When I was a youngster growing up in West Demerara and going to Saints, we usually headed for the Pomeroon in the August school break. My father, Joseph Francis Martins, had a farm about two miles north of Charity, and we would spend a couple weeks or so there, but it was a grind getting to the place. We would start at daybreak catching the train at the Vreed-en-Hoop stelling. The rail line actually ran right inside the stelling structure, and it would be sitting there hissing steam as we climbed on. From there it was west to Parika and then the long, slow trip across the Essequibo mouth (my mother’s basket of eats would get seriously raided in those four hours) and then, the most taxing segment of all – the dusty ride, packed into this huge creaking wooden bus all the way to Charity. The bus owner, Mr Rahim, known to all as “Cass”, liked to play jokes on passengers. On one trip, when a passenger got off and came to the front to pay his fare, Cass short changed him a jill (two cents),
