Driver's Ed...

I knew it was only a matter of time before I got behind the wheel here and given what I’ve written in the past about the motor vehicle culture of Jamaica, I simply assumed it would be a memorable experience. But as I have said before, the Almighty has a sense of humor and I had no idea what awaited me.

A couple of weeks ago the monsignor came up to me and said, “Since we have the mid-term break coming up, if you and the other volunteers want to take one of the cars and head off to YS Falls or something, that’s fine.” This offer, having been made in the not-too-distant past might still have been on the table and so I approached him and asked, “Monsignor, I kind of feel like I’m 16 again but, can I use the car tonight?”

“And where would you be going, young man?”

“Little Ochie.”

“And with whom?”

“Miss Anne.”

(pause)

“You can take the blue car; just make sure you’re home by midnight and not a minute later!”

You see, during the week one of the teachers of the school and I decided that this weekend we would head out for a few drinks at a local establishment called “Little Ochie”. It’s a bar/restaurant which literally sits on the beach. They have creatively converted row boats into booths by suspending them four feet off the sand, installing small sets of stairs which lead up to said boat, and placed a table in the middle of it for your dining pleasure. These elevated booths, along with picnic tables scattered here and there, are sheltered with thatched canopies and provide great views of the Caribbean Sea. It is really quite an ingenious and cute idea and every spot is within reach of not only the main bar but the waves as well.

Just after sunset, with a few slices of pizza to simmer down my appetite, I was on the open roads of Jamaica. It was my first time driving on the left hand side of the road and on the right hand side of a car. It took about five minutes to acclimate to it all but I really didn’t have too much time to think about it because oncoming traffic “soon come” and I had to learn very quickly how to negotiate a very small road in a very small car.

One of the biggest adjustments came whenever I had to execute a turn, especially when said turn involved a stop sign. My instinct is, of course, that my flow of traffic comes from the left and that when I turn I will find myself on the right side of the road. Having to completely reverse my thinking, I began to wonder just how many aspects of driving have become automatic (no pun intended) and that maybe a refresher of a driver’s manual is in order when I get back to Chicago later this year. My license is up for renewal anyway so I can tackle it then. Back to our present story.

I wove my way around corners, dodged potholes and did my best to make room for other cars and to not hit pedestrians but the way things were going, I could have sworn that the good people of Jamaica had conspired earlier in the day to make sure I encountered all of those obstacles at the same time repeatedly. Yes, I was thrown right into the deep end, folks, and I was determined not to drown.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that I only a vague idea of where I was going. Signage on this island can best be described as pathetic and magically every destination is “just around the corner.” Combine that with the fact that the last time I had made this trek I was but a passenger in the car, I was sure that my odds of getting utterly lost were very high. But fortune smiled on the daring, as they say, and I was soon united with my friend and we were off to Little Ochie.

The drive there was an eventful one, to be sure, as we navigated the local happenings of the area. Saturday night was in full swing and I often had to dodge parked cars and congregations of people. The practice of setting buildings away from a roadside or making room for parking is practically non existent and so a road, which is barely wide enough for two cars, becomes even more treacherous as one third of it is taken up by parked vehicles. On our way we passed three or four exotic dancing establishments and every one of them had a group of guys outside huddled around a grill, drinking and swapping stories.

Now, I’m not here to condone or admonish exotic dancing, however, I would be remiss if I did not mention my bewilderment. That someone would take in enough exotic dancing as a spectator and manage to fit in a meal is, well, odd to me. I do not usually equate the two activities but apparently that is how it’s done here in Jamaica. Fair enough. Eyes on the road. Let’s move on.

As I described above, Little Ochie is perfectly situated on the beach. To boot, it has an almost dive-like quality to it and to someone from Chicago, the prospect of drinking at a beachfront bar in March is heavenly. The crashing waves added a nice touch to the atmosphere and the weekend’s full moon meant there was no need for exterior illumination. All that was missing was a cheesy, four chord pop song playing in the background. Instead there was a 20 foot high speaker stack and a DJ pumping reggae tunes with the bass blasting at levels high enough to disintegrate kidney stones. I had to take the good with the bad, I guess.

After a few hours at our magical locale we decided to call it a night and our return trip was not too dissimilar from our original drive. The end of the night looked to be fairly uneventful. Then the accelerator broke.

While taking my friend home to her town of Southfield we passed through Top Hill, so named because it sits at the top of a hill; a very long and steep one at that. It was on said hill that the throttle cable attached to the accelerator snapped rendering the car useless. In one moment we were cruising along nicely and the next, I suddenly found the pedal was to the floor and the engine was slowing down to an idle. These two things, for obvious reasons, did not go together and in the time it took for my brain to make sense of it all we had ceased moving forward and were starting to roll backwards. Realizing that our reverse momentum was more of a priority than figuring out just what the hell was going on, I moved the car out of harm’s way. Without a flashlight, tools or any knowledge of this car, it quickly became clear that my ability to MacGyver my way out of this was practically non-existent. Our only hope was to make some phone calls and get Raymond out here to save the day.

A word about Raymond: He is a brother in the Mission Society of Mandeville and will be ordained a priest in July. Originally from Manitoba, he came here ten years ago as a volunteer, realized his calling to religious life and has walked that path ever since. As I have mentioned in the past, each member of the society seems to fill a particular role and Raymond is the Swiss Army Knife of the group; a role I have become accustom to playing in certain circles so he and I get along nicely. He can fix just about anything and if he can’t fix it at first, give him twenty minutes to figure it out and he will. When something mechanical breaks he is the first person we call. The phrase, “Get Raymond” is used as often as the word “Amen” and this was, once again, a time to “Get Raymond.”

After some abrupt midnight phone calls wherein I woke up half the house, Raymond was soon on his way and arrived at our troublesome scene in ten minutes. It was quickly decided that I would use his truck to finish taking Miss Anne home while he attempted to fix the problem. If he was still working on it upon my return, we would leave the car until the next day and if he was not there, it meant he was successful and I would simply meet him at home.

Fortunately this car had experienced the same problem in December and since he was the one to fix it then, he quickly re-fixed it now. As I approached the place where I had left him, he was gone so I continued home and met up with him there. After a few laughs about the whole thing it was time to retire. Sunday morning prayers and Mass were “just around the corner.”