Go far for Fargo

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Ryan Fargo and of course I watched the movie!

I think Fargo was the only Coen Bros film I’ve seen, and I watched it when I was in my late teens.

I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs yet.

I actually like Westerns because of the lyrics behind them. When the gunmen and them come to shoot, the little lyrics they put down.

I was born in Nichols Nursing Home in Cascade, grew up in St James and lived there until I got married in May 2017. Saturday was our sixth anniversary.

My wife Sheila and I moved to Valsayn, where we currently live now. After 30-something years of my life in St James, Valsayn was a big change. Until then, past the Lighthouse was South. To face that traffic to reach to work on a morning…

We have a three-year-old son, Joshua.

I’m the youngest of three sons, Sheldon, Roger and myself.

My dad died from prostate cancer. I lived the treatment through my dad. It’s in the family on both sides. Although my mother died from a massive heart attack, but a lot of her siblings, three of my aunts, died from cancer.

I was baptised at Assumption Church and my wife and I still leave Valsayn to go to the Saturday evening Assumption mass. I am still a Catholic. My wife, too.

She’s from Cascade, so both of us are from Port of Spain.

God gave us a brain. We have to use it sometimes.

I do believe in an afterlife and in heaven, hell and purgatory. We are human beings and sinners and I don’t personally judge anyone. It’s not for me to say someone else will suffer eternal damnation.

All my siblings and I went to Newtown Boys’ RC.

It was close, because my father was the manager of Astor Cinema, Woodbrook. I got to see a lot of movies.

I passed the Common Entrance exam for St Mary’s College, my first choice.

After CIC, I went to Daniell’s Private School, where I obtained all my passes, distinctions. I was kind of top at economics at Oxford. Mr Daniell told my father it was a very top A from Oxford’s perspective. The top 100 internationally, or something to that effect.

Then I did management of business, economics, principles of accounts and general paper at A-Levels at UWI Sixth Form.

I started to work at T&TEC right after A-Levels and it’s 23 years now I’ve been there. I’ve worked my way up the corporate ladder, everything in administrative section.

It was there I met my wife. We still both work there, separate departments. We go to work together when I’m working the 7 am shift.

Our son goes to a daycare in Curepe.

I’m not a movie hound now. I used to love to watch movies before, but as I got married, my focus changed.

Anytime a new Marvel or DC movie came out, within the first week, I would have seen it. Now, it’s like I’m so busy doing things around the house, activities with my son, promotion at work…It has to be a really good movie for me to go to the cinema to watch it and not stream it. Now, I’m more likely to watch Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig.

I’m trying to remember if I watched Fargo on cable or on video from a video club in the 1990s. It was either Beta or VHS, ’cause it was before the days of DVD. I’m probably going back over 30 years now.

I was so young at the time, I always said I’d have to come back to it and watch if from an adult perspective. I’d probably appreciate it more now. I was just watching it for watching its’ sake, because, well, it named Fargo, like me!

I actually tried watching Fargo again this week on my firestick. The version I got was sticking so I could only watch the first half-hour.

The amazing thing about watching it now, compared to when I was in my teens, is how violent the movie is! I don’t know how I missed so much of the violence when I was younger. The movie is good, but it’s rough.

We work as a team, my wife and I, and three of us go places together, but she does most of the work with our son since I’ve been working shift. She spends most of his time with him.

I try to catch up when I come home. We kick some ball outside, go to the park, get a little bonding thing going. He’s be so happy when he sees me. He jumps off the bed and rush me for a hug.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s in St Mary’s, people liked the Shabba Ranks and the Buju Bantons, but I always liked my alternative rock.

My favourite song is still Bryan Adams’ Summer of ‘69. If I go karaoke, that’s the song I will sing.

You can’t be a Trini and not be into soca.

I played mas for ten years straight. From Harts to Poison, Trini Revellers, Charm, I played in everything.

But parenthood and covid – I haven’t played mas since getting married.

We have two dogs, Storm and Lexi, from the Marvel comics, both German Shepherds, both sisters. They’re pets/security dogs. They don’t really bark unless something gets their attention.

Crime in Trinidad is unbearable. I it’s a fact, not a discussion.

It’s got so bad, the wedding ring I’m wearing is not my real wedding ring. We buy cheaper rings, so if somebody come, you take it.

Knock on wood, I’m one of the very few people I know who’s never been robbed or held at gunpoint or anything. It could happen anywhere at any time, I’m not denying that. I’m always prepared for, if and when someone points a gun or knife at me, how I will handle it.

Try to remain calm and collective. They’re sometimes as scared as you. So try to give them money, keys, cards – gi’ them, gi’ them. All that is material stuff. You could buy that back.

One time I was really proud to be a Trini was in 2005, when we qualified for the 2006 World Cup. That was a great day. Everybody come together. Bandits and all was there. Everything was about the Soca Warriors. Our first game, the whole country shut down to watch.

You felt that patriotism. That stands out above everything else.

For me, a Trini is one of the happiest people in the world. We live for Carnival, lime, fete, sports, cricket, football. That’s what Trinis are.

To me, Trinidad and Tobago is the red, white and black. When I see the red, white and black, I see the diversity of cultures.

You see it in the food, the music, the quality of women, the mixture of everything we have, the ethnicities that come together as a callaloo.

That’s what TT means to me.

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