Gordon Robinson | Drinking Rum and Coca-Cola

The Old Ball and Chain has a lifelong abhorrence of men who drink to excess.

She also has a long list of dislikes about men, including men with beards (so, as an eternal lesson, God inspired her three sons to all grow beards); men without what she calls ‘spine’; and men with other girlfriends, which in large part explains how she ended up with this fat, ugly, grumpy old red man.

But Old BC’s turned-off attitude to regular drinkers makes the story I’m about to tell ironic. Many decades ago, when she was but a slip of a girl and a flaming nuisance to us older boys, Gene Autry and I were invited to one of her mother’s famous ‘Dos’. Her mother was a magnificent cook and baker, so these invitations were welcomed, even if it meant having to put up with the irritating attentions of Baby BC.

To pass the time, Gene and I devised a dare. Each of us would fix an alcoholic drink for the other, who had to consume it in one go. I fixed him a very stiff rum and coke, which he gulped down without batting an eye. Then I noticed he and Baby BC heading off together. They returned with a two-litre mug of what seemed like rum and coke. I wasn’t going to allow batting-order strategy to defeat me so, with difficulty, I downed it without pausing for breath.

The details that followed are somewhat foggy but the night ended, after her brother dropped me home, with me being sick as a dog on my doorstep. Years later, Old BC confessed she and Gene had plotted to “drunk me up” by filling the mug with a deadly mixture of rum, vodka and gin, and adding just enough coca-cola to colour the drink.

It took me years before I could take another alcoholic drink, which is partly how I was nicknamed ‘The Archbishop’ at Law Faculty. Rum is still something I’m only recently revisiting, and only the best-quality stuff.

So, it was unsurprising when, on Wednesday, Old BC asked me if I’d read the story of the 60 year-old bottle of rum auctioned for $2.4 million. She was horrified. So, under orders, I read it.

I was horrified. Jamaica’s tourism Minister, Mister Ed, was enthusiastically present and announced government “will acquire 60 bottles of 60-year-old that will be my gift for the next 60 months as we move across the world”.

What the ‘blurdnaught’? He wouldn’t say, but Gleaner estimates that “investment” at more than $15 million. Why is a country that can’t afford to pay public-sector workers a living wage, or buy an air-conditioning unit for a particular hospital, spending $15 million to give away liquor to foreign dignitaries/entities?

“If you ever go down Trinidad

they make you feel so very glad.

Calypso sing and make up rhyme

guarantee you one real good fine time

Drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola

Go down Point Cumana

Both mother and daughter

workin’ for the Yankee dollar.”

THE PRETENCE

Rum and Coca-Cola was a huge hit in America in 1945 with an unsavoury history. Despite music by Venezuelan composer Lionel Belasco and lyrics by Lord Invader (Rupert Grant), the song was copyrighted in USA by Morey Amsterdam and recorded by the Andrews sisters. The song was a monster hit in Trinidad and at the peak of its popularity when Amsterdam visited the island in September 1943 as part of a USO tour. Although Amsterdam claimed never to have heard the song during his month in Trinidad, the lyrics to his version are clearly based on Lord Invader’s, with the music and chorus being virtually identical.

But the American lyrics twisted Lord Invader’s message of mistreatment of local women into a not-so-subtle innuendo that Trinidad women were prostituting themselves. For example, Invader’s final stanza described a newlywed couple whose marriage is ruined when “the bride run away with a soldier lad; and the stupid husband went staring mad” . These and other lyrics were stripped from Amsterdam’s version. Neither Invader nor Belasco received compensation or credit.

Don’t we have a superior tourism product and a loquacious, marketing-oriented Minister? Do we really need to rely on rum?

This is just another example of politics drunk on power, spending our money whimsically.

These trumped-up 60th anniversary ‘celebrations’ are starting to appear very expensive. Surely, we can mark another year of independence without intoxicated frivolity as pretence we’ve much to ‘celebrate’.

Peace and Love!

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.