Adelaide Blanche Dickson celebrated the hundredth anniversary of her birth yesterday, February 5, 2000.
The one thing this remarkable woman planned to do was attend church on Friday. "It's first Friday and I will walk to St Francis Roman Catholic Church on the Circular"; not too far from her small pink cottage on nearby Clifford Street where she has lived from age one, but far enough to my mind for an hundred year old lady.
Born at Cameron Lane, Belmont, Adelaide, or "Auntie Blanche" as everyone calls her, was the youngest of Elvira Thorne's five children. She attended the Belmont Roman Catholic Girls' School, which is now located a mere stone's throw from her home where she happily looks after herself. She was baptised at Rosary Roman Catholic Church on Park Street, and lived with her parents until their respective deaths: "My father, Joseph Dickson went first in 1921, and my mother quite a long time after in 1940."
The feisty woman has never worked, has never been married or had a child, and has spent most of the 36,500 days of her life "doing my housework and then sitting down and relaxing. I have lived a holy and pure life, and never had anybody to confuse me, I never had a husband and did not want to see them, my mother had a hard time with my father and I said I would never go into that to bear all that persecution. I have never overworked myself."
Auntie Blanche, as she is called by her remaining nieces Lucille Turton and Dolly Pierre, great niece Daphne Pierre, who incidentally was visiting from Washington DC, and great nephew Wendell Williams, is still cleaning and cooking for herself. But why not, she does not have an arthritic pain, nor does she suffer from heart disease, diabetes, hypertension or any of the ailments which come with age. She eats and drinks everything, "except for coconut cooked up in my food", and hardly ever wears eye glasses, but admits "the eyes are getting a little dim."
Blanche,who was still walking from Belmont to St Clair to visit her niece up to last year, opened her first bank account last June at age 99. "Auntie Blanche was getting on and it was easier for my cousin Wendell to look after her affairs with a bank account as my mother could no longer do it" said Daphne, a librarian. "It took some talking but the lady at the bank was very impressed that she signed her name on the dotted line, without glasses. She nearly changed her mind when the bank's air-conditioning greeted us at the door, and wanted to wait for another day when she could wear her flannel vest. I had to convince her we would be quick."
There have been many changes in Belmont since Blanche was a child. "The little, narrow lanes, are now streets. There were not all these large houses, just a few little old houses. I remember Miss Sarah, opposite to me who used to sell provisions and coals. She didn't last too long when she moved to St James" said Blanche in her own dry style. Incidentally, Blanche still uses the old flat iron which must be heated on a coal fire, and carefully pads her clothes with newspapers after ironing to avoid catching a cold. While the old hand sewing machine stands in a corner. She has a radio because "the boys who used to board with my sister from Tobago when they went to College came last year to wish me Happy Birthday and brought a radio." But draws the line at owning a television.
Seated in her straight-backed chair, wearing a pastel-colour, plaid shirtwaister dress, and her cuban-heeled, tan open-toed sandals - "I have always liked high heels" - Blanche spoke of the one suitor she ever allowed to come close. "He was coming around but I did not take him on. Christmas came and he apologised for not giving me a card because he said he had no money. He was working at the Mental Hospital and I said to myself, you could have given me a tube of toothpaste, a vial of essence, a tin of powder, even the card, if you do not give me anything, you not coming back in here again, you are a monthly paid man. After Christmas, he came and said 'good morning Blanche', I said 'I know it is morning alright.' He asked 'where you going to' and I replied ''you did not send me anywhere.' He told someone about how I answered him. He won a sweepstake afterwards and opened a big parlour somewhere in Belmont. But I had sent him on his way already."
The guys on the block look after Auntie Blanche. "Nobody strange is allowed to come in there to look for her, they know her routine" says Daphne. "She is out from early morning, going to the shop, doing other errands and dropping by to talk to her many friends in Belmont." As we chatted, Percy Bacchus, hearing the strange voices, enquired from the doorway "darling love, how are you, what yuh say do do." Blanche assured him she was alright today but "I am seeing about my business now so I can't talk to you." Bacchus was definite "I have to give a party for her but I fraid that party thing, she needs a party." Who knows, Auntie Blanche may yet have her party if the boys on the block have their way.
As photographer Keith Matthews and myself said good-bye, Blanche, an amazing woman at age one hundred, came to the door and teased "take care I don't take the young man from you." I assured her he was already spoken for.