A Carib is not a beer

The company called Carib Beer has made lots of money off the name Carib for more than seventy years but they claim that the word Carib does not come from Carib but from Caribbean. The marketing manager a man called Foster said that as far as he was concerned, a precedent has been set by a beer in Australia called Foster, his family’s name

A Portuguese, the Chief Executive Officer called da Silva* maintained that the Portuguese were not in the slave trade. He does not know that they were the first great European colonizers and started the trans-Atlantic slave trade and they and the Spanish called all Indians who fought against colonization cannibals in order to justify wars against them and their enslavement. The name Barbados is first recorded on a Portuguese map, and is one of the islands that Las Casas, the protector of the Indians, documented as being a slaving post. For da Silva the treaty of Tordesellas, where the Pope divided up the New World between Spain and Portugal does not exist.

*Lasonta’s mother was to be lowered into the ground and the sound of the rocks as they hit the coffin would make most people under the trees in the churchyard cry. Her mother’s death notice in the newspaper had brought me to the graveside amongst the small gathering of close family.

“da Silva,” I said to Lasonta whom I had only just seen for ten years, “is Chief Executive Officer, of the second largest corporations.”

“How did he get there?” She gave an infectious titter just as the ropes were unhooked from the sides of the coffin.

“Selling Ovaltine for thirty years.” A murmur of laughter permeated the air.

“What about his brother?” She went out with the brother. “Did he turn out to be a drunkard?”

“I do not know but he runs a bar.” The giggling was controlled.

“You always chose better ones than I did.” There was not one dry eye.

The two young brothers and their family moved into, a road that ran at the back of our school. They were poor and Portuguese and the CEO was brown-haired and good-looking. He now looks like a blown-up frog bursting from crown down. His brother was small with black hair and has not changed even to gain weight. The brothers rode motor scooters.

I was in a bind and could no longer lie. I had to have it so I could continue to talk about it. This boy Stephen Niles had taken my virginity and we were doing it every night. Only thing Stephen Niles was make-belief; I was a closet virgin and my girlfriends were becoming suspicious. I chose da Silva to prove a point twice, told him nothing about my condition and since the experience did not inspire I did not repeat the act for a long time.

Twenty years late I lent my house on the beach in front of the now famous Soup Bowl to the surfers for their first contest so that the judges could sit in the veranda and judge; utilities could be plugged into my sockets and there would be a comfortable place to operate. Surfing was not an acceptable sport at that time and the middle class residents and house owners refused to rent or allow the use of their houses. Ovaltine sponsored part of the contest and’ Mr. Ovaltine” was there.

“He said he took your virginity.” Some one said to me after the contest.

When I started my publishing business; I called him up and sold him advertising in my first book. We never discussed our carnal encounter but he paid four times the normal rate for the advertisement and bought into another book.