SCREEN I
As written by Reginald (Marcel) Henry (USA)
Pappa, Patriarch of The Henry 12, definitely not more than five foot four inches tall (163 centimeters). Pappa stomped lightly; Pappa stamped slightly. Pappa didn't live a headline--though he had a shiny full moon bald head! He lived and moved around quietly. Because he stomped so slightly, the culture stamp he has left on his children’s lives is more an aura than something overpoweringly tangible or open.
Really, Pappa is, in a way, a silhouette to his children. Are they involuntarily blotting him out! Whichever way, it's typical that children usually spend more time with their mothers, learn living skills from them, and, INDEED, learn more from them about ancestry--especially the maternal side. So children usually learn and repeat more of their maternal history and their maternal point of view than of their paternal.
Pappa and his bride, Rhoda Irene Morgan-Henry, made their home at Burn Hill, more commonly called Bun Hill. They were married in September, 1931. He was twenty-nine and she, twenty-one. They already had their first child, Rudolph (Coda) on April 22, 1929, and their second, Antoinette (Nellie), November 22, 1930. The residence was set on the well drained north-north-west edge of the level area that crowned the property. The house was what was called a wattle-and-daub structure. It had also a thatched roof and wood floor and was just to the inner side of a “bluie” mango tree. This mango was a one of a kind, known nowhere else that the Henrys travelled.
Pappa had inherited the nice Bun Hill homestead from his parents, Simeon and Antoinette (Mother Iron). As the youngest son, he got the best of the legacy. His three brothers in the district, Maas U (The Henry children called him Maas U instead of Uncle Uriah, and everyone nicknamed him, Briar), Uncle Ben, and Uncle Bob (Robert), got their own, and so did his sister, Theodella (Aunt Tee). Another nearby sister, Repersia (Aunt Persh) lived in Ramble, across the Yallahs River, with her husband, Mr. Spencer. (There were other brothers and sisters living outside of the general Somerset area.) The children named their father, Pappa, and their mother, Mamma, and, of course they were required to call the brothers of their parents Uncle, and the sisters Aunt, while older cousins would be called Cousin So and So. Brother and sister were titles for siblings or fellow church members, and some other relations. For non-relatives Maas and Missa stood for Mister; and sometimes Miss for both married and unmarried women.
Bun Hill was a few acres of fruited land, with a primitive sugar-cane mill, a few squares of sugar cane to support the mill, and a mule, good for turning the three roller iron mill. This mule was replaced with a donkey, and the donkey with a horse, Tirry. Pappa either sold one animal then bought the successor, or he exchanged one animal for the successor.
Tirry was a beautiful black mare. No domestic animal is as graceful as a horse. And a horse’s grace and stateliness are even increased when a rider is seated on its back and horse and rider become as one! But Tirry was a bread- and-butter work horse, the flesh and blood engine that turned the rollers of the simple, small scale farmer’s sugar mill! But not for long. The whole local sugar industry was fading away and Pappa’s was the first to go, followed by that owned by Maas Edgar Lindsay (Nod); then that owned by Maas Ewan Houslin (Egg, or Goose), Aunt Tee’s husband; and, finally, by the one owned by Brother Oscar, a cousin of Pappa’s.
Tirry, Pappa’s Model T, did not last much longer than his mill. It would have been so delightful to have seen Tirry in the role of a noble horse. The family got a little picture of what that could be by watching their Bun Hill neighbor, Maas Iety (Ithamar Lindsay), and their Wilson Field neighbor, Edgar Lindsay, two brothers, racing their animals together, between Bun Hill and Wilson Bump, a small rise between Wilson Field and Bun Hill. It was quite a charm on any day, quite a spectacle, to see Iety and his donkey up against Edgar and his horse! It never mattered who won. It was enough to see the four creatures showing off their energy, their stateliness, and their sportsmanship, and to listen to the cheering during the race and the applause at the end. Now, one may entertain a very private whisper: could this be where Mamma and some of her children developed their lifelong delight in watching horse races and other horse sports, whenever possible? Tirry did not get to give them this pleasure. She labored at the mill, then got sold off.