Xmas in Guyana - Toys for tots
Stabroek News
December 12, 2004
(This is the third part in a series by Godfrey Chin)
Ever since the little drummer boy, presented his gift to the Christ Child in the manger over 2000 years ago, toys have been as mysterious as Aladdin's lamp; fascinating as a magic carpet ride; exciting as a NASA Space Rocket launch; joyful as a first born; and profuse as a Genip tree in season.
Toys for young Guyanese, yesteryear, were not necessarily gifts at birthdays or Christmas, but rather unique resourceful home-made playthings that offered endless fun, year-round. They developed camaraderie, skill and healthy competition, among pickneys of varying sizes, races and religion. Toys in this cradle of our melting pot were a cook-up of our cultural heritage - derived from the rich, diverse potpourri of our ethnic forefathers and their customs.
From kindergarten through public schools, challenging games of skill were outsourced from everyday items, empties and discards, around the house. Before the innovation of zips and press-studs, buttons from our garments allowed games of cush. Pieces of string made elaborate intricate figures from finger weaves and the Awara seed was prized for games of marbles, jumming, gam and holes. Placing these seeds in ants nests, resulted in hollowed taws which, with a dowel inserted and sealed with bees wax, became a Guyana singing buck-top.
Discarded empty wooden cotton reels were converted to an imaginary mobile war tank that climbed obstacles with a piece of pointa broom, candle wax and a rubber band.
We emulated the local sports heroes, with football doving of wind-puss worn tennis balls. Cricket balls were rolled from boiled balata or slices of bicycle tubes, and bats were sawn from coconut branches, or local wood. Of course, the tell-tale oil drum was the wicket, to avoid lengthy small-boy arguments in self-umpired matches that equalled the Intercolonial and Test frays at Bourda.
Bowlers emulated Berkeley Gaskin; batsmen aspired to be Robert Christiani; and the words 'Buridee, Bucksick and Basadee' entered the local vernacular. Basadee described a lamata, who was not very skilled at ball-games.
Bicycle wheels, were as resourceful as the coconut tree. With wheel rims and a stick, we raced sprinting like Rocky McPherson, around the block. Fifteen-inch wire circle hoops, rolled by a steering stick with a hook, inspired future Laddie Lewises and Tarrant Glasgows. There was no local Chinese sports icon to emulate then, but this cook-shop-fly was thick and thin, competing with the young neighbourhood champs.
Sliced inner tube propelled buck bead pellets for our wood guns were ideal slings for our slingshots, and we were all straight shooters like Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley. What then was fun for boys was death for crapaud and ground dove. Hand-made submarines with rubber bands used for propellers, levered tin fins, forced us to swim like Johnny Weissmuller, to retrieve our boats in the city canals.
Empty tin cups were drinking utensils or gun targets, but we also walked on them with string, like robot mother-sallies. An empty Ovaltine tin, plus a piece of carbon, were schoolboys' ceremonial military gun salute. You spit in the can, shake, add a lighted match to a hole in the bottom and boom the lid flies off, while all the neighbours complain 'you all will awaken the dead.' A rod, with string, a bent pin, and flour dough or ground worms, and the patwa, salabey, houri, in the canals were in frenzied confusion.
Steel wool soaked in kerosene, set alight and spun on wire were aerial fireworks displays, that delighted the youngsters, but scared the adults into warning that we would burn down the wooden houses. Thankfully the corrugated galvanized roofs were very 'fire-proof!'
Those musically inclined harmonized with flutes from papaw stems, comb and silver paper, empty bottle and spoon, calabash shac-shac and biscuit cans for drum bases.
Five small 'round' stones and the girls had endless games of 'littie.' A piece of clothesline afforded skipping to Creole rhythmic shantos of Olympic proportion. Chalked squares and circles were hopscotch hurdles to 'make babies'! It was the age of innocence, when girls could tell smiling parents they had just made a dozen babies. Today the age of consent moves like a thermometer in a winter blizzard.
It is my opinion that these imaginative escapades were significant in our childhood and were the foundation for outstanding achievements by Guyanese icons, at home and abroad.
The annual Christmas gift toys were special as they reflected and strengthened bonds of love and caring between children, parents and elders. Xmas toys were adult rewards, fulfilling promises for good behaviour, improved school reports, or wishful letters to Father Christmas or kin abroad.
Unlike adults, our young ones boasted their age with the precision of the Stabroek Market clock. Five and a half today, or six next May, were fraction precise, for those at public schools, grasping numerical tables, from the back cover of the blue 'exercise books.' The latter was a clever reminder that a birthday was coming up!
The toys we played with were the gauge of our maturity. And this is not carping on close friends who started with the bottle and still worship the bottle!
Two year olds had wooden toys, alphabet blocks, hickory dickory clocks, peg points, stacking rings and colour cones. The spinning top that was pumped from the top and the tin drum with two sticks were their favourites.
Guns have always been the boys' favourite. By age five, water pistols and cork pop-guns were replaced by Bang-Os, six-shooters, and shiny chrome Colt 45's with loud sulphur caps that allowed us to be western silver-screen heroes like John Wayne and Roy Rogers. Every Guyanese boy yearned for and cherished the complete cowboy outfit of holsters, gun belts, breeches, and sombreros, waistcoats, bandanas, stirrups and sheriff's badges. Some preferred to be red Indians, soldiers, pirates, and even Davy Crocketts with the popular coonskin caps, after Disney's Fess Parker. Davy Crockett adventures were released at the Plaza, in the mid-fifties.
From rat-a-tat tommy machine guns to today's space guns, and star-war lasers, guns continue to fascinate the macho males, and to some extent accounts for today's gun proliferation threats to society. In my time, a Red Ryder BB gun earned from selling flower seeds in response to advertised coupons in every comic book was the ultimate reward.
With a magnifying glass, a piece of mirror to reflect the sun and discarded movie film strips, bottom houses and enclosed staircases became kid-cinema movie theatres. Kenner's Give-a-show projectors came after the end of WWII, and the popular comic characters Superman, Batman were favourites short comic style episodes. These were later replaced by the View-Master, with three-dimension pictures of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell in full colour. Panoramic vistas of far-away places were available for the adults, and the entire family enjoyed the excitement, while taking turns to view the images.
With hordes of plastic three-inch toy soldiers, historical or imaginary war battles of Waterloo, Alamo, Agincourt, could be re-created for hours of fun. Meccano, Erector, Lego and cabin logs facilitated building of forts that fired the young generals' imagination. Recently, a young mother was baffled at the continuous disappearance of her tampons. Finally her darling boys admitted they were ideal 'scud missiles' for their mid-east battle defences.
For action thrills, we graduated from tricycles, Radio Flyer wagons, pedal cars, tanks and fire trucks, skates, pogo-pogo jumping sticks to roller blades. Two staves and wheels, and every boy was a local Howard Hughes, building his own masterpiece scooter, then advancing to go-carts. Before the famous Jamaican Bobsled team became legends in the film Cool Runnings, we were go-cart racing downhill on any slope.
My first train in 1943 was a spring wind-up tin engine with two carriages on a 24-inch diameter circular track which was over the years upgraded to more realistic models; locomotives that puffed real smoke, remote control coupling systems complete with depots, X crossings and water tower spouts.
Plastic push along vehicles, Tonka trucks, matchbox die-cast replicas and hot wheels were later replaced by remote controls that engendered closer relationships between fathers and sons, as both 'show-offed' airplanes aerial displays and model stock car racing.
Future nerds started with Mother Goose Rhymes and Grimms Fairy Tales, graduated to Bedtime stories, novels of the Hardy Boys, Billy Bunter, Nancy Drew, literature classics and classic comics illustrated, all tomes that whetted the appetites of a very literate future population.
Crayola came in 1951, followed by Etch-a-Sketch, and Play Doh. Gamesmanship started with Milton Bradley's snakes and ladders, playing cards, Monopoly, Checkers, Scrabble, Battleship, and Chess. New toy fads were introduced every year such as Yo-Yo's, Slinkies, Hula hoops and Frisbees that delighted young and the never-too-old.
Musical Talent was nurtured with kindergarten biscuit can tin drums, twirl-a-tunes, baby pianos, accordions, xylophones, harmonicas, plastic banjos all designed to improve ear-sound, and inspire talent. Alas, the advent of play phonographs, personal walkmans and CD players, negated to some extent the continuation of nurturing the rich heritage of local musical talent!
Ooops, nearly forgot the girls, who, except for a few tomboys thank heaven, were more sedate and less noisy, playing with their dolls and doll houses. 'Ginny', an eight-inch doll of hard plastic, introduced by Vogue Doll Co was the first of its kind to come with a complete line of clothing and accessories. The first lady doll was 'Cissy', a full-figured high-heeled doll introduced in 1955.
Lifelike dolls of soft plastic and rubber grew from babes to brides to ballerinas; Barbies to Cabbage Patch to Beanie Babies. These came with dizzying assortments of outfits reflecting the latest fashions in all-occasion wear with carrying cases. Dolls had moving limbs, ability to talk, walk, sing, cry, burp and allow school training in home science for motherhood and parenting skills.
Barbie, the teenage fashion model came in '59, and her dazzling array of sold-separately outfits equipped her for slumber parties to night club singing. No wonder male companion Ken in 1961, best friend Midge in '63 and little sister Skipper the next year joined her popular royal court. Some locals cherished their Raggedy-Anns, kewpies, golliwogs and teddy bears.
Guyanese doll houses and playthings were initially locally hand-crafted assemblies but plastic allowed a revolution in doll house furniture and appliances. While the boys were busy in boisterous outdoor games, the little girls played with miniature homes, furniture with bureaus whose drawers opened, washing machines and dryers with lids. Later on play-ovens baked and every room in the doll's house was a miniature boudoir with every household activity. Tea parties were real and Guyanese women were being prepared to be the finest hostesses in the world!
Later, Atari, video games, Nintendo, Gameboy, Transformers, Dungeons and dragons continued to mystify the youngsters.
Toys for Tots were collected and shared annually by the Olga Lopes Radio Demerara Needy Children Fund, Lions, St Vincent de Paul bringing joy and pleasure to orphans, the underprivileged and the needy. This was the true meaning of Christmas.
The Xmas tree has been set up - the house decorated and toys procured for the young ones. Finally, I will share with you Guyana Christmas Spirit, Sound and Smell!