It has been awhile since we have featured our favourite columnist Richard ‘Lowdown’ Hoad. In his latest column he gets down-right philosophical. Did we detect some frustration as he wishes for a reality that will never be? We hope that our main man Lowdown knows that there is a price which mankind and mankind alone has been prepared to shell-out for progress. Hi Lowdown, you did not mention once the Reddifusion, the ubiquitous box-in-the-corner.
What progress has done to the Barbadian is to highlight our inherent desire to be status finders. On the flip side we have benefited by developing a cadre of professionals, architects, engineers, accountants, lawyers, bankers, agriculturists, Insurance Executives and others.
This reads like a chicken and the egg argument!
The great benefit we are told to be derived from the progress we have made can be seen by travelling to our West Coast, Warrens, South Coast, St. Lawrence Gap, Sugar Hill, Port St. Charles and the like. We have been told also that if we enjoy a high standard of living sparked by a high standard of education, expect the level of crime to be manageable, if we are to speak in relative terms.
Yes there is a price we have had to pay for progress we must admit. We are at the start of the hurricane season, all it takes for Lowdown’s memories which have been plucked from down memory lane to become a reality is to think Category 5!
Often times a benefit derived from disasters is the discovery of the kindred spirit of FAMILY.
Barbados Underground 
His consistency ratio is through the roof!
The other newspaper columnist should learn a thing or two from Lowdown. Standup for something and leave the wishshy washy stuff in the laundry room. It explains why he is prbably the most widely read of all the writers.
Lowdown’s columns reflect a man of great intellect, but also importantly a man who has a grasp of the things which ordinary Barbadians still seem to want. It is easy for some who read Lowland to enjoy his satirical delivery but for those who want to go further there is a lot more.
Hoad has always has been the only reason why I read the Nation Newspaper. We chased after success, but at a serious price. We lost our soul as a nation and built a house(s) of cards. Now the worldwide economic decline could also see much of this house of cards collapse.
Hoad confirms the saying many a true word is spoken in jest and more. He is the product of reality. When dee cow hungry or breast full o’ milk Hoad can’t complain ’bout prices or oil cost, he does have to fix dee moo fast fast. Hoad will tell ya that stewed sweetpotato pickin’s, fricasied salt fish and a mauby float got dee same sweetness as playing he sax o’ phone music. As we face the oil crisis we may find that his principles may be our way forward.
Hoad’s wife must be a very tolerant woman. He does throw real licks in her boy 🙂
Aren’t we overdoing it a little when we praise Hoad so much? To me, Hoad lives in the past when everyone knew their place and merit meant nothing. Do we want a return to those days?
As a non-Barbadian, the important aspect of this item is why he (Tiger) could be guaranteed to marry a white woman and not a black one! Perhaps, black women are n’t considered a priority, any more!
Justice you must always read between the lines to understand Hoad. If you did Shakespeare or some medieval literature you may want to use the same approach to the interpretation of the Hoadie chronicles:-)
Hoad aint easy!
Justice
NO WE are NOT overdoing it a little when we praise Hoad so much. Everyone I know who has interacted with Mr Hoad respects him very highly.
There is nothing wrong with living in the past or knowing one’s place. What is so special about our day? How is it any better than the fifties really. Filth on tv, the internet, gadgets and NO ONE KNOWING THEIR PLACE?
What do you mean by merit meaning nothing? Do you think all those with good academic qualifications who cant get a job are really being treated on merit?
I would rather live in the Barbados in which I grew up, than live in today’s world.The only advantage of the world today, is that it highlights that JESUS IS COMING SOON! I WISH IT WERE TODAY!
Having lived in Barbados in the fifties…despite the faults of today, and they are many. In terms of people’s circumstances and personal self-worth, for a major section of the community, Barbados is a better place.
I speak from person experiences, not from something I have read, or heard.
David:
You may find that if you encourage factual rather emotional discussion about our past, Barbadians maybe pleasantly surprised by the jewels they will find after all the tons and tons of slavery and colonial dirt have been dug up.
One example: The backyard that many of us so despise was an invaluable source of thinking and experiential educational skills that are now lacking among many kids because of the leisure society we now crave. Because of “progress” the art of thinking will have to be taught as a formal skill in schools sooner rather than later.
Picking a breadfruit, staking out sheep, making scooters, gutter perks and trucks are rich in science and math. The student who was forced perhaps against their own will to keep kitchen garden or help dissect a pig at 5am in the morning was the kind of exposure that eventually many of the British teachers look good. Think about it many children learnt to read at Sunday school, the success was checked by everyone who lived in the village and all the delicacies we no cherish from souse and pickled breadfruit, to tamarind balls were all created within the crucible of adversity.
I can guarantee and God forbid that if we get a Hurricane many of the old fashioned roof tops will survive and many of the slanted roofs that are not bolted down like ole time. So much for progress.
Well as far as I know, what some may consider living in the past, is actually Hoad’s present. He does everything he writes about, lives his life as he writes it, and you can bet your bottom dollar his board and shingle house is just as he says it is.
I love the man.
When I tell people that I plan to build a “house and shed” on my land at home as a vacation/retirement cottage, they look at me like I am crazy. The problem with concrete is that it absorbs the heat during the day and releases it at night. It is so hot, you sweat and cant sleep. Not me, give me my old Bajan chattel house. I dont mind having outdoor facilities either. Afterall, Barbados does not have winters, and in parts of Canada that is what people have – outhouses.
Hoad has a genuine love of black people. So dont knock him. How many white men in Bim would let their daughter marry a black man?
Pat wrote “How many white men in Bim would let their daughter marry a black man?”
Anyone of them with a brain?
I have experienced the idyllic joy of empty beaches during school holidays. The Sunday school excursions to Morgan Lewis etc.. and lovely they were. Watching ground doves under the shade of a tamarind tree. Pitching marbles and playing marble cricket…with time to spare; to bring in the sheep for the night.
I learned a lot and am happy to have done so, but there was an element of “Barbados life” which does not campare as favourable as today.
This is one of those debates that will run into a cul-de-sac…and I know now is not the time for “me”.
Based on what we have read Hoad is a man who is enviously qualified if we used that as a standard.
Secondly if we judge the fact that he seems to run a household which is self sufficient in energy we think that is another qualification which entitles him to puff his chest even if he does not.
The only think which the BU can match Hoad on is his love affair with family i.e. traditional family.
Lastly he could do like most Bajans and be selfish about his belief and philosophy. Instead week after to week using his peculiar style which is loved by many he tries to change the world.
Hoad is our hero!
Oh Sh*te, don’t tell me Chris Halsall WWhite too.
I’m just me… IMHO, colour doesn’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) matter….
Yardbroom
I usually respect your views.
But when you were growing up it was not common to see the number of youths I have seen in police stations there for murder.
As a youth we went to the police station to play table tennis. My father before me played draughts in the police station.
I agree this argument would end up in a cul de sac , but I fail to see the glories of modern Barbados when compared with the idyllic nature of my childhood.
Georgie Porgie
I was away from the computer for awhile, please excuse my late response.
You are quite right, when I was growing up in Barbados. There were no aggressive young men demanding money for no service rendered…not in my experience.
Old people were treated with respect. I recall once on my way home from school, throwing stones at a mango tree. A very old lady- I did not know her – asked my name and said she was going to tell my mother about my behaviour. I was petrified…because that meant trouble for me.
My friends and I could walk from the Bridgetown Plaza -cinema – to my home some miles away. If we missed the last bus home on a Saturday night. There was no fear, we always got home safely, no trouble at all.
I did not know anything about drugs, even today I have never taken drugs of any kind..apart from those prescribed by a doctor. I have never had that need. I have been to New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, London and manyof the other big cities so there has been opportunities. I am not a big drinker or smoker, so this is not an attack on anything, it is just personal experience.
Those days of my youth were good in many respects, but there was another side to Barbados.
I recall some years ago I was invited with my wife to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. As we took tea, someone spilled a few grains of sugar on the lawn. We all made a joke about it, saying something for the ants etc. I laughed and said “I never like to see a grain of sugar wasted.” Someone responded,” I bet your family own sugar plantations”, I smiled and said they do not…it is a long story.
What they did not know and I did not tell them. One night as a young boy in Barbados I was so hungry I decided to have a little sugar and water before going to bed. However, when I went to the larder, there was no sugar there, and nothing else as well. As a result I had a tot of water and went to bed.
My mother asked “are you allright?” I saw the look in her eyes and said I am fine, and went to bed.
The next day I was up bright and early, and off to school.
My children find it difficult to believe such circumstances, and thank goodness we are far removed from such a situation.
That was also Barbados, and the circumstances which made that possible…but that is enough about me.
Yardbroom, why were you invited to tea at Buckingham Palace, an honour which has also been bestowed upon me. What was your great achievment which merited this royal, honour?
Yardbroom
Again I respect your view and understand the angle you are coming from, but despite those hardships we overcame, and did not disgrace our selves at home or school, or on the streets.
I do not know you, but even in your anonymous comments you portray a dignity and decorum that is absent from our youth that had everything.
I’m still interested to know why BLACK women are being ostracised! Nobody else seems interested in the fate of our women but I am! I’m also, interested in the continuance of the race!
I can’t think of too, many celebrities who’ve ‘tied the knot’ with black women as though there’s something wrong with them! I insist that there is n’t!
Yardbroom
As you may well recognise I have great admiration for most of your thinking and perspective.
Your upbringing sadly reminds me of what made our country great with its meagre resources and why we should all as one people and with one voice fight to maintain our standards.
Standards that some of those in the ‘nouveau riche’ group who would have benefitted from these wholesome practices,now seek to convince us that they are backward – and we must move with the times.
It is for experiences like yours and of the Barbados that is so greatly admired by most overseas which shaped me to be the person that I am – that I fight so strenously and unapologetically to avoid us heading down the road of other failed countries like Guyana,Jamaica and Trinidad – their resources nothwithstanding.
Sadly those elected persons – who pompously remind us that they are members of parliament – and the holders of great power – have bought in to the thinking of the ‘nouveau riche’.
They quickly try to erase from their minds the experience of which you so eloquently speak – and seek to be politically correct – so as to win the admiration of those in the multinational corporations and western countries.
The Great,Late Errol Walton Barrow if he were to return would not recognise these pretenders to the throne – these empty vessels.
I hope that the DLP will not have as their legacy – the warning – ‘You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting’.
Thanks once again for your timely interventions – I hope that if you have not already started – that one day you may consider immortalising these experiences in a book.
Dear Pat: I don’t think that Hoadie “let” his daughter(s) marry a black man or (men). My impression is that Hoadie’s daughter’s are as strong minded and individualistic as he is. I don’t think that they are the sort of ladies who walk around saying, “may I please?”
Georgie Porgie: Tek ya head outta de clouds
J:
I dont know the ladies. It may very well be as you say. Or, they could have been impressed by his talk of the good times he had at Vaucluse with the black workers. Or, it could be how he raised them, to be liberal and openminded without prejudice. Or, they could jut be ‘chips off the old block’!
Bimbro
Your question out of courtesy, deserves a response.
I was invited to the palace,because of a position I hold in a particular organization, a public body.
It would be unwise to say more on a public forum. I hope that is of some use…if it is not, I can only apologize.
I wont or cant take my head out of the clouds J
I am looking towards the clouds literally for Christs appearing.
I’m in the U.S now, so i read Nations News online…well, actually, I log on to Nation News, read the new Hoad column, then log off. Simple as that. I can get all the propaganda I need elsewhere.
A member of the BU household sums it up best.
Hoad’s writing is a true demonstration of Rubin’s theory of perception. It does not matter who reads Hoad we are all able to take away a little learning from the experience .
Thank you, Yardbroom. They say that ‘manners maketh man’, and you’re a man, Sir!
Hoadies daughters are just like him and his wife……they do not seem to see colour but character. He would have a mauby and ham cuttuh with anyone. I beleive that he would have taken a black wife if he had found one who took his fancy, but a Burke girl caught him first. I had the good fortune to work on his farm and he made agriculture so much fun that to this day I don’t feel that I worked as hard as I did. He also tells stories about one of my ancestors at Black Bess Plantation who had a tendency to tell ‘tall tales’ about his exploits in Panama. As for the race issue ……don’t forget that Hoadie calls them ‘whitish people’. He knows that quite a few of our ‘white’ families have ‘more than a touch o’ de tar brush’ in their history so ‘race’ is a relative term in Barbados. We all have ‘whitish’ as well as ‘blackish’ people in my family. Some of us will find ‘a man in a dhoti saying prayers in front of a chandi’ too if we look far enough in our blood lines (pardon my spelling if inaccurate). Look at the honourable Esther Byer Sookhoo- possibly ‘whitish’, ‘blackish’ and ‘indianish’ blood. She also seems to be on Hoadies ‘hot ladies’ list.
I looooove Richard Hoad. I am so sorry that I do not know of the days he reminisces about.
If I had false teef, duh wudda drop out just now and bruggadown, pun de desk top!!! I had no idea muh big brother was making such a name for himself all over de world. So when I googled his name and this page (among others) pop up pun muh screen, and Lowdown dih pun everybody lips (or finger tips), muh eyes and mout open real wide.
Anyhow, I ain got nuh words of wisdom to add, I jess come to big up muh big brudda an’ leh wunna know I love he real bad!
Richie boy, if yuh reading dis, send some sunshine fuh yuh lil sista up heyso in de cold norf uh europe.
Leave Lowdown alone – he makes people laugh and then think; or is it the other way round?