Roti & Drive-In

This is my father sitting on the southwest end of the "Southern Main Road", a good 2km dead-straight stretch of the main road leading to San Fernando, in the background.

San Fernando was the second largest city on the island and for us living in the south of the island, the main place for many larger matters. We had an excellent grocer in the village, "Leong Poi's". The owner Mr Leong Poi was an amazingly good entrepreneur and very likeable. His wife who sat behind the caged cashier's office and watched over the checkout could hardly speak any English but always smiled.

Anyway, Leong Poi could supply almost everything for daily life -. rice, noodles, meat, bicycle inner tubes, children's toys, snorkel, kettle, pots & pans..... However, when it came to large electrical goods, furniture, books etc, it had to be San Fernando. It was also where the dentist was and as far as I remember the nearest hospital. The company had an excellent medical centre for all employees at Santa Flora where the main offices and refinery were.

I suspect that given the angle of the sun and my father wearing very clean white trousers and a casual blue shirt (white was standard & blue shows sweat straight away especially with 100% humidity) that we were on the way to San Fernando to celebrate his 49th birthday.

I don't remember there being anywhere locally that we ever went out to eat and so San Fernando was the closest. Even now in 2018, Google route planner shows the time from our house and using the then main road via Fyzabad as being one hour for the 36km stretch.

I don't know what we actually did but I know what his favourite birthday treat would have been. Stop off at the best drive past "Roti" take away and then to the nearby drive-in cinema. With the sun setting, devour the roti, washed down with a coke, buy a fresh cold coke and then hang the speaker on the driver's open window and settle back to watch the film.

I trust my UK Blipers know what a Drive-In cinema is. Here is a photo that sort of looks like ours but we didn't have such flash cars. As it was somewhat difficult to watch from the back seat, we children would sit outside at the front of the car on fold-up chairs we would bring along.

Roti is strictly simply an Indian chapati but in Trinidad was the BigMac in my days. Filled with curried meat, a joy. For my father heaven. He had served WWII in India and had come to love the food. We had curries at home but he took any opportunity to eat the real thing - our cook of Afro-Carib origin tended towards more "soul food".

Trinidad is unlike almost all Caribean islands having been until "recent" times attached to South America and thus with tropical forest geology and climate. And also in terms of population, it was unlike most of the islands not subject to much of the African slave trade but more from the different form of "Indentured labourers" a much "nicer" word for the same thing and avoided anyone asking for reparations. Most coming from India but also in earlier times also from Europe. Trinidad's biggest asset was the melting pot of its people - Back in 1960, around 43% African, 37% Indian, 16% Mixed, 2% White, 1% Chinese and 1% others.

Well after an entertaining night, the long journey home with all the dangers of wild animals of all sorts, crossing the road. My mother would have missed not being able to buy a large quantity of fresh fish and above all "shrimps" from the roadside sellers who were situated at the far end of this stretch of road. The fisherman would sell their catches directly from the harbour wall. For shrimps read giant prawns. A favourite dish of my mother's - shrimp cocktail. I doubt more than three shrimps fitted in the large serving glass.