Morris Cargill

I HEAR that Beverly Anderson has been confessing. She need not. Many years ago the old JBC asked me if I would coach some of their radio and TV announcers. One of my first "pupils" was Beverly Anderson; not that she needed much coaching, for she had considerable natural talent. She was very photogenic. She not only looked beautiful on the television screen, but was an excellent announcer. I was very proud of her and wrote a flattering piece about her in my Gleaner column. This had a strange consequence.

Shortly after my column appeared, I was at a large cocktail party when the Late Edna Manley came up to me and said, "Morris, how could a man of your status have taken time out to praise a chit of a girl like Beverly Anderson? She will now become conceited and walk around making googoo eyes at everyone." I fear that I replied very sharply and walked away. I subsequently discovered the reason why Edna Manley had it in for Beverly was that she was going around with Michael Manley and that Edna Manley did not consider her fit company for her son.

As we all know, Beverly and Michael Manley got married. During the '70s I was watching TV when Beverly appeared on the screen in an interview. She said, in reference to her husband and the electorate, "Oh! we can do anything we like with these people." I was horrified by such arrogance. This was not the Beverly I knew. She had obviously contracted a disease then prevalent known as infectious Manleyitis.

I am glad to say that in due course she fully recovered. She became once again and now remains the intelligent and attractive Beverly Anderson that I have for so long admired. I know she includes "Manley" in her name. I suppose we all carry the scars of old wounds.

A strange interlude

Everybody now knows that the Israeli, Eli Tisona, who is now in jail in Florida was a rascal and a gangster. In the '80s in Jamaica he set up a high-tech farming enterprise at Spring Plain for the purpose of growing and exporting winter vegetables to the USA. The Spring Plain enterprise might have been designed as a cover for other activities, but the fact is that Spring Plain was a remarkable experiment in modern high-tech farming.

While it was going well I went on a tour of inspection of the whole enterprise and as a farmer as well as a columnist I was enormously impressed. Acres of well-kept fields and carefully planted crops stretched before me and the drip irrigation system was a remarkable achievement. In addition there was a well organised fish farm and neat buildings in which the selection and packaging of such things as papayas took place. I cannot help to this day feeling that whatever else Eli Tisona was, he was an expert at modern high-tech farming from whom the farmers of Jamaica could learn a lot.

As we all know the Spring Plain enterprise went horribly bust. But, I have always felt that the Spring Plain enterprise had an enormous potential for success.

Eli Tisona was a strange mixture, a con-man and a rascal who was at the same time an extraordinarily able farm organiser. It is a great pity, and a great loss to Jamaica that the con-man and gangster side of his character prevailed over the side that could have created a revolution in farming in Jamaica. He might even have taught us how to grow bananas competitively. It was Eli Tisona himself who conducted me on the Spring Plain inspection and I found him a quick-witted and entertaining man. But the truth is, that I often find some quick-witted rascal to be more entertaining than some of the solid citizens whose company I have had reluctantly to bear.

Revenge

I can't help feeling that the brouhaha started by Tony Abrahams concerning Tisona was a bit of revenge against Seaga, for Seaga's having dispensed with him as a Minister. I hold no brief for Seaga, but at that time Seaga acted correctly, for Tony Abrahams was then on drugs. Indeed, as I think Abrahams well knows, I was one of the people who told Seaga at the time that Abrahams was not fit to be a Minister. I hope that Abrahams will not attempt to revenge himself against me, for I'm sure he knows that if he does he will greatly regret it. But he won't. He also knows that I know that he has kicked the habit and that he is once again an able man doing a fine job for the country on the Breakfast Club. What is more, his charming son is married to my grand-niece. It's a small world, isn't it?

Alas, Poor Lester

My colleague Daniel Thwaites wrote a delightful and elegant piece in The Gleaner of September 17 on the subject of the Late Lester. Lester committed a crime and suffered the death penalty unlike so many others in Jamaica.

But we must remember that crocodiles have very small brains, no moral sense, and are simply biologically programmed to look a bread. They are rather like a few of our local politicians.