Mass Hubert

Mass Hubert
by
Austin Mitchell

Mass Hubert came to live with us in the mid ninteen sixties. He was my uncle, Eddie Thompson’s father.
He was in Cuba and apparently wanted to leave the communist country. He wrote to my uncle, who begged my grandmother, Miss Ella Phipps, to take him in. He was an elderly man, probably in his mid sixties. He came with few possessions. I don’t know how long he was in Cuba for. I suspected that the island turning Communist may have affected him badly. He certainly didn’t speak kindly about Fidel Castro. He had two daughters, Miss Julie amd Miss Rose. Almost every Sunday, Miss Julie and her husband, Mr. Campbell, would come to visit us. Mr. Campbell used to drive one those old time Volkswagon vans.

Mass Hubert had a friend by the name of Hepburn Binger. He like Mass Hubert had left Cuba without
most of his possessions. He lived off the produce from his small holding. I remember going with Mass
Hubert to visit him before he died.

Because we lived next door the Phipps property we had access to picking breadfruits any thing we liked. On  Saturdays we would roast half a dozen breadfruits.  We would roast salt fish and then cook it down with run-down. We would also mix lemonade.

I think why Mass Hubert left us and went to live with Miss Julie was because my grand aunt, Maude, was coming to stay with us and there wouldn’t be enough accomodation. However from Mass Hubert left we never heard a word from him or his daughters. However in 2006 when my uncle was being buried a woman who knew the family said that both Miss Julie and Miss Rose were dead as well as Mass Hubert.
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