Calabash Alley

The chorus — "Struggling" to "one family" is sung twice again. That is the theme song for the television version of Calabash Alley. Of course, I pinched the beautiful adjective rainbow from Rev Tutu. Mr Joel Caverly, my colleague at St James Secondary for a number of years, was kind enough to put my lyrics to music.

Looking back to how it all started, is most interesting. I was introduced to Mr Peter Hesketh, CEO of Radio Trinidad, by Jasse Mc Donald at a party to celebrate the success of Mr Harbance Kumar’s movie The Right and The Wrong. I told Mr Hesketh that the station should produce radio plays. He was very keen and immediately arranged for us to meet.

"Don’t write about politics, race and religion. Those topics are too controversial," said Mr Hesketh with Mr Gabriel Francis next to him at the meeting. The Board felt that a soap opera was what would really click with listening audiences and before broadcasting, the station should have at least ten fifteen-minute episodes ready in the can.

Radio soaps were very popular at the time. "Portia Faces Life," "Deacon Brodie," "Dr Paul," "Peyton Place" and "Second Spring" with its evocative question that every one was trying to answer... "Can a woman who has once loved completely, ever find true love again, can she find a second spring?"

What should I write about? That was the question. While searching for a theme, ideas like tsunamis overwhelmed my mind. Then, out of the maelstrom the thunderbolt emerged...LOVE. What is life without love! Everybody loves a love story.

My story would reflect the lives and loves of people living in East Dry River. I wanted a really rootsy name which once heard would always be remembered. "If you want to succeed, you gotta have guts like a calabash "is one of my credos and I loved the vowels sounds of the place that existed only in my imagination...

Calabash Alley: a local true-to-life story that looks at the many faces of love."

That’s the way I voiced the seventy-eight programmes to thousands of listeners from Monday November 2, 1970 to February 17, 19071 at 5.15 pm on Radio Trinidad. Originally, it was supposed to be just twenty-six episodes, but the demand was tremendous and it went on to three times that number.

I always had to be two weeks ahead of the listeners. I remember walking down Frederick Street and a vendor selling under Stephen’s clock was shouting out, "Papa George go dead!" But the story ended with him still in the hospital and he is still there — frozen in time.

"Carol Parker" is still expecting her baby after 35 years. Is it for the womaniser "Danny King" or for the business man "Arthur Wells" or his friend "Rex Raphael" or her "saintly boyfriend." I had always tried to end each episode on a climatic note but for the finale, I went for the overkill: a quadruple cliffhanger!

Now for a true joke. My second son, William, about seven at the time, dashed into "The Yellow Submarine" (That’s what my two sons called my Mistubishi Galant) and exclaimed, "All the children in class only arguing what will happen to ‘Mabel’ and ‘papa George.’ So I tell them, ‘My daddy writing ‘Calabash Alley.’ And all of them shut up their mouth."