Maas Harry - master of many trades

Christopher Serju, Gleaner Writer

COAL BURNER, overseas farm worker and now fisherman. Harry Smith has done quite a few jobs and excelled at them all, to hear him tell it.

"See all that, me a teacher," he says, as we get back into the car and head towards Milk River after watching Leighton Livingston packing a kiln to burn coal. The 70-something charges that with power saws so common now, people in the business have things much easier than he did. An axe was the tool of choice in those days when logwood, cassia and other "heavy-duty" trees were the main source of coal.

On the way from Farquahar Beach, where he hitched a ride, mistaking the Gleaner-emblazoned vehicle for a route taxi, the senior citizen makes for good company as we head to Milk River. He is on the way to visit a stepsister, taking for her fish safely stashed in an igloo.

This is his way of repaying the kindness of her mother, who allowed him accommodation in the house when he first came to work in Clarendon. With the older woman now dead, Smith and her daughter still enjoy excellent relations.

The road is in very bad condition, forcing us to drive slowly, and so Smith has time to share an abridged version of his life story.

Married to Valda, with whom he has six children aged 28 to their 40s, the three girls and three boys are an obvious source of pride - with one daughter still living at the family house in Lancaster, Manchester. Harry spends most of the week working at Farquahar Beach in Clarendon, going home on the weekend or when things are slow.

Overseas experience

However, he is accustomed to life on the road, having spent many years travelling to Canada and the United States on farm work, which he gave up in 1992.

It was in Canada that he bought a "23 Johnson engine" and got started fishing in Clarendon the following year. After the boat that was fashioned from cotton wood rotted, he was forced to work for other fishermen, but believes that his skill and experience make him very marketable.

"I am just a skipper. Any man would want me work them boat because they rig the boat, but they don't want to go to sea. They would want a man like me to work it," he boasts.

Though still fit and active, the senior citizen admitted that the many years of hard work and life on the road seem to be taking a toll - finally.

"I can't take much of the night sea fishing now like first time. I work with Nigel, mostly cut out pot and fit up pot and all those things. I don't love the night sea engine anymore," he declared.

He has since given away the Johnson engine after finding that rats had cut some of the wires while it was in storage.

"After I find say the wire them cut up, I say before it seize up, I just give it away."

These days, Harry Smith is enjoying the fruits of his labour, having built his matrimonial home in Manchester and schooled his children from the farming income. He has come a long way from 1951 when Hurricane Charlie destroyed the house in which his family lived in Old Harbour, St Catherine.

"We were living in rent house and the storm run us, because all the houses blow down; 1951 storm was a very wicked hurricane."

This forced the senior Smith to move his family back to Manchester, the parish of his birth, taking Harry's mother fromOld Harbour where, according to him, "My father find my mother."