A plea for tolerance

THE EDITOR: “Tolerance” is one of the national watchwords.

As too many people continue to “beat up” over the China Town sign on Charlotte Street, please allow me to share the following.

When I was a very young child, my mother worked in an arcade at 90 Frederick Street, opposite Royal Castle. This is now a car park. Next door to Royal Castle was a parlour run by the illustrious Sylvia Hunt. She was the first person to have a cooking show on local television.

The arcade was a one-storey building with several different businesses. My mother worked on the first floor at a place called British Caribbean Trading Company Ltd. Also on the first floor was Straker’s Record Shop and Knolly’s Tailoring, among others.

On the ground floor was Chung’s Photo Studio, Miss Lizzie’s Lunch Place and at the front of the arcade was Next Fifth Avenue Boutique (owned by William Munroe of Soca Monarch fame) and Smith and Alfred Ltd.

Smith and Alfred had two branches. The main branch was on Charlotte Street.

The Frederick Street branch was run by a woman called Miss Pearl and she was assisted by another woman called Son Soy.

Long before there was a “take your child to work day,” my mother used to take me along with her, during school vacations.

Smith and Alfred was a variety store that sold clothes, records, books and other things. I spent many, many hours sitting on a small piece of wood voraciously reading the store’s comics – Spiderman, The Avengers, Captain America, Richie Rich, The Rawhide Kid, Dennis the Menace, Archie, Black Panther, Fantastic Four (in which the Black Panther was first introduced) and so on.

I was also fascinated by the pictorial history books. One of these chronicled the demise, in June 1876, of five companies of the 7th Cavalry led by Lt Col George Armstrong Custer to a confederation of Native American Indians. This book had actual pictures from the battlefield.

I will always be grateful to Miss Pearl and her staff for putting up with me in their store.

I vividly remember whenever Mr Alfred would visit that the staff were always on edge and on their best behaviour. I never knew who Mr Smith was.

In late 2017, I was walking down Charlotte Street one Sunday morning when I saw Miss Pearl, after many, many years. She was well advanced in age but I took the time to thank her profusely for allowing me, as a child, to be in her store.

Why am I sharing this?

We must be very careful never to assume that we know what someone looks like from their name.

Mr Alfred and Miss Pearl were Trinidadians of pure Chinese origin. To a child, this was of no significance.

The only important thing, back then, was that you had to respect your elders, regardless of who they were and what they looked like.

I did not grow up in a “race-obsessed” TT.

Thankfully, there are still many of us who understand that it is not what you look like but what is in your heart that matters.

On Divali day, I was left smiling because, while driving home I saw Trinidadians of every kind walking with their buss-up-shut and dhalpuri skins and rotis from a very popular roti shop.

Let the “wanna-be” dividers chew on that.

LINUS F DIDIER

Mt Hope