Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 by Under An English Heaven (v1.1) Page B

trying to say is not true. I think they
got the message. Because right here in this community this was the only
ranch-style house built here in 1952. And people moved around it, you look
around, you see a piece of land, they built ranch-type homes around it. There
was change in the pattern of thinking."
    Did no other pair of hands do any of the work on the house? If so, their
contributions have been swallowed within Jerry Gumbs's own pride of
accomplishment. "The only reason," he says, "why perhaps I have
accomplished what I have accomplished even in building this house is because I
was blessed with a body with tremendous strength, and maybe a mind to
understand. Two things going together. Now, most people are not that way."
    He
gestures across his long, neat living room full of bric-a-brac. "When this
was built, there's a steel beam across it, and that piece of steel, I couldn't
get it here, although I paid for it. The union would not deliver it. And I had
to deliver it, on a little truck that I had, and I did it. And I had to put it
up without a crane, and I put it up with my shoulders." All this trouble
because he was a black man, of course, building in a white neighborhood. He will be the strongest man around, and he will never stop finding arenas in which
to test his strength.
    "You
build a house, now," he says, "and at night people are gonna gather
and kick it down. They're gonna back up the truck, they're gonna take your
lumber, you gotta bring it back tomorrow. It's not easy. And you don't go and
make a public scene. Inspectors won't give you a license. You run around for
months trying to get somebody to sign a document which is already documented
and signed. You dig open a hole to put a sewer in; they tell you you can't put
that type of pipe in it, you must put a certain type, and that certain type
does not exist in the state." But the house got built.
    Other
things got built, too. The fuel-oil business; the Anguilla Improvement
Association; a family with four children, all of them college-bound; and back
on Anguilla two things, a small air ferry service called Anguilla Airways and
the Rendezvous Hotel, a motel-type operation on Rendezvous Bay, where the
French dried their powder in 1796. The most modern hotel on the island, it is
still a bit more primitive than an Iowa tourist cabin in the twenties. Still, it
does have electricity—until nine-thirty at night, when the generator is turned
off and the guests convert to kerosene lamps. And it has running water, a
trickle, icy cold, from cisterns that catch the infrequent rain. And it has a
restaurant, half a dozen tables, with meals prepared by Aunt B, Jerry Gumbs s sister, who runs the
place for him. And it also has a beautiful white-sand beach, and if tourism
ever does become a major industry on Anguilla ,
Jerry Gumbs has the jump on the trade and can be relied on to drive himself to
stay ahead of the competition. Not entirely for money; to be first, and
proud of it.
    When
trouble started on Anguilla , Jerry Gumbs couldn't possibly stay out of
it. He flew down to the island—the last leg, on his own airplane—joined the
Peacekeeping Committee, and bulled his way into prominence as naturally and
unmaliciously as if he were building his own house.
    Jerry
Gumbs and the Anguillan delegation met with the St. Kitts Government on June
30, 1967 . Whether
pressure had been exerted on Colonel Bradshaw by outside forces it's impossible
to say, but he was more inclined toward compromise than usual. He offered to
appoint a new Warden for Anguilla who would not only be Anguillan (Wardens
had almost always been Kittitian before this) but somebody acceptable to the
people of Anguilla . He also promised to restore mail
deliveries once the Warden had been appointed and to arrange for the payment of
Government salaries and pensions that had been held up by the rebellion. The
delegation said they'd talk it over with the folks back home and let the St.
Kitts Government know in a few