“Hill-an’-Gully Rider “ takes a humorous but thought-provoking look at politics, romance and intrigue in an exotic land of palm-fringed beaches, luxury cars and yachts, fetid slums, and reggae singing, weed-smoking Rastafarians.
When Patrick O’Connor passes his A-Level exams with distinctions in English and European History, he faces an uncertain future. The son of a banana plantation overseer, he has no money for college, and he blew his chance of a Rhodes Scholarship by falling asleep during a Latin exam. But Benjamin, the Headman on the banana plantation, comes to his rescue, suggesting he enter politics. Patrick’s boyish charm and gift for cricket ─ and Benjamin’s inventive genius ─ keep them one step ahead of the forces of Evil. Under the watchful eye of Uncle Sam, who is “just a hop, skip and jump” away, Benjamin leads Patrick through a Byzantine series of stratagems to develop their island ─ and further his interests.
Excerpt
Ras rummaged in his Dashiki (by Angela Facey) and came up with his chillum pipe. He was about to light up when Patrick screamed:
“Not here, Ras. Not here. The smell will bring police. You will get us arrested. Go outside where the wind will blow away the smoke.”
Ras looked at him in disbelief. What kind of heathen country was this where the Wisdom Weed was outlawed? (Technically, it was illegal in the island also, but that was one law no government had tried to enforce for as long as anyone could remember.)
Dread located his pipe among the folds of a tie-dyed creation from the fertile brain of Betti Brandon. “I-Man coming with you, Ras,” he said. “We will have reasonings together under Yalweh’s sky.”
The two Rastas, in their stylish outfits, guitar cases slung over their shoulders, walked together in midtown Manhattan, looking for a peaceful place to sit and seek enlightenment. They found it in Central Park. Sitting on a park bench, they laid their guitar cases on the grass and lit their pipes. When inspiration came, Ras picked up his guitar and plucked musingly at the strings. Dread followed suit. Ras thought of a few words. He began to sing.
“In the land of plenty,
Milk an’ honey flow…”
Dread thought of a response.
“In the land of Judah.
Dry wind a blow…”
They went on from there, contrasting the opulence around them with the wretchedness of the Dung Hill. A small crowd gathered. Passers-by casually dropped money in the guitar cases. A patrolman interrupted them to inquire about the contents of the pipes, but Benjamin had equipped them with diplomatic passports for just such a contingency, and the policeman decided not to pursue his investigation. The next day, a New York City tabloid ran a Page One photo of the musicians under the heading, “Dueling Guitars.”
“You can’t buy that kind of publicity,” Stein exulted when he saw the newspaper. “I guess my talk with Bellows is paying off.”
Back in their hotel room, Ras and Dread were counting the money they had made singing in Central Park. It took all of Patrick’s negotiating skill to get them to continue the tour instead of staying in New York and singing in parks. They finally gave in when he promised to take them to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. “It kind of looks like cricket,” Dread commented afterwards. “Only not as exciting.”
Professional Reviews
“Hill-an’-Gully” politics
(Jamaica) Observer column for Monday 30 July 07
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By Jean Lowrie-Chin
Meet the naïve ‘brown man’ Patrick O’Connor and the brilliant, black Benjamin Miller -- they are politicians on an island that bears a striking similarity to Jamaica. It was fun reading George Graham’s book, ‘Hill-an’-Gully Rider’ in this election season, as it is peppered with stories about political maneuverings and downright ‘ginnalship’. In fact, I would consider it a must-read for any newcomer to Jamaican politics.
George Graham was my meticulous, temperamental boss on the Features Desk at the Jamaica Daily News, until he wrote a farewell column under the pseudonym of ‘Pan’, frustrated at the game-playing of politicians and others, and declaring that Jamaica would remain ‘a barefoot country’. It is only after reading this book, several decades later that I clearly see George’s vision, his unfulfilled dreams for Jamaica, though I had always appreciated his wry sense of humour.
Patrick O’Connor, like George, is the son of a ‘Busha’ (George spells it ‘busher’) at a banana plantation in the fifties, a recent high school graduate with good passes and no career plan. The savvy Benjamin Miller, a headman on the same plantation, decides that he will make both a businessman and a politician out of Patrick.
And so the ‘Rock of Ages Construction Company’ is born, winning lucrative road building contracts. The title of the book comes from Benjamin’s insistence that Patrick ‘must not walk’, and gives him a mule to ride among his constituents – I guess the modern equivalent would be the fully-loaded SUV.
George explores the wonders of advertising and PR. Benjamin names a new housing scheme after Patrick: “it’s called branding, and it will do wonders for him in politics.” Patrick’s newly furnished home gets written up in an international design magazine and he is off and running.
Patrick’s opponent, a man called Peterson, decides to declare ‘Black man time come” on the political platform and he is forced to listen by a group of ‘concerned citizens’. He is actually kidnapped and when he threatens to call the Police, a man in the group says, “I am the police.” But interestingly, this is what they want to tell Peterson: “You are never to bring up skin colour again. We get along with each other here, black, white, Indian and Chinese, Jew, Arab and everything in between.” He gets the message.
George describes several political tricks: “In addition to being available for raids and poll blockades, the city gang leaders ran a rent-a-protest service used unhesitatingly by both parties.”
As opponent Peterson’s popularity grew annoyingly, they search for a chink in his left-leaning armour: “What about a Cuban invasion?” This was effectively staged and Peterson became history. Hmmm… sounds a lot like, “What about Russian ships?”
The Prime Minister, Sir Charles DeLeon, with his engaging personality, mane of white hair and a secretary called “Miss Waybridge” is an endearing portrait of National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante.
The women in this book are for the most part, strong and intelligent. A troublesome government minister was notorious for sexually harassing the women in his office, until “he picked the wrong young woman” and George has us cheering along as he is brought to book.
Patrick’s lady love, Catherine, is actually brighter than the politician, and ghost-writes his brilliant proposals, coaches him in oratory (shades of Beverley Manley?) and livens up his weekly television show.
Stein, a Jewish PR man out of New York turns their wedding into an international showpiece, scheduling it to coincide with the visit to the island of Emperor Haile Selassie. Stein is well connected and when the ‘Cuban invasion’ story backfires on Patrick, it is because of a lodge brotherhood that Stein is able to approach the US Ambassador about the removal of a US warship brooding over the Kingston shoreline.
As being black became more important to being politically viable, the astute Benjamin, a voracious reader, traces Patrick’s bloodline to an Ethiopian named Desta, thus convincing the influential Ras Patrone that he was descended from the Queen of Sheba. The light-skinned Patrick is dressed in red, green and gold and a Chinese ‘sampata’ to promote the new Dung Hill Label (read Dungle) throughout the US.
“Then Benjamin unveiled his secret weapon,” wrote George,”…Haile Selassie was designated as the Lion of Judah and Patrick was proclaimed as the Young Lion.” He describes the use of broadcast media over print, to successfully reach the masses.
The country’s romance with cricket is acknowledged as Patrick’s best talent is at bat, and his claim to fame a century at Lord’s.
But it is a wistful George Graham who turns back time for our leaders to nix bauxite mining and petroleum refineries, opting instead for environmental development and solar power. His arguments for the legalization of ganja and prostitution are so persuasive, that the reader becomes as convinced as the Liberal Anglican bishop in the novel. Reggae music transforms “Dung Hill” into a fashionable district, drawing artsy folk from all over the world.
These are George Graham’s “recollections in tranquility” as well as his recommendations for national stability. He draws us a colourful picture of the Jamaica of the forties and the fifties, where a rainbow of people see their Jamaican-ness as their distinguishing denominator and progress purposefully from the class-conscious plantation, towards self-determination.
lowriechin@aim.com
Journalist Returns To His Roots With a Quirky Novel Set In Jamaica
By Jan Hollingsworth
of The Tampa Tribune
Published: August 23, 2007
First, full disclosure: I adore Jamaica George.
But then, so do many who have had the privilege of knowing the self-described "little brown man" who covered Plant City's police and politics for The Tampa Tribune. Until last year, when at age 72, he went into retirement – for the third time.
For a full year, George Graham did not touch his computer keyboard, hibernating in his Lakeland home, "burned out," he said, from the daily grind of writing to meet continual deadlines with little to show for it.
"When I got into this business, I actually thought in some small way I might change the world," he said wryly.
Still, he rose with the sun each day, donned his "little magic reporter's coat" and waded into the fray.
"If I had my hat – the felt hat with the "front page press" on the front, you couldn't stop me at all," he would say.
Graham figures he's written 10,000 stories in his half-century of newspapering.
"It's like writing in the sand," he said. "The waves come and wash it away. I wanted a monument."
Enter "Hill-an'-Gully Rider," an ironic web of politics, romance and intrigue on an exotic island that bears a striking resemblance to Graham's native Jamaica.
Palm-fringed beaches, luxury cars and yachts, squalid slums and stoned Rastafarians inhabit the lovely but corrupt paradise that serves as a backdrop for Graham's tale of a naïve, charismatic Jamaican youth who becomes a career politician under the tutelage of a brilliant and ambitious mentor.
"One morning I woke with the first three chapters in my head," Graham said. Three months later, he had completed his first novel.
Jamaicans have taken notice with a vengeance.
One reviewer calls "Hill-an'-Gully Rider" "a funny and thought-provoking look at politics on a mythical Caribbean Island, where bizarre events occur, love blooms and surprises abound."
The Caribbean Current, a weekly news magazine for Caribbean ex-patriots, noted in a recent story that "Hill-an'-Gully Rider" was "expected to trigger political controversy in his native island."
But then, controversy is no stranger to Jamaica George, the Current points out:
"A founding editor of The Jamaica Daily News, George Graham evoked furor – and even threats on his life – with a 1970s column deploring the political and cultural path that the "barefoot island" was taking.
"A plague on both your houses," the column stated. "I am voting with my feet."
Within weeks, his feet had touched Canadian soil, where the Jamaican rabble-rouser entered the North American phase of his journalism career. Graham cut an editorial swath from Toronto to Tampa to Clearwater, where he served as managing editor of the Clearwater Sun.
But that is another story, for another time, perhaps in another world.
Graham's quadruple citizenship – born under the British flag, transformed by Jamaican Independence, embraced by Canada and America – allows him his choice of many worlds.
His life has amounted to a series of choices that ultimately put him on a strange and broken road to Plant City.
"When I think of the thundering ironies in my life, I just want to weep," he said.
Return To Jamaica
In "Hill-an'-Gully Rider," Graham returns to Jamaica to answer the question: What would have happened if he had never left? What if he had taken an opportunity that presented itself shortly after high school, to enter the circles of power in his native land?
"What would have happened if I were king of the world?" he mused.
Much like his protagonist, Patrick O'Connor, Graham is the son of a banana plantation overseer who was well into his 40's when he met and married a 17-year-old island girl.
Both his mother's and father's families came to Jamaica in the late 1700s.
When her eldest son was born in Black River, Jamaica on March 23, 1934, his blonde, blue-eyed artist mother, then 18, rushed to the nearest church, laid him upon the altar and consecrated him to God.
"You can imagine what kind of childhood I had," said Graham, who was named for his father, but for many years was called "Dixie," due to an early passion for Dixie Doodle fudgesicles.
"Dixie" and his three younger siblings grew up in remote isolation without electricity or running water. His father's vast library was the sole source of entertainment.
He read and he wrote, voraciously – some might say obsessively, penning stories from the age of 8 and begging the schoolmaster to edit them.
"I had this urge, this need, to put words on paper all my life," he said. "I'm full of these words and they spill out."
He published his first news story in the Jamaican Times at the age of 10 – an account of the family's Christmas tree, festooned with candles in place of lights, catching fire. His father, dressed in a Santa suit, extinguished the blaze.
At 16, Graham's essay on how to achieve world peace won him at place at the World Youth Forum and a meeting in 1951 with the Queen of England, the woman who later became the beloved Queen Mother to Queen Elizabeth.
More than 50 years later, his first novel draws on these memories to paint a colorful picture of island life during the 1940s and 1950s. It was his later years in North America, however, where Graham learned the inner workings of politics and what he calls "the good old boy network."
"I wrote this book as a message for America," he said. "The things that happen in Jamaica are happening in a big way in America – the political climate, the environmental destruction, the fouling our own nest."
A Different Path
In "Hill-an'-Gully Rider," Graham turns back the clock to a time when Jamaica's leaders stood at a crossroads and – as far as he is concerned – took a wrong turn. His novel suggests the consequences of embarking on a different path, of saying 'no' to the bauxite mines and petroleum refineries that created gaping holes in the earth and pollution in the air and water.
In doing so, he has become a voice for the Jamaican Diaspora, thousands – perhaps millions – of ex-patriots who have made their lives and fortunes in other parts of the world; and who perhaps would like to return some day.
"The Diaspora is a political force on the island, even though we're not on the island," he said. "We have Web sites, magazines, television and radio stations.
Jamaica George is only too happy to share his views on these forums. A recent column he penned for Jamaica.com – "A Race Apart" – has sent ripples through the Jamaican communities on and off the island.
The column traces the islanders' roots – from the fierce West African Ashantis captured into slavery, to the European landlords and Sephardic Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal to escape the Inquisition. Traders from China, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries also found their way to Jamaica.
"On this, the 45th anniversary of Jamaican Independence, I would like to propose that we declare the existence of a Jamaican race," he wrote earlier this month. "Not black. Not white. Not Asian or Middle Eastern. But simply Jamaican."
And so he fans the flames with his words – tossed to the ephemeral reaches of Cyberspace and bound between the covers of the books he plans to leave to his children and grandchildren and the generations not yet born.
Final Deadline
"Giving life to something – it ain't easy," he said of his work. "And it takes life out of you to do it."
Jamaica George thinks a lot about life these days. He is 73 and diabetic, with all the health issues that implies.
"Every day I get up and I say, "Hey, I woke up this morning. I better make my mark."
Time is running out, he believes. He doesn't know how much he has left, but he does know what he wants to do before the sand runs out of the hour glass.
There is another book, just completed and waiting for the final edit by his wife, Sandra, a writer, copy editor and teacher.
It is a memoir he started writing at the age of 23, originally titled "My Life Among the Savages." Later he changed it to "Good Intentions." For years, he carried it from place to place, secreted in a box, unseen by anyone until finally, he showed it to Sandra.
"She fell in love with this one character – a servant girl who wasn't a big part of the original book," he said. "Sandra insisted this was who the book was about."
He revised it. The story is now called "Girlie" and is very close to self-publication, like "Hill-an'-Gully Rider.
Graham also has assembled a collection of poems he's written throughout his life in times of deep despair. It is called, "In a Delicate Condition," and he plans to dedicate it to his mother, Phyllis, and illustrate it with her art. She died two years ago at the age of 88.
And, finally, he is halfway through his third book and also is teaching himself how to write a screenplay. "Girlie" would make a fine movie, he said.
It is all very different from what he's done these past years. Still, like his previous incarnation as a newspaperman, there is a deadline – this one imposed by the vagaries of time and age.
"You're working under deadline and you don't know what the deadline is."
And so he writes, often in his sleep. He wakes at 3 or 4 a.m. "with pages and pictures swirling before my inner eye.
"Books, short stories, poems, even magazine and newspaper features come to me ready to be transcribed and tweaked."
Despite a city proclamation signed by then-Mayor John Dicks, honoring him at what was thought to be the sunset of a remarkable career, the man his colleagues dubbed Yoda continues to craft ironic prose with his wit and wisdom intact.
It is not how he envisioned spending his golden years when he retired 16 months ago.
"As for me, I will be riding that ol' rocking chair in Mount Vernon, Ga., long before this time next year," he said upon retiring last April.
"And my way of sticking it to the Man will be to spend as little money as possible, growing my own black-eyed peas and curing my own fatback, for example.
"I will not buy clothes or shoes or go to the movies; Sandra and I will downsize our housing, keep only one car and drive rarely.
"If American consumers went on strike, the global economy would collapse and the parasites it supports would wilt from lack of sustenance. Then, some more reasonable system would replace it.
"We need a latter-day Gandhi to lead the resistance," he said.
Instead, Jamaica George has remained in the former parsonage in Lakeland he shares with his wife, three cats, two dogs and an assortment of birds and squirrels that inhabit his yard. It is from there, that he has launched his own revolution.
"Hill-an'-Gully Rider" is published by Lulu.com and is available online and at Amazon.com.
Jan Hollingsworth can be reached at (813)865-4436 or jhollingsworth@tampatrib.com.
Thought provoking and full of intrigue
Books2Mention Magazine
“Hill-An’- Gully Rider is thought provoking and full of intrigue. ”
“Patrick O’Connor, the son of a banana plantation overseer becomes involved in politics through the help of his friend Benjamin Miller who happens to be the headman on the banana plantation. Benjamin has connections in the political scene and uses that power to assist Patrick in developing their island and other interests.”
“Hill-An’-Gully Rider is a great story that delves into romance and the workings of politics. It is an enlightening read that also offers humor.”
