prideful, but that he was confident.

It just so happened that my mother and Mr. Roy were talking together and I had the audacity to run between them. In an instant Mr. Roy grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. There, in front of my mother and anyone else who happened to be within ear-shot, he gave me a very stern lecture on proper social etiquette.

In essence these were his words. “Never pass between two people who are speaking to each other. Always go around them. If you can not go around them wait for a pause in the conversation, say ‘excuse me,’ and then slip between as quickly as possible.”

My mother stood there and never said a word. She was perfectly content to have Mr. Roy rebuke me. In a way, it was like having an uncle correct my behavior, for hadn’t my mother and he grown up together and been life-long friends?

To this day I am careful about going between two people when they are speaking to each other. If I can’t go around them I wait for a pause in the conversation, say “excuse me,” duck my head, and slip quickly between them.

Mr. Roy died in 2006. In 1999 my sister, mother and I took Mr. Roy to breakfast. I am glad to say I was able to tell him about the life lesson he taught me. Of course he didn’t remember it, but we had a good laugh.

Here’s a picture of Mom and Mr. Roy taken the day we had breakfast together. One can still see in the way he is sitting and in his shoulders the remnants of his regal carriage.