Early Immigrant Days-5

In those early times in Canada, me and my country men and women, who found ourselves in strange new surroundings,
would try to keep some fragments of our recent past, in place. Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, assisted by large cauldrons
of pepper pot or chicken curry, we would compare notes on our adventures in the True North. On week-end trips to Honey
Harbour or Niagara Falls, we would savour our new found ability to put on snappy clothes, carelessly stick a wad of Canadian
dollars in our pockets, and cram into a car for a jaunt on four wheels, when most of us had only been accustomed to
travelling on two, back in bicycle country. For seven or eight of us to crowd into the car of a fellow immigrant, who had
achieved this rung on the ladder to "making it", was on the surface, a lark. Most of us passengers, however, quietly harboured our ambition, to be like that person at the wheel some day. The lucky one at the wheel, had special status, and spoke to the rest of us with the confidence and authority, befitting someone in such a lofty position. Yet,
somewhere deep down inside, the rest of us knew, that the driver's world would never achieve it's maximum flowering, if he
was never able to strut his stuff before our envious eyes. And so, a tacit bargain was struck: "I'll drive you where you want to
go...you give me some respect!". Also the strong Guyana sense of hospitality was a factor, with the still present hankering,
to spend some time together, with other folks from "back home". Our tendency, at that time, to express inaccurate
information vehemently, attained a near suicidal blossoming, as back and front seat "drivers", sometimes, would violate the
bargain struck between driver and passengers, by giving directions to our week-end destinations. It was a badge of honour
to be the one who "knew the way", showing uou were a sophisticated Canadian now, and not an old Guyana bumpkin. The
driver was often hard pressed to keep the piece of confidence he had attained by acquiring a car, under the withering cross-
fire of instructions...an Ontario highway, even in those days, was not the place for us to work out our new immigrant
complexes, and sometimes a close shave with an eighteen-wheeler, coming the other way, would be followed by, a sober and
silent recognition, that none of us really knew our way around Ontario, and should remember to keep our mouths shut,
in the future.....................Quester.