Whenever I watch snowflakes fall in the winter and cold of North America, I imagine that I enjoy the so very . . . sweet, aromas of sugar cane, and I'm transported back to life as a child around sugar cane and a sugar estate, the latter label being our local construct for both the nearby sugar factory itself and for some more full but loose construct of a total sugar producing apparatus and infrastructure, a leftover vestige of an earlier time; and reminders were even also around everyplace from a still earlier time when the triangular trade held sway, and sweet sugar, and related product rum, was tied up with trade in human bondage and misery. And as I go back in my mind, I must think and talk of cane--just cane and not sugar cane--because only a neophyte not growing up and living with cane would say other than . . . cane. And, by the way, the sugar estate was just the Estate.
The smells of a sugar factory in production are at least enticing, and more; and the smells take root and become a part of your permanent unconscious; and I'm still surprised sometimes to realize how much I know about sugar and sugar production just from the daily flow of life of old. Oddly, I still feel that I know a lot even as some memories now and again remain just out of reach, and some knowledge never did even connect in full consciousness but only took root and still linger on as part of some unconscious knowledge of permanent experience.
Well, the smells of Estate life would have to include the distinct, I-remember-as-pleasant, smells of the cane fields being burned out, this done to lessen the potential of harm by snakes, alligators and the like to cane cutters at work at the harvest--cane cutters at work cutting cane, as we used to say. Of course, burning out the cane fields also served largely to get rid of less dangerous nuisances, like rodents, and I've heard tell that this step in the process even came later to be valued as an enhancement to the cane itself. But burning out the cane fields to avoid harm to cane cutters must not have been quite an exact science, as I do remember staring as a child at the chewed up part of what remained of a leg attached to a still breathing cane cutter as the remnant of the leg was being dressed and bandaged at the Dispensary, our construct for the clinic site itself, as well as our construct for the Nurses Compound or Dispensary Compound with houses for the nurses, the Dispenser and their families.
The Dispensary, of course, could be considered part of the Estate, as could be considered much else associated with the factory and sugar production, and it could be said to anyone when the inquiry was made that we lived at the Estate, although maybe the Nurses Compound or the Dispensary or the Dispensary at the Estate could just as well be said.
In any case, the lost leg I was told was the result of a lost battle with an alligator, and I remember distinctly that the cane cutter being attended to seemed remarkably calm about his lost and chewed up limb, but maybe that's just the way that I prefer to remember it.
Years later, I came to wonder whether he had a fighting chance against the alligator with his Twenty-Two, 22 inches of cutlass blade used for cutting cane, and a fixture of usefulness for a lot else, including as a weapon of both offense and defense. But Twenty-Two discussions and lore: Well, that's most certainly another story . . . . But as to my valiant, surely romanticized, cane cutter, I prefer to conclude that he must have been surprised by his quick and dangerous nemesis; and it must surely be a victory of sorts that he was still then around after his encounter, even if hobbling around on crutches missing a leg, and I'm still sure in spite of my practical self that I do remember an amused, icy calm and resolve in his manner.
The flow of things at the Estate included cane fields being burned out, and the cane harvested after a safe time and loaded on to punts for transport by canal from the fields to the factory, and along the way loaded punts were fair game for limited raids by children, and bold others, and cane feasts were common even in plain sight at the vicinity of the punts and for children at play at this or that. As some might know, stealing cane from a punt, as the practice was openly referred to, could be dangerous even if rewarding work, not on account of rules and officials, as there seemed as I remember it to be a child exemption to whatever rules there were, but on account of the need for speed and a sure foot when confronting loaded punt, moving or not along the canal, and when confronting a deep and sometimes very, very deep canal after rains that could be counted on.
Well, I came very close to losing my own life at the adventure, but that's another story.
And strong teeth are required to peel cane, bite through connecting joints and chew cane to extract the . . . sweet rewards of cane juice.
As the cane fields burned in preparation for the arduous, just plain dangerous, task of cane cutters at work cutting cane, the heavens would snow ashen flakes of gray and black carried along the way by good winds to land here and about, and sometimes land in the tiny hands of playing children. And, so, when now I reach in smile to catch a snowflake, I reach also for flakes of the leftovers of burning cane, and for the leftovers of memories of Estate life.
This an odd gift of snow . . . .
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