by Larry Smith
Ezekiel was a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher who also drove a taxi. Mina was his wife, a part-time straw vendor. Samuel, the eldest of three sons, was a professional slacker who worked and chased women in a hotel. Blossom was his precocious little sister, and their eccentric neighbour, Miss Lye, was a hard-nosed street vendor.
They were The Fergusons of Farm Road, a quintessential afro-Bahamian family who all made their living from tourism. And for a few seasons during the 1970s we were consumed with interest in the antics of this mirror-image family. The 15-minute radio serial premiered on May 13, 1970 and ran on ZNS for 137 weeks initially, although no audio has survived.
The Fergusons was co-written by Bahamian Jeanne Thompson and Jamaican Sonia Mills. Thompson is a lawyer who dabbled in newspaper writing during the 70s and was prominent in theatrical circles. She retired as a supreme court judge in 2007 but still does some lecturing at the UWI law faculty.
She first met Mills while at boarding school in Jamaica, and the friendship continued when Mills was posted to the Bahamas with her husband, where both worked in government ministries.
"When Clement Maynard (who was minister of tourism at the time) asked me to write a show to improve Bahamian attitudes towards tourists I talked to Sonia, who had written and produced similar radio soaps in Jamaica. She encouraged me to take on the project, which I probably wouldn't have done otherwise," Thompson told me.
The result was a spicy mixture of education and entertainment laced with vernacular comedy that presented Bahamians au natural for the first time in broadcasting. It was, according to history student Ward Minnis, who is researching a graduate thesis on the subject at Carleton University in Canada, "a singular instance of Bahamian creative collaboration."
Minnis is the son of artist/composer Eddie Minnis, who played Samuel in the original production. And last week he gave a talk at the Bahamas Historical Society on his research to date. He wants to "understand and conserve a Bahamian cultural artifact that gives a sociocultural perspective on the turbulent years" after the predominantly black Progressive Liberal Party assumed office for the first time in 1967.
"The Fergusons scripts were full of biblical allusions tied into the political story of the Exodus that was adopted as a theme by the PLP," Minnis said. "Perhaps with a name like Ezekiel, it gave his warnings about society, and their potential consequences more weight."
The late 1960s was surely an interesting time. But the excitement of regime change quickly soured. Service was seen as servitude, and the work ethic of many Bahamians deteriorated so much that the country's lucrative tourism industry was threatened. And it was the receipts from tourism that the PLP were counting on to underwrite all their planned social reforms.
Much like today, an economic recession in the US led to a slump in tourism in 1970 after years of dramatic growth, which caused a major panic. Bad attitudes were considered part of the problem, and Prime Minister Lynden Pindling had to use his considerable influence to leverage the situation:
"I want our waiters and maids to smile and be courteous more than ever before, because you have something to smile for now," he said in a 1967 speech. "If you fail, you fail me and I shall fail you...my government has promised you a square deal but it will not drop out of the sky."
So the Ministry of Tourism launched a smile campaign with the slogan "look up, move up, the world is watching." It was a national appeal to promote a better work ethic and courteous service. And one of its key components was to be a radio show produced by the government's New York communications agencies called All About the Alburys.
But this initial effort was judged much too American to appeal to Bahamians, and Clement Maynard turned to local playwright Jeanne Thompson to write an all-Bahamian production performed by members of the Nassau acting community.
It was patterned after The Archers - a British educational serial launched in 1951 with government input and billed as an "everyday story of country folk". It is now the world's longest-running radio soap opera, and at the height of its popularity it was estimated that 60 per cent of adult Britons were regular listeners.
The Archers was conceived as a way to provide information to farmers and smallholders to help increase productivity in the post-World War II years of rationing and food shortages. The programme's educational remit, and the involvement of the government, ended in 1972, but it continues today as a popular naturalistic drama.
Thompson told me how she and Sonia Mills created The Fergusons: "We sat together and plotted out the full 13 episodes. Sonia wrote the narration and I did the dialogue. Each show usually had three scenes and comedy was very important."
The total fee for each show (including talent) was about $2,000, which was considered good money at the time. But unfortunately, none of the recordings and only a few of the original scripts have survived.
"I have nine scripts from the first series and some from the second and third series," Thompson said. "The terms of reference initially were to explain the importance of tourism and focus on being polite to tourists. It was part of a government friendliness campaign. In 1974 ZNS decided to revive the show, but they could never find enough sponsors.
"We did over 100 episodes in the second series and were able to extend ourselves more. In the third series we did whatever we liked within reason - it became a purely naturalistic drama with no particular message. But there was never any politics involved. ZNS would not have allowed that. We taped the show at ZNS and Carl Bethel helped us a lot. At the time, Charles Carter was opposed to using dialect on ZNS."
One of the surviving scripts is of the very first episode, and we can get a feel for the flavour of the show from this excerpt of the Ferguson family entertaining their bishop:
Bro. F.: So how the organ fund going?
Mrs. F.: Blossom… leave that piece for your father.
Bishop: We collecting slowly brother. But people not giving like they could.
Bro. F.: Yeah. They saying things tough. People talking about laying off workers and the number of tourist dropping.
Bishop: Yes. Well that’s why I was so please to hear your sermon this morning.
Bro. F.: Excuse me… let me full up your glass. (Gets up from table).
Bishop: Thank you. I wish more people was like you and understand the meaning of charity and respect for their brothers.
Bro. F.: Amen.
Bishop: So what you thought about your father’s sermon Blossom?
Blossom: I don’t agree with him sir. Everybody always saying is the younger generation, but The Lord say is the sins of the fathers that is visited on the children.
Mrs. F.: (Laughs) You hear that Zeke. You daughter call out back the Bible on you.
Blossom: (Getting more courageous) And furthermore, Daddy say that the Lord going to wither up the earth, but in Genesis The Lord say “I will not curse the earth any more for man’s sake for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done.
Bishop: But you quoting your Scriptures child.
Blossom: I learn that in Bible Knowledge class at school sir.
Bro. F.: (coming back to table) You’ll learning to be disrespectful to your elders. That’s what. Who tell you that you know the interpretation of the Bible.
Blossom: Is the Bishop ask me a question you know Daddy.
Bro. F.: Don’t back talk me child.
Blossom: I wasn’t …..
Bishop: When you father talk to you open your ears and close your moth.
Blossom: I was just….
Bro. F.: Hush you mouth child. You leave this table right now (pause) You going feel my hand when the Bishop gone!
(Sound) (Gentle link music)
Narrator: Poor Blossom. Parents never understand do they? But Blossom is the least of the Ferguson’s worries. It is Othniel and Samuel who are going to be their father’s grief and their mother’s bitterness.
Little does Brother Ferguson know this quiet February Sunday that there is more than enough trouble in store for him…and his family. Listen again next week for another chapter of the “Fergusons of Farm Road”…. a true life drama of a Bahamian family.
The original cast included Charles Bowleg (Zeke), Miriam Johnson (Mina), Lilian Collie (Miss Lye), Eddie Minnis (Sam), Calvin Cooper (the bishop), and Heather Thompson (Blossom)).
Jeanne Thompson and others performed this original script at an event hosted by the Pompey Museum last fall. And it generated some nostalgic interest from Greg Lampkin, a well-known radio personality who started out at ZNS himself. Now at Star 106, he is producing a pilot of the first episode with a view to selling a new series.
This pilot features Skeebo Roberts as Zeke, Heather Thompson as Mina, Clarence Rolle as Sam and Cookie Allen as Miss Lye. Davidson Hepburn will be the narrator. It will be produced at the end of this month.
"My recollection is that the show was extremely popular," Thompson told me. "In many neighbourhoods people used to gather around the radio with The Fergusons blaring. I feel it did make an impact, and also helped to foster more interest in Bahamian drama. Our actors went on to appear in other theatre productions where they helped to pull audiences."
As Ward Minnis noted: The Fergusons of Farm Road filled a large gap as the first national narrative ever provided to the Bahamian people in a popular format, but after only three seasons it "simply vanished into the silence from which it came."
Despite its popularity, ZNS said it couldn't justify the cost to keep the show on the air. It remains to be seen whether this unique example of Bahamian vernacular storytelling can be revived.
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