In their Words: Dwight Pickering

has been working at ZBVI Radio since the 1970s. He reads news, records commercials, and runs a radio show on weekday afternoons. Mr. Pickering is also a farmer.

I was born in Tortola in 1951. I grew up in lower Main Street. We were the second house up from Government House. The building where PicSmith Clinic is now was the home of the headmaster of the high school at the time. 

I spent my early childhood around the bayside. In those days, all that land where the parking lot of the hospital, the Government House parking lot and everything is now — all that was sea. It was a nice little sandy beach. We used to swim there and do a lot of fishing. In those days, fish was plentiful. Right at the bay there, you could get conchs, you could get whelks, you could get lobsters and the whole nine yards. As children, the Government House property was our playground. There were lots and lots of fruit trees on the property, and we made them available to us.
In those days, it was the administrator [instead of a governor]: He had a son around my age, and he was like my best friend.

School
We started school at the St. George’s hall. That was what they called the infant school — kindergarten. From there you would move up to the present high school campus, which was the primary school. That housed the primary school and the secondary school. Of course, at that time the secondary school had about 150 children instead of 1,500 that it is now. The primary school probably wasn’t much more either. Everything was on a very much smaller scale than it is now.

In those days, there was one road: the old Main Street. The place began to develop back in the 1960s. A gentleman that was here by the name of Norman Fowler actually started the first newspaper in the BVI. That was probably in the late 1950s – the Tortola Times. He also started the first cinema, and that was down in the building where Richardson’s Rigging is located. I went to the cinema occasionally on the weekends.

The seating was wooden folding chairs: It wasn’t anything like U.P.’s, but we enjoyed it. We watched Tarzan movies and Roy Rogers. They sold snacks like peanuts and candy and stuff like that. A ticket to the movie was 10 cents. I was between 8 and 10 years old.

Road Town wharfs
Down where the Customs House was located was what we used to call the “Big Wharf.” Around Road Town, there was the Government House jetty, the Hospital Wharf, George’s Wharf, Tobacco Wharf. And some other people had rock wharfs, where they would simply take stones and fill up an area out in the sea. That served two purposes: If you wanted to land something from a rowboat, it was easy to do it. Secondly, every so often you could go and turn over the stones and you would find some really big whelks under the stones. Every now and again, you could get a really good meal of whelks from your rock wharf.

In front of the administration building where the customs building is now — that was called the “Big Wharf” because that was where the big ferry boats from St. Thomas and the cargo boats from Puerto Rico arrived. We didn’t have Port Purcell at the time. Every Saturday, a boat used to come here from Caneel Bay Hotel in St. John. They would bring the guests here over on an excursion to the BVI.

When that boat would come in here with the tourists, all the small boys in Road Town would run out on the wharf and jump into the water. Everybody could swim from the age of maybe 4 or 5 because we practically lived in the sea.
Everyone would jump in and dare the tourists: “A penny in the water! A penny in the water!” They would throw coins and we would be there like little seals catching it. It was hard because the coin used to go down in a zigzag way. After years of that, on a calm day you could go to the wharf with a diving mask and dive down, collect the coins. Spend a couple of hours doing that and you end up with a couple of dollars in coins, but they would be tarnished being in the seawater for so long. We would get some lime and ashes and shine them up, and that would be our money.

Working
I completed my secondary school in Antigua at the Antigua Grammar School. When I came back, the first place I worked was at the quarry in Pockwood Pond. I was the clerk, and I kept control of the sale of aggregates at the quarry. From there I went to the magistrate’s office as a clerk to the magistrate.
Court was like once a week. The cases weren’t anything like today. For example, a murder case was rare: You’d probably get one every 20 or 25 years. The crimes that made it to court were, maybe, a guy getting drunk, resisting arrest. Maybe somebody fighting.

From there, I went off to St. Thomas, where I did some time at the college over there. When I came back, I started to work at the radio station. I had a friend that was working there while I was in St. Thomas, and I used to keep in touch with him. I used to visit him, and I got acquainted with the operation. When a vacancy came up, I got accepted.
Everything at the station then was on the vinyl records, with the turntables and reel-to-reel tape. At that time, the radio station was operating on 10,000 watts. Except for Radio Antilles in Montserrat, we were one of the most powerful radio stations in the Caribbean. Especially in the evening, the signal would travel further. We would cover from Bermuda in the north to as far as Guyana in the south. We would get reception from ham radio operators from Germany and various places in Europe, South America and North America.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Ngovou Gyang. 

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