Orlando Hooper Remembers...

Orlando Hooper c1910

 We have been privileged to conduct a series of interviews with the oldest living Tamba- Tambaman, 109 year old Orlando Hooper . As he speaks in very pronounced Tamba- Tamba English we have made the text more 'reader friendly'.

 

Prott: Citizen Hooper, you were born in 1901; what is your earliest memory?

OH:  Well, I fancy I remember lots of things that I can't rightly recall- small details from around the house and that, from when I was no more than a baby, but reckon these must be things I was told later. For sure though I remember watching the boats coming in, and I remember wanting to go to the school with the other children. Normal, everyday things. I remember my uncle telling me that all Hoopers were fishermen, and waiting patiently to go out with them.

Prott: And you went out as a fisherman at a very young age?

OH: Full time from when I was nine, but even before that I was able to do some work on the boats. It didn't seem like work as you might think of it. It seemed most natural like. It was just what we did.

Prott: So you left school at nine?

OH: Yes- school started when you were five. It was only a couple of hours a day. But you had to go. Then once you had the basics, enough learning to be useful, your father could go to the Council and put the case for you going off to work. Or to carry on with your learning. All of us was fishing. My family always wanted more boats out, more men, less hard work. We were the main fishing family and it suited the Council. By the time I came along we were already providing enough so we could trade overseas.

Prott: This was a time of great advancement...

OH: For sure, things were getting more advanced. The Old Kakoy, he was all for it. 

Prott: Clifton Gates?

OH: Yes. All for the progress; machines and the like. It was him that started the cannery and the pickle works...

Prott: Do you think it was a good thing?

OH: For sure. People wanted it. There wasn't the problems they had elsewhere. Unemployment and that. It just made life easier for the working people.

It was always exciting when some new thing came to the island, a steam tractor or something.

Prott: Recently we've been looking back to the time of the 1914-1918 war, what do you remember about it?

OH: I remember thinking would I have to be a soldier? (laughs). And folks worrying that the Germans would invade Tamba. I don't know why they would have (laughs). Older lads, my brothers and that, doing their turn in the militia, and of course, Father and my Uncle going off to sea with The Kakoy on his warship.

Prott: The sloop?

OH: That's right. The Kakoy looked very grand in his uniform. I don't think there could have been a German or English general looking grander. Then of course when he died we had the big funeral. What a day. Everybody on Tamba was out there that day. I mean everybody. Everything stopped. There was a great sense of sadness over the whole place for a long time afterwards.
Prott: What do you remember about the Kakoy?
OH: The Old Kakoy and Sir Hugo were right amazing men. Always something new. Interested in the life of the ordinary folk too.
HR was another thing alltogether.
Prott: You knew him personally?
OH: I considered him a friend. I don't like it when they calls him The Mad Kakoy. A more lovely man you couldn't wish to meet. I remember him working on the vegetable plots- just the same as the other men, digging away, drinking his cold tea from a tin bottle, always smoking miserable little cigarettes. he would turn his hand at anything. He even did some work on our boats, painting and caulking and the like. Never saying too much, keeping his counsel as they say...

We'll be hearing more from Citizen Hooper in the near future.