AN INTRODUCTION

I am now officially an ex-pat, or expatriate.

An American living overseas (again).

This is not the first time for me.  From 2005 – 2008, I was here.  Here is Barbados.  The most south-easterly island in the Caribbean chain.  Some would say that the most Barbados has in common with the place I left in the U.S. (New Orleans) is the hurricane of 1831. That storm ravaged the island, destroying Bridgetown (the capital city) and killing 1,700 before moving onto the Windward Islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent and then Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba and finally hitting Louisiana, perhaps a precursor to what was to come in 2005 with Katrina, flooding the city. This island is just over 2000 miles south of New York; 1599 miles from Miami and 525 miles from Caracas.

But for me, there are great personal similarities between these two places, some 2,100 miles apart.  I have a long history in both.  Both can lay claim to being “second homes” for me.  I think I’ve spent more time in both than my hometown of Philadelphia.  I’m sure of that fact about New Orleans having spent about 15 years there between college and work in journalism and public relations.

For me, New Orleans is the northern-most Caribbean country.  Not literally, of course, but in its mentality in many ways.  Both Barbados and New Orleans require someone accustomed to the pace of Northeastern U.S. cities, or even Midwest locales like Chicago, to switch gears.  Very few people are in a hurry in either place. 

Driving through the French Quarter and some other neighbourhoods in New Orleans, the architecture of the city reminds me of Barbados and the Caribbean.  There aren’t many other American cities where “salmon” is considered an acceptable exterior paint colour for houses.  

I’m reading a book – Understanding the Caribbean Worker – Service, Sensitivity & Culture – by Yale – trained therapist and employee assistance professional Neilson A. Waithe.  Suffice it to say at this point that (generally) what we might call “the work ethic” of Barbados and New Orleans isn’t too far apart.  I’m sure that passages from Waithe’s book and my own observations on that subject will creep into my writing...they cannot help but.

I left New Orleans for Barbados on a 6 a.m. American Airlines flight via Miami nearly two months ago on 4 August.  It is a route that I could probably negotiate with my eyes closed, especially the Miami-to-Barbados portion.  That air route dates back to the Juan Trippe and Charles Lindberg days of Pan American World Airways and Col. Frank Boreman at Eastern Airlines.  When Pan Am went out of business, their Caribbean routes were acquired by Eastern who maintained them until their demise in 1991.  Since then, the primary carrier into and out of the island has been American.  With two flights a day from Miami, one from Puerto Rico and one from New York (and a non-stop flight from Dallas starting in December), American leads the way with service from the states.  There are other options, but only if you live along the East Coast, primarily near New York.

But when I first started travelling to Barbados in 1960 (yes, this year is my [gulp] fiftieth anniversary of coming here), my family would drive from our Mt. Airy home in Philadelphia to Brooklyn, staying overnight with my grandmother’s sister, Olga Braithwaite and her husband Ulric.  The maternal descendents from that period were all first generation Bajans (the term used rather than Barbadians – Bay-juns).The next day it was off to Idlewild Field (now JFK Airport).

Until doing some research on JFK today, I didn’t realise that the airport was built on what had been Idlewild Golf Course and had two other names before being named after the assassinated president in 1963 - Major General Alexander E. Anderson Airport in 1943, and in 1948 New York International Airport, Anderson Field. But in 1960, and up until 1963, EVERYONE called the airport Idlewild.

These trips (I came down to live with my mother’s sister Ruby and her husband Seibert [Bertie] Chase) actually form the first memories that I have.  Clutching my grandmother Carmen Pilgrim’s hand, wearing my little sailor suit at age 4 – there is a photo somewhere – we boarded the BOAC Britannia for the flight to Bermuda, Antigua and Barbados.

The British Overseas Airways Corporation (now British Airways) was at the visible symbol of the saying “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” meant to symbolise the fact that until after WW2, the British Empire literally spanned the globe.  The airline was a flying symbol of the realm.  The company, probably because of my early association with it, has remained my favourite carrier (I even flew on one of their Concordes).  For those of you who may be into airlines and aircraft as I am – although I missed my childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot – BOAC gave me thrills on a number of aircraft in those early days from the Britannia (a four-engine transcontinental prop aircraft) to the ill-fated jet powered Comet, the 707 and my all-time favourite airplane, the VC-10.  The VC-10 was England’s answer to the 707 which along with the DC-8 became the world’s first truly intercontinental jetliners.  The difference was that the VC-10 was powered by four rear-mounted Rolls Royce engines, much like the configuration to be found on the 727 and DC-9 aircraft.  With her engines mounted aft, the VC-10 was a huge airplane with an extremely quiet engine.   She was a beauty.  By the way, the only other passenger airplane with a similar engine configuration ever built (four rear-mounted engines) was the Russian Ilyushin Il-62.

There were several airlines on which we flew that tried US-Barbados service, with varying degrees of success, throughout the 60s and 70s.  Among them were Air France and a short-lived national airline of Barbados called Caribbean Airways.  That is not to be confused with, nor does it have any connection to, the present day Caribbean Airlines.  Caribbean Airlines is the successor to BWIA, or what used to be British West Indies Airlines. 

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BWIA was a subsidiary of BOAC that was ultimately purchased by the government of Trinidad and Tobago and became that twin-island country’s national airline.  BWIA was shut down in the last few years and its routes acquired by the new entity Caribbean Airlines.

In recent years, Delta, and Continental offered service to Barbados from Atlanta and Newark respectively.  US Air started a daily non-stop from Philadelphia which it no longer operates and now Jet Blue flies daily non-stop from JFK.

But the major airlift into the island is from England.  Long known as “Little England,” the majority of tourists from outside the Caribbean to Barbados arrive from England.  Even though the island gained independence from Great Britain in 1966, close ties have been maintained with the island being a favourite vacation spot.  Former Prime Minister Tony Blair spent his month-long vacations here every summer while he was in office and is rumoured to be buying property here.

I didn’t mean for this first entry to be a history of my air travel to Barbados, but I guess that’s what happens.