RETURN TO NEVIS—2008

RETURN TO NEVIS2008

[editor’s note: During Mom’s Florida years, she left us a lot of pictures of people at parties. She had several very good friends there, like Christa Kelsey and Judy Kerr and her neighbor Cindy Lindburg, but I only really know their names, and cannot identify any of the people in the pictures. This piece about a trip to Nevis and the next one are the only snippets we have from Mom that discuss those friends.

During this period, she bought a townhouse with a dock for her boat. She sold the boat, then sold the townhouse and returned to Texas in 2008.]

Nevis, West Indies

A Trip with Girlfriends: January 2008 Travelers: Pat Cole, Christa Kelsey, and Judy Kerr

Our odyssey began at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 22 nd with a nasty alarm clock pulling me from the arms of Morpheus. We had agreed to take only carry-on luggage, so I packed in my sea bag. My traveling companions, who had started this “carry-on” deal, both showed up with sizable suitcases. You know, the kind with wheels and handles? While I had all my stuff hanging over my shoulder. Christa’s husband, Jim, had volunteered to be our taxi driver to Orlando airport. He and Christa picked me up 6:15, then picked Judy up, and we were offi cially off to Nevis. Christa’s 96-year-old father, Fred, told us to have fun in Venus, as he couldn’t remember the name of the island. We made all our fl ights with no problems and arrived on Nevis, aka Venus, at 3:00 p.m., caught a cab to the Hermitage Plantation Hotel, had our luggage thrown into our cottage, and went straight to the bar for our fi rst Rum Punch. The 350-year-old main house is the oldest surviving wooden structure in the Caribbean.

I started seeing faces I recognized, and soon, Hermitage owner and old friend, Richard Lupinacci, appeared with his wonderful smile and a big “welcome back” hug. His lovely wife, Maureen, came down a little later. It felt like I had gone home. We were so hungry that, to

prevent us chewing on the furniture, P.G. the bartender brought us some calamari and a little later we had a superb West Indian dinner. Soon after, we wobbled down the hill to our cottage, having consumed liberal amounts of wine and rum punch, and fell into our beds. The next day at 7:00 a.m., there arose such a clatter I thought Christa and Judy were having one hell of a hair pulling fi ght, breaking furniture over each other. I looked in on them and they both were still snuggled down in their beds. Judy peeped out from under her pillow and said, “What was that?” Christa said it was coconuts falling on the roof. I, being the old island pro, said it was a Monkey Pod tree throwing its seeds on the roof. Out on our screened porch, I found a troop of 20 or more Vervet monkeys doing the “River Dance” on our roof. Every morning we were there, they came across our cottage roof between 6:45 and 7:00 a.m., did their dance, and threw seed pods on the roof for 15 or 20 minutes, then went off to do whatever monkeys do all day. No alarm clock necessary.

I called my old friend, Dr. Adly Abdul Meguid, the owner of Mt. Nevis Hotel to say hello, and he invited the three of us to lunch on Thursday. In the mid 1980s, my company, Metal Concepts, Inc., had designed and furnished all the kitchen and bar equipment for Meguid’s hotel. Everything went into a container and was shipped to the island and we went down, in the middle of a hurricane, to install it. One day before we met him, our daughter Kim, who was living on Nevis at the time, was hitchhiking into Charlestown when Dr. Meguid gave her a ride. While they were introducing themselves, Kim told him that her mother and father built commercial kitchens. He called us in Texas and ordered all of his hotel kitchen equipment from us. In the process, he and his wife Sally became our good friends. I called Monica and Don Haldane, acquaintances from Canada now living on the island. On my first trip to Nevis in the early 80’s, Jack and I met Monica during the construction of their house. Monica was an actress and Don was an award-winning director. A day spent with Monica is recorded in that first photo album of Nevis. What a day!! Don had a stroke last year and does not get out much, so they were unable to come to Hermitage for dinner or drinks. On Thursday, after we left Mt. Nevis, we stopped in Charlestown and wandered around so Judy and Christa could shop. After the last hurricane, the town really got a thorough cleanup and the waterfront looked great. We also stopped by Nisbet Plantation for a stroll on their beautiful beach. I met Joel Shenkel, a retired advertising exec from NYC who had been living on the island for a number of years, when he came to have breakfast with Maureen Lupinacci. He remembered my daughter, Kim and her dog, Ting. Said he was sure Kim owes him $5.00 for buying her a drink 20 years ago at Golden Rock Hotel. On Friday, Judy and Christa took the ferry over to St. Kitts for the day. They hired a driver to take them all over the island and up to Brimstone Hill. Since I have spent plenty of time on St. Kitts, I opted to stay on Nevis and go up the mountain for a look at the property Jack and I used to own. I spent several hours reminiscing with Maureen and a long while sitting on the porch of Goosepen Cottage where we were staying just studying the dappled pools of sunlight coming through the palm fronds and listening to the trade winds rustling through the mango and the Poinciana trees I remember in vibrant April bloom. It felt like a rain forest, silent except the occasional chatter of island patois from hotel staff moving around the property. Huge butterflies, pigeons and little wrens or finches flittered around. It was so peaceful. What a great place to restore and recharge. The temperature was 78 degrees and big puffy clouds hung in the sky. An occasional rain cloud passed over and dumped a brief shower, and the perennial cloud hung over the mountaintop behind me. Off in the distance, a car engine on the main road echoed up the hill. Trees and ground covered by coral vine provided pink accents against a vibrant green backdrop. Remnants of an old stone wall built 350 years before stood while a yellow butterfly the size of my palm fluttered past. A tiny hummingbird landed on a branch. Vines like long, straight hair hung from the trees. Birds nibbled fruit and twittered. Friday night celebrated Robert Burns birthday, complete with haggis (flown in from Scotland) and a piper. None of the three of us could handle the haggis, so we skipped dinner, but we got so hungry during the night we almost chewed our arms off. When the monkeys hit the roof at 6:30 Saturday morning, we fell out of bed and raced to see who could get breakfast first. Saturday, we logged a lot of hammock and swimming pool time. At dinner that night, when we were telling everybody goodbye, Richard Lupinacci said he would see us at breakfast. We said we had to leave for the airport by 5:15 a.m., so would probably miss him. He chuckled. “The airport is closed,” he said. “The fire truck won’t start, and runway can’t reopen until it does.” Knowing what island time is like, it was highly unlikely that any effort would be made to start the truck before Monday. So, Saturday morning, we got up at 4:15 and started calling anybody who would answer to get a status report. Christa finally got through to American Airlines and changed our reservations. Then we went back to bed to wait for the monkeys. We finally left the hotel around noon for the Nevis airport where, we checked in and were then transported by taxi halfway back around the island to the ferry depot for a trip to St. Kitts to catch a plane. The ferry left Nevis two hours late, and then we had to take a taxi from the ferry dock on St. Kitts to the airport where the plane was another two hours late leaving for San Juan. We finally got to San Juan about 7:00 p.m., and wouldn’t you know it? The plane from San Juan to Orlando was delayed. I learned years ago not to sweat the small stuff when traveling in the Caribbean. You truly are on island time. We finally got to Orlando around 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. PatsHorseTales.com 85