This is how I roll tyres

Junior Lewis says no religion shows growth for women other than housewife.
Junior Lewis says no religion shows growth for women other than housewife. "All religions say women supposed to sit down home, cook, wash, clean, do everything in the house." - Mark Lyndersay

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Junior Lewis and I know everything about tyres.

I born Couva but reside Upper Bournes Road, St James, since probably three years old. Couva is my root but is a place I knows nothing about. I can’t remember one day living in Couva.

I could remember my whole life in St James.

I am the third-eldest child and the middle boy of three boys, three girls.

I believe the middle child does end up with all the responsibility and stress from siblings, parents, grandparents, everybody! I cannot recall one time when I wasn’t blamed for something I didn’t do.

Is true I did a lot that I throw blame on my other siblings for – but it was more done to me.

I don’t know if it was the shortest, the easiest, the most memorable name, but any situation take place within the household, my name was always the first to call.

I ent sugar-coating it at all: I was a miserable little fella. To put up with me, you would need to have a
lot of patience and understanding.

I grow up a little too fast. My understanding was always greater than most.

I don’t know what transpire with my parents because first child from the father always supposed to have the father name, then “Junior.”

My parents had it a little mixed up. So my given name, my government name, is just Junior by itself.

Everybody does call me Beard-Man.

My oldest boy, Jahdell Jaquan Lewis, is seven years. The youngest, Jaydon Kyies Matthias Lewis, is two.

These guys are my lifeline. I can’t live without them. I love my boys very much. Everything I do today is preparing for their future, to leave them financially established, financially fit.

Education is the key to life, but if you have a trade, you have twice as much advantage. If you don’t make it to president, prime minister, doctor, lawyer, you could make it as an engineer, a businessman.

Without that solid foundation to stand on, I don’t see how someone could leap from one point to the next, unless you born with a gold spoon in your mouth. I didn’t born with one.

Adam and Eve, the first two people on Earth, somewhere along the line, the story don’t add up. I ain’t no big Bible person.

But I don’t see how a male and a female two sons get married. This gap. Where these two females come from?

Unless the two boys married Eve, the mother. I place that thought aside because the Bible speaks firmly about incest.

I see religion as a separation between the people God create.

No religion shows growth for women other than housewife. All religions say women supposed to sit down home, cook, wash, clean, do everything in the house.

I never see the inside of a university yet.

I played the fool a lot with school. I real regret that.

But, as much as it regretful, it somewhat paid off in a sense for me. To me, is like I ent do bad at all.

The majority of people on the breadline, sitting at home now, is the people with the set of education, behind desk with office and this, that and the other. In the covid situation, most trademen have work still coming.

Around (age) nine or ten, trying to reach for the rosiest mango, just as my finger touched the mango, the branch I was standing on snapped completely from under my foot. I fell off the tree.

I could have been at least 30 feet above the ground – but on a hill! Where I eventually land could have been 60 feet!

I get two bus’ head, from pieces of metal within the ground. I broke my left hand.

From since then, I never climb tree again!

Falling out of that mango tree is a experience I could never forget. It seemed like the rolling down the hill would never end. I just rolling, rolling, rolling, trying to grab on to anything to save my life. And nothing I grab on to stopped the rolling.

Is the bottom of the hill that stopped me rolling. I end up bouncing against the neighbour house.

Where boy days is concerned, mine was cut very short. I lose interest in playing outside after than mango tree incident.

Before the mango tree, from little boy, all primary school, I started off sweeping the tyre shop, making room for the actual technicians and them to work.

The mango tree incident created the necessary room – how to put it? – it created the need for something else to replace what was lost.

I believe learning tyre work, learning this profession, was one of the best decisions I ever make in life.

I was 11-12 years when I started doing tyre work for a salary. I was actually on a payroll. Illegally. At that time, children couldn’t legally work. That was child labour and child abuse.

But, growing up in the situation I was raised in, ghetto life and poverty, I had no other choice but to put myself out there, to learn something and try to assist the household in some sense of the word.

At this point now, I learn tyre work that much that I can’t just repair a tyre. With the right equipment, I believe I could actually make my own tyre for myself.

From scratch. I could format a design and put a tyre with my name, my brand, my logo out there.

There is nothing in tyres and nothing surrounding tyres that I don’t know about! It might have one or two fine-tuning to do but nothing I cannot fulfil.

I go all the way from repairing tyres to selling to everything.

Junior Lewis believes with the right equipment he could make his own tyre from scratch. - Mark Lyndersay

I am in tyres 19 years and I have accomplished a lot that, through time and bad management, I end up losing. I didn’t render my understanding to learn certain things to go along with tyre knowledge, like business management. I made mistakes that cost me.

So this is me transitioning and making that attempt again to re-accomplish some of these things.

At this point, I am trying to take tyres to the full altitude.

What I’m working towards is owning my own establishment. Whether I purchase it from somebody or build it myself, that I don’t know right now.

But I intend to go wherever tyres takes me.

I
never went anywhere else and I don’t have intentions of going. If man was supposed to fly, God woulda make we with wings.

I don’t believe in going on plane and all them things. I born Trinidad and I believe this is where I belong.

Basically, anything you tell yourself you want to be, it could happen right here. Trinidad is a stepping stone for anybody willing to become something. Somebody who willing to make theyself, then.

Trinidad has the room for that. Trinidad has the support. It has the love. And, sometimes, the unity.

To me, a true Trini is anyone that has the willingness and the capability to make the impossible seem possible and to repeat that process every single day of their life. They wake up on a morning and don’t know what they going to do or how they going to make it through the day. Whether is financial, food, clothes, comfort, whatever.

And, yet still, they go in the bush, they hunt, gather different food, go by the river and fish. No matter what you put in their way, they have a way of working around it or getting over it.

Trinidad and Tobago means basically everything to me. I comfortable here and everything I need is right here. I love where I grow and I want to continue that growth. I am willing for everybody who willing to have the same experiences I did have.

Read the full version of this feature on Friday evening at www.BCPires.com

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"This is how I roll tyres"

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