MY BELMONT OF THE 1940s : Part 1- by Ian Lambie

I spent my first twenty-three years resident in Belmont with my parents and siblings before relocating to Woodbrook in 1956. Nevertheless ,today, more than fifty-seven years later ,I still have a special affinity for Belmont.
Belmont has always been a residential area with the majority of residents being middle income Public Servants, office and store clerks and low income blue collar workers,with a smattering of upper middle income households in the north of Belmont.
Up to that time the majority of houses were mainly wooden structures with a Main House on pillars and a detached kitchen at ground level . It was only in the 1940s that running water,water closets and wash basins,were installed in new houses with the Main House, kitchen and occasionally a laundry room being built on the same level.. Most fireplaces were wood burning while some persons used coal-pots for cooking and baking. Kerosene stoves first appeared in Trinidad in the 1940s and cooking with electricity and LPG was introduced much later. Household refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and electrical kitchen appliances had not yet arrived. Tap water was not available in the Main House and the shower was often an enclosed cubicle in the backyard enclosed using galvanise-sheeting. There were no water closets. The facility was a pit latrine located some distance from the other buildings and there was no toilet paper. Discarded newspapers were used. In some living rooms of many Roman Catholics, hung a photograph of the Sacred Heart, Pope Pius XII, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis ,Haile Selassie and occasionally of Learie Constantine.
Without household refrigerators,the matriarch ensured that there were not much “left-overs”, and whatever there was,it was placed in a “safe” enclosed with fine meshed wire. Occasionally, for preservation, meats were smoked and fish salted and dried,“taza sale”.
The washing of clothes was manually performed using a wooden tub, cut from a pickled meat barrel,and placed in the back-yard,with a “jooking board”,and with blue,brown or Sunlight soap was used. There were no powdered detergents,or liquid bleach. The addition of Keens oxford blue made the white clothes whiter. In the backyard there was a mound of stones for “bleaching” the white clothes and a line for sun –drying.
Many backyards had one or more mango, zaboca, breadfruit, guava,sugar- apple,sour-sop, lime or plum trees,the fruit of which was shared with the neighbours. Occasionally there was a large tambran (tamarind) or chenette tree in the yard. There were “yardie” fowls.”clean-neck”, or “frizzle”, and Muscovy or “canal” ducks. Frozen chickens were yet unknown. It was not unusual to see an old chamber pot (pozee) containing an aloe plant on the dog house,if there was one.
In the 1940s the primary mode of transportation was walking, riding a bicycle or using the Tramcar which was in service until 1954. From 1941 to 1958, Trolley-buses ran the Belmont-South Quay route.
At the Transfer Station,located at the corner of Park and Frederick Streets, a commuter could transfer to a tramcar going to Four Roads,Diego Martin, or to a Woodbrook/St.James Trolley-bus. Around 1945 the “six-cents taxi” emerged ,and one of the popular drivers on the Belmont/St.Vincent Street route was Eugene Ducurew ,with his blue Ford Consul,Registration No. P 666. Another six-cents taxi driver was Boland Amar, who later became a successful businessman and agent for Toyota Vehicles.
Lunches were conveyed on foot, by pipe-smoking“Lillian”,from homes in Belmont,to reach the “breadwinners” at work “down-town”, before noon.
Christmas was the most significant season of family togetherness, feasting and merriment. The house had to be thoroughly cleaned. The exterior house walls and the fence “white washed”, using coloured ochres for colour and the woodwork painted. The furniture had to be polished and floors had to be scrubbed or polished using “Mansion” Floor Polish and shined manually. New curtains had to be sewn and hung, and linoleum purchased for the kitchen floor. Occasionally an imported Christmas Tree, cut from a live tree, was purchased from Grell and Company. These trees imparted the “Christmas smell” to the house. Residents ,and visitors to the neighbourhood, extended “Merry Christmas” Greetings to everyone and not the recently “copied” “Happy Holidays” Greetings from the USA. To us in Trinidad ,Christmas was and continues to be about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. We erected our creches at home and in later years a Public Creche was erected on “the greens” at the junction of St.Anns Road and Circular Road during the Christmas Season.
The Christmas ham was a dried and smoked pork leg or shoulder, encased in a tar jacket. After removing the jacket it was boiled in a “Pitch oil tin” placed on three bricks,over a wood burning fire in the backyard. It was then decorated with cloves. Another meat was often baked chicken or turkey, and a baked leg of pork,when affordable. The Christmas cake,was always a black fruit cake, made with fruit steeped in rum for many months,and baked in a galvanise “box” placed over a coal pot fire. In country districts, mud ovens were still used for baking. Making pastelles was a Christmas tradition, as it continues to be, and all members of the family participated in its preparation. Today many caterers prepare pastelles for sale. Today, pastelles are available from Trini caterers in those parts of the USA and in Canada where there is the demand from Trini residents.
Christmas beverages were sorrel, ginger beer, ponche-de-creme, cherry brandy, falurnum, vermouth rum, beer, with gin and whisky, when affordable.(Vodka was yet unknown in Trinidad). Apples, pears,and grapes were luxury items available only at Christmastime.(No Air Freight as yet) I cannot recall whether other exotic imported fruit were available.
Danish biscuits,chocolates,walnuts,brazil nuts and almonds were served. A block of Ice was often stored for use in an “Ice –box”outside of the building.
A traditional early Christmas Morning function was the opening of the Christmas gifts by the children of the house onthe return home after attending “Mid-night Mass”.
Boxing Day was a big day,with horse-racing at the Queens Park Savannah. It was a day for picnicking with family and friends from the country, who had travelled to Port-of-Spain, by bus or by train, for the occasion. They did not own vehicles in the 1940s. There were games of chance which included : “Alipang in de bag”, “Over and under the Lucky Seven”, throwing hoops over bottled beverages and the “Three Card” game. Occasionally there was a “Merry-go-round”,and a “Ferris Wheel” erected on the nearby Princes Building grounds.
Everyone enjoyed this annual “get-together” of camaraderie and fun. I am confident that the “Senior Citizens” who read this will have happy memories of these wonderful occasions which they enjoyed,with family members and friends, as I have. (Source: Ian Lambie, Juy 24, 2022)