Island Tales

`Smart-men' and `smart-women' have been around for a long time in the Caribbean as elsewhere. The Brer Rabbit-type trickster, shark, shanxter, or santapee person, surviving by tricks and wits, could be a next-door neighbour, or the legendary Sam Lord in Barbados. Skulduggery existed in all walks of life, including politics, where the art continues to have its fiercest supporters.

Vendors adding water to milk, who may even been the originators of the two percent concoction we now know, were perhaps among the most common practitioners. Some rationalised this behaviour with the saying, "If yuh don't put water into duh milk, the cow bubby gun burn." In the end, a lot of people got burnt, except maybe the sacred cows!

Ironically, many illicit milk vendors, charged and taken to court in British Guiana by a Chief Sanitary Inspector called Good, engaged by a lawyer called Hope, and were expecting some Charity from the magistrate.

In one story, a prominent milk diluter was being repatriated to India by ship, when all his money which he was keeping on deck close to him was washed overboard by a wave. The man looked quite unconcerned, and when questioned, simply said, "Pani geh, an' pani tek" (Water gives and water takes).

Some milk vendors deliberately used a narrow neck and top on their milk pan, which the milk measure kept hitting after it was dipped into the milk. As a result, for every four pints dipped, the customer actually recieved only about three pints, as the knocking always threw some back into the pan.

Another practice was the tipping of scales. This could be done by using false weights and measures: a pound was not a pound, a pint in a false bottom container measure was not a pint. And at times, the vendor would clandestinely put a hand on the scales, jiggle the weights around, or put the measure on the wrong calibration which the customer could not see, as it faced the vendor. If caught, the trickster excused himself for the short-measure by saying he was short-sighted. It was mostly a short-changed customer in the end!

Another trick by the devious shopkeeper was to wet the tobacco overnight, so it weighed more the next day. Yet another was using weights eroded by the passage of time.

Then there was the unscrupulous pawnbroker who not only undervalued precious items, but sometimes did a shrink job as well, so much that a gold neck chain which fit a customer comfortably before it was pawned, choked her after it was redeemed.

`Smart men' were immortalized in the Caribbean's culture in calypsoes as `Sly Mongoose, dog know yuh name,' a taunt aimed at well-known characters, going back to a refrain sung by Houdini in Trinidad in 1931. Another well-known ditty was `The Legend of Sam Lord' in Barbados, pertaining to Sam Lord who wrecked ships with deceptive shore lights, plundered them, and built a castle with his spoils.

Then there was the bane of many housewives trying to make ends meet by `trusting' at the shop. There, the commonly kept `credit book,' a necessity for poor or struggling households, seemed to grow heavier overnight, as the shopkeeper added a cent here, a cent there, after the shop was closed.

Many a poor customer entertained the thought that the `credit book' would become the `ice book' and the debt would melt away, even if that meant the shop-owner lost his life, the book, or both, one night.

However, some shopkeepers "took in front," as the saying goes, and had a sign painted prominently on the walls, which read, "No Credit: In God we trust, in man we bust!" in order to discourage creditors. As well, they also looked out for a special kind of loafer called `a shop corporal,' the predecessor of today's limer, who had more than liming on his mind, and who possessed fast hands and even faster feet.

Confidence or `con' men also used `baksheesh' or bribes to gain favours, get a contract, or curry favour, a practice which flourished at the highest levels.

And some say that the policeman's long, black serge pants pocket on occasion held more than the baton, for if caught one night riding a bicycle or driving a donkey cart without lights, a deal could be cut, away from the streetlights, with a "greasing of the palms."

That was the better alternative that to "pull foot and run" or clog up the courts. In this way, many a dark deal never saw the light of day, except when the talking parrot saw and heard it all, and kept repeating what he heard!

Illegal gambling, blackjack and spinner, pyramid schemes, `whe whe' and `drop pan' also held sway at one time, and still do today in other forms.

And there were tricksters in bush medicine, where a man worried about "losing his nature" could be fooled by a bush-doctor into buying and drinking a combination of Courage Bush, Love Vine, and Stiff Cock. If that didn't work, or killed him, F-drops, a liquid medicinal aphrodisiac was so good, it could wake up the dead!

Bush rum, `bushee,' `barbash,' or `moonshine,' made in illicit stills in the countryside, and sold at cut-rate, if not cut-throat prices by unscrupulous distillers, could cause blindness, insanity, and impotence when drunk.

Perhaps in the end, the trickster who believes that life is a trick and all things show it, gets a taste of his own medicine, for as old people say, "When tief tief from tief, God laff."

However, there is always a new generation of `smart men' waiting in the wings.