Enjoying view from the hill

By Gercine Carter

Many days Bob Parravicino stands at a window of his St George home perched high on a hill with a commanding view, and loses himself in the verdant canvas that is part of the St George Valley as he reminisces.

His thoughts constantly drift from his life as a former figure in the tourism and transportation sectors to his Italian ancestry to the stories about his great grandfather’s coming to Barbados and to the succeeding generations of his offspring who have carried on his legacy.

They are precious memories which ignite the 92-year-old’s passion for life and fuel his determination to keep active despite the constraints of age, having long retired. He especially looks forward to hopping into his late wife Lorraine’s decades-old car and driving short distances to nearby facilities such as the supermarket, the petrol station and the Post Office, aware that time is running out on his ability to be legally behind the wheel on the road.

“I will not be driving any more after my licence expires in a few months,” he said with a hint of resignation.

Though he gave no indication of regret about this, one could surmise it will be a bitter-sweet end for a man who learnt the highways and byways of Barbados while ferrying Barbadians and visitors around the island, initially as his father’s employee and later as the head of Johnson’s Stables, which was renamed Johnson’s Tours.

To have a conversation with Parravicino is to take a trip back in time, to an old Barbados where horse-drawn carriages were a common mode of transportation. From him, one learns something about the evolution of transportation in Barbados when motor cars began to take over from the “buggy”, when vehicle brands such as Vauxhall, the Ford Chrysler, the Austin Cambridge, Volkswagen the Morris mini, started to take over.

He went to work with his father, also named Bob Parravicino (more familiarly known to many by his nickname “Poor Bob”), at Johnson’s Stables, at age 22, persuaded by his sister to come back to Barbados from Canada where he had migrated, to “help daddy”.

Johnson’s Stables and Garage, then located on Coleridge Street, Bridgetown, opposite the Central Police Station, was acquired from the former owner by “Poor Bob” Parravicino. The business was originally known as Johnson’s Livery and Stables and started in the 1820s.

By the time his son returned to Barbados to give him a hand, “Poor Bob” had very few of the original fleet of carriages remaining, the majority replaced by cars, which were becoming the preferred mode of transportation.

“You still had the odd carriage but there were vehicles. When I came back to Barbados, my dad had quite a number of his cars which were off the road, because he did not have a good mechanic looking after things and I was a mechanic,” Bob recalled.

“I worked fixing the cars and even the door panels. I would bring those door panels home at night, cut out the leatherette and fix them.”

He added: “When I first went there, we still had the old Victoria carriages. We still had two of those that we used to keep at the Marine Hotel in their stables at the back and we used to keep one by the Nelson

Continued on next page.