Hartley Neita, Contributor

The post office in my childhood village was a community meeting place, Mondays to Saturdays, between the hours of 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

A train from Montego Bay stopped at the nearby railway station about 5.30 p.m. The train from Kingston arrived there about 5.45 p.m.

These trains carried mail, letters, parcels and post cards from the stations between Montego Bay and Four Paths and from Kingston to the village.

Waiting for mail

A postman, pushing a cart, carried the mail left at the station by the train to the post office.

Adults, mainly women, and children gathered at the post office from as early as 5.30 p.m.

The few men stayed on the road and discussed the progress of the war between England and Germany. A few of their sons had gone to England to work in the munitions factories or to fly planes in the Royal Air Force.

The women crowded near the closed window of the post office, talking about food prices and the shortage of kerosene to light their lamps at night.

The boys and girls idled shyly on the grounds outside the building.

Important postmistress

Everybody waited impatiently for the postmistress to open the window and call their family names if a letter or parcel came for them.

Post offices were, therefore, the first means of communicating with families and friends, far and near.

It was the postmistress, too, who received information from the head office of imminent hurricanes. When she received this news, she hoisted a red flag on a nearby pole.

The post mistress was probably the first to know of the death of someone in the village, and a member of the family always came there, day and night, to send telegrams to their families and close friends.

Newspaper

The verger of the church lived close by and she sent to tell him of the loss. Shortly after, he left his home wearing his Sunday-best black suit and hat, walked the three-quarter mile to the church and tolled the bell. The church bell tolling was another form of communicating news.

The Daily Gleaner was delivered to the police station by a Gleaner car, early each morning.

These cars were privately owned. They carried passengers as well as the newspaper.

Shortly after, the village vendor collected the newspapers and walked from house to house shouting the headline and selling the two-pence-per-copy publi-cation.

There were no telephones in the village then. Neither was there electricity, hence few radios. The only radios in homes were owned by families, who had motor vehicles and could use them to charge the batteries to operate the radios.

Different world

Today, it is different. Everybody can listen to the world with their transistor radios. Television, which was only a science fiction impossibility, popularised by Dick Tracy, the cartoon character, is part of the household furniture.

There is also email, which my former gardeners children use as a matter-of-course. It is a new world.

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