Trumps – A Small Tribute

In Part I of Miss Meada’s Yard I mentioned Trumps.

Perhaps there is a person from your childhood who, if you’ve spent time thinking about it, had a profound influence on your life. For me that person was Trumps.

What can I say about Trumps? His real name was Ohenio, but the only person I knew who called him that was Miss Meada.

He was a mystery. Whose child had he been? Who was his family? How/why had he come to live in the tiny shack in Miss Meada’s yard? At least that’s where Erva and I assume he lived, near the ancient lignum vitae tree in an area of the yard we never went. How old was he? I remember him having a smooth skinned face with thin chin whiskers. Yet he was ancient to me.

As a little girl of five, six and seven, I was fascinated, repulsed, afraid, and felt terribly sorry for him all at the time.

Trumps was small, wizened, and deformed. A large head sat atop narrow hunched shoulders. His shoulders were hunched because he had a large hump on his back which bent him forward. His left arm was thin and small and shrunken. Permanently bent at the elbow, his hand at the end of it was curled, a near useless claw.

A lot of kids teased him. Erva and I did not. We hadn’t been told not to, but maybe our experience of being white and different and being teased, taught us a sub-conscious lesson; it wasn’t right to tease, it hurt. Why inflict that hurt on someone else, particularly someone like Trumps, who, except for snarling and raising his broom threateningly, could do little to defend himself?

Despite his physical handicap, Trumps had a job which he performed with slow, deliberate care. Possibly in return for a place to live and food to eat, he kept the Park (an area next to the yard that was bordered by mahogany trees and had benches and a swing-set) and Miss Meada’s yard swept clean. My best guess it that it was about an acre of land that he kept meticulously, spotlessly clean.

He used a broom made of bound sticks. He raked and swept up every leaf, twig and fallen flower. Where he had been the ground was clear of the tiniest mahogany leaf. The twigs from his broom left behind tiny trails, marks like those made in a Zen sand garden.

Every day, except Sundays or when it was raining, there he was, sweeping. Sweeping, bent over, slow, working the broom with his good arm. Sweeping leaves, flowers and twigs into small piles. Then he’d scoop up the piles onto a piece of tin and carry it to a place in Miss Meada’s yard where all kinds of leaf debris was deposited. Palm fronds, coconuts, branches, everything went onto the midden. The chickens liked to scratch around on it.

Everyday, sweeping. He was part of Miss Meada's yard, part of the yard culture.

I wanted to befriend him, but my fear of him kept me from it. Never once did I ever speak to him.

But I have never forgotten him. The years have given me time to think about the part he played in my life and the person he helped make me. I give Trumps the credit of instilling in me a love for the underdog. I give Trumps the credit of my coming to understand that everyone can have a place, a job, a reason for being. I give Trumps the credit of learning to respect those who are “different” from myself.

In one of my novels, which needs a lot of work, I gave him a major role. It is a small way for me to honor him, a twisted, bent little man, who must have spent the majority of his life in physical pain and discomfort and yet, who despite his being an outcast, was cared for by Miss Meada and developed the Zen of sweeping into a fine art.

I wonder why, even now, after all these years, his memory brings tears to my eyes.

Miss Meada's Yard - Yard Culture - Part I

In the islands there used to be a thing called “yard culture.” Yard culture was all about somebody’s house that had a yard, usually a large yard where kids, who’s parents worked, gathered after school. Under the watchful eye of a mother hen the kids were looked after. A kid just couldn't get into trouble. If there was any kind of misbehavior it was for sure you’d get reprimanded and/or disciplined and it was for double sure your parents would be told, which meant you’d be reprimanded and/or disciplined a second time.

I believe my sister, Erva, and I are part of the last generation to know what “yard culture” is.

In Cruz Bay on St. John there were several homes with large yards where kids gathered after school. But the best and biggest yard was Miss Meada’s.

In fact it would be safe to say Miss Meada’s yard was the center of down-town Cruz Bay as it occupied a whole block. Her yard included her home, a small shack that was her kitchen/restaurant, The Inn, which was a house she rented out, her tortoise pen, a two-seater privy, a large chicken coop, and the shack were Trumps lived. (More about Trumps later.) If you told anyone, “I’ll meet you in the yard,” it was understood you meant Miss Meada’s yard, because that’s what it was called, The Yard.

Miss Meada had an older twin sister. Miss Myrah was a registered nurse and midwife. If you had to get a shot, you were blessed if Miss Myrah gave it. I was one of those kids who hated getting shots, particularly penicillin when I’d get tonsillitis which meant getting a shot in my butt. There I’d be stretched across Mom’s lap, squirming and squalling and Miss Myrah would do this trick of slapping my butt. By the time I felt the sting of the slap, the shot was given. She was fast. She was good. The Myrah Keating-Smith Community Health Center is named after her. (You can see her picture and read more about her here.)

Miss Meada’s gift was being an excellent cook. In the early days her kitchen/restaurant was the little wooden shack in the middle of her yard with a few tables where people came to get a good meal. Later on she replaced the shack with a concrete building that had a real dining room.

The first thing to happened, when we kids starting arriving in her yard, is that we’d get something to eat. What I remember best were her Johnny cakes. They were the perfect blend of baking soda and sugar, a wonderful salty-sweet. And they were just warm, not hot from the fat they were fried in, or too cold from having sat too long. We’d get something to drink too, like lemon or lime aid. If it wasn't Johnny cakes it was something else, like a piece of hard bread with some nice sharp rat cheese or a coconut cake or a hard-boiled egg. Or we might get whatever fruit was in season, like mangos or sugar apples.

After we had a snack, the older kids had chores to do. Erva helped out with these. I don’t remember doing chores, but I probably did. Children were not really allowed to be idle. Even the youngest were required to help out and were given small tasks they could easily perform. I do remember feeding her tortoises which were quite large, but then I was quite small. Those tortoises are still there, having out-lived their owner. They may well out-live me. They are not so big as I remember them.

After chores it was time to play; stories for my next blog.

If you go to the St. John Historical Society site and click on slides 43 and 44 you can see pictures of Miss Meada and Miss Myrah with their cousin Theovald "Mooie" Moorehead. There are a lot of other wonderful pictures from the early days as well.