As you cross the bridge connecting Roatan proper to Fantasy Island, two bags of sliced Coleman Bakery sandwich loaves sit on the passenger seat of your pickup truck, a white motor dory is approaching from the West. A single figure is on board, and you give a friendly honk of the truck horn. This he returns with a casual wave as the motor dory goes beneath the bridge. The wake spreads evenly behind him in the calm water; the dory soon slows as it approaches a wall of mangroves just beyond the key where Coco View is situated.
Suddenly the engine is cut, and the figure stands. With a hand-made paddle he eases the now quiet and gliding dory to the smallest clearing at the base of the mangroves, with your eyes squinted, you can distinguish a small and unpainted wharf.
Depending on which islander you might ask, this man was going to tend his “planting grounds”, or “plantation”, or “grounds”, which was located “up in the bush”. While it is anyone’s guess exactly what he was tending, it could have been a selection of any of the following: rows of sucker trees of plantains, bananas or apple bananas, patches of watermelons or pumpkins, cassava (yuca), sweet or Irish potatoes, taroo (malanga), or mutton peppers. He might also own a good number of cattle, which he would butcher periodically and sell in town.
Wake spreads evenly behind him in the calm water.
As to which islanders farmed their property, the answer would vary according to when the question was asked. “Back in the day, it seemed almost everyone had a piece of land up in the bush that they planted. Some had big grounds, and others small grounds.” A snapshot from French Harbour in the 1970s would include those who accessed their property either by paddle or motor dory, as well as by truck or motorcycle, if you owned one then there were those who would walk from town, an empty crocus sack and a machete across their shoulder, accessing their planting grounds from an entrance to the barbed wire fences along the dirt highway.
Many a time while traveling the highway one would come across a truck or motorcycle parked along the side, abandoned while its owner worked his property. I can still picture Banegas going down the road on his motorcycle, headed to his ground, his eight or nine-year old son sitting behind him with one hand firmly around Banegas’ stomach and the other holding a green and white can of Baygon insect repellent.
There was also the islander who owned no property to tend, with Mr. Cleveland Tennyson of Pandy Town in Oak Ridge coming to mind. “Uncle Cle”, who weighed in the palms of his hands the tomatoes he sold from his paddle dory, leased a large piece of property up behind Oak Ridge Point know as Reynolds Flat. Challenges that this resourceful gentleman dealt with included salt spray coming in from the reef during windy and rough weather. The spray one year killed a considerable part of his crop that was planted too close to the shoreline. And being near town, Uncle Cle’s watermelon patch would often be raided. Having had enough of these raids, he began holding nighttime watches with a borrowed shotgun until the night the watermelon thieves again showed up. He emerged from his hiding place as the thieves, mere teenage boys, settled in to enjoy themselves. “Don’t kill us, Uncle Cle!” Far be it from him to have hurt anyone, but Uncle Cle made each of the boys eat an entire watermelon selected from the very largest in the patch. Rind, skin, seeds and all.
