Daraine Luton,Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Hilda Blackwood sharing her life story. - Photos by Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

A copper is novel to many persons. Some may have seen this massive rustic iron pot, but are totally ignorant of its use. In the hills of Westmoreland, a place called Lundie, where the air is crisp and the evening breeze passes through a refrigerator before it hits, a copper is literally the breadbasket for many persons.

Hilda Blackwood owned three of these big boiling pots. Her late husband, Gilbert, is said to have been a master at boiling wet sugar, a product he sold to supplement the family's income. When Gilbert died three years ago, other skilled "boiler men" in Lundie helped Miss Hilda boil sugar.

Wet sugar fetches a price of $400 per quart and is a choice sweetener for naturalists. This was money on which Miss Hilda could depend. It supplemented that which she gets from her son, Kevin, who is abroad. At age 75, she had also grown accustomed to wet sugar, having used it all her life. Thieves, however, hit one night and changed the course of life for this poor, old woman.

"Dem just come and thief all a dem ... all three a dem and gaan (gone)," Miss Hilda laments from the veranda of her two-room house. She says that three men had visited the community earlier in the day to view the coppers.

"Dem seh it have tourist potential so dem want to look pon dem. Dem seh dat dem a go carry tourist come si how di wet sugar mek," Miss Hilda relates.

tricked

It was a trick and Miss Hilda and two other persons in the community fell for it. The night when the men returned, they stole seven heavy iron pots from a boiling house in Lundie. Nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything, except for the spot where the coppers once occupied.

"Is a terrible thing dem do. Dem nuh know how mi eat. Dem no care if mi dead but mi try nuh worry over it. Mi leave dem to God," the elderly woman says.

Miss Hilda says she is not going to lose any sleep over the loss of her 'breadbaskets', and perks up when she starts talking about her children.

Son seeks employment

At the entrance to her yard are some odd-looking chairs, elevated on poles and trees. They are the work of her son Josh, who she says is in his 30s. Immediately you begin to wonder if he works. The answer is 'no', but Miss Hilda says he is "trying hard". Josh had gone into town "to look for work", when The Sunday Gleaner visited Lundie. His mother could not say what kind of job he had gone to seek, but judging from his works in her yard, it could be anything which involves a whole lot of muscle. After all, he dug a swimming pool in his mother's frontyard. The walls of the pool are lined with stones, in the way a pit would be packed, and stained with white lime.

She is hoping that Josh finds constructive work soon, but even if he does not, Miss Hilda says she won't stop loving him. Josh and her other son Kevin are not her biological children. She had five children, but all died in infancy.

"Gilbert used to quarrel with mi seh a my fault, but den him stop," Miss Hilda says.

"Him go a him bed one night and mi granny dream him and tell him seh a nuh my fault ... a 'cause she nuh like him," she relates.

Like many persons in Lundie, a community where development has not yet hit on a large scale, the nostalgia of the good old days is what older folks hold on to. Thieves from time to time take away a goat or two, or cattle, leaving many people to count their losses.

"Things change now mi son. One time you could a go a yuh bed wid yuh door open but yuh can't do it again. Mi have two likkle goat an mi a hope dem nuh trouble dem like how dem tek weh mi copper dem. But mi nah worry 'cause doctor seh mi have high blood pressure," the ageing woman says.

daraine.luton@gleanerjm.com