A few Saturdays ago, I wrote an article about a legend surrounding the 44th mile post on the Bamboo Road, which connects Claremont with Browns Town in St Ann.

If I may remind you, or briefly tell about the legend, if you did not read my previous article, it is that, over the years at this spot, numerous unexplained accidents have taken place. The drivers of the vehicles all say that they felt an unseen force pulling at their steering wheels

The reason for these accidents, legend says, is that a former slave had killed an English soldier, who had ravished his daughter there. In anger, he killed the girl. He then went in search of the soldier intending to also kill him but, before he could, he was shot dead by the other soldiers. Father and daughter were buried by the roadside, where the 44th mile post was subsequently placed.

Three days later, a boulder rolled down the hill and killed the soldier.

I was delighted, recently, to receive a letter from Mrs Marlene Steer, an elderly resident of Bamboo,

Landmarks

She said she lives approximately half-a-mile from the '44 corner', so-called, she recalls, because of the 44th milepost that was there. As a child, she remembers, it was one of the landmarks on their way to and from school.

"We used to walk it then, a journey of approximately two miles from Ebenezer to Bamboo. We would race each other to see who would get to the milepost first, or we would "lay wait" someone there to frighten them with some trick or the other."

She says she had never heard the legend I wrote about. The closest thing she knows is that no one wanted night to catch them at "44 corner" because it was very dark at nights and, with the many duppy stories abounding, only the brave-hearted would walk there alone.

Dangerous spot

"However, I can attest to the fact that the road did have a slight tilt at the spot," she says, "and vehicles were always going over the road or colliding at the corner. It was usually assumed that the driver did not know the road, and, the corner, being a very sharp one, they would take it too wide, only to find themselves going straight over or colliding with an oncoming vehicle."

She tells me that the milepost has been removed. It is now located at Shelly Road, a little farther on.

And, so a legend has faded from most memories. In my young years, our elders told us stories of old Jamaica, fact and fiction, and they became a part of our culture. Carey Robinson is doing this for us today with his 'Hill and Gully Ride' on television. So, too, is Lalah in this newspaper, and Amina Blackwood-Meeks and Joan Andrea Hutchinson. Olive Senior's Encyclopaedia of Jamaican Heritage is another.

We must always remember and celebrate the birthdays and other happy anniversaries of families and friends, and all the blessings of our yesterdays.

Mrs Steer has asked me to drop in and see her whenever I pass through Bamboo again. I will try and, in the meanwhile, I wish her and her husband wonderful memories of the past and a joyous Christmas '08.