Breakfast at the Liquor Store

January 17, 2014

Green Turtle Cay in the Abacos has been our home for almost 2 weeks.  We were first on a mooring in White Sound for a couple of nights and then moved down to a mooring in Black Sound for the remainder of our stay. 

Donny Sawyer of Donny's Boat Rentals hosts our moorings.  Donny is one of four brothers from a family with deep roots here.  We have finally mastered the brothers names (we think!): Reggie (home builder); Ronny (fishing guide); Donny (boat rental and marina); Roddy (marine construction).

White Sound has several nice marinas/restaurants and is the base for most cruisers;  Black Sound is quieter and closer to the settlement of New Plymouth and is our preferred location.  We have observed that many cruisers make a 2-3 day stop at Green Turtle on their way to the 'Mecca' of Marsh Harbour;  we find that places like this are a nice destination in themselves.  You really can't begin to know a place like this until you have invested some time in exploring and meeting people.

Our home away from home in New Plymouth has been Plymouth Rock Liquors and Café, or 'Daves' as it is know to the locals. We have found many 'odd' business combinations in the Bahamas and Daves is one of them.  The café was started by Dave's mother, but when he took it over he decided that he didn't like to cook as much as his mother and wanted to broaden the business, so he added the liquor business.  In spite of Dave's 'aversion' to cooking he still does a brisk café business and is the locals 'go-to' for breakfast and lunch.

On Tuesday and Saturday mornings, Dave offers Chicken Souse, a Bahamian breakfast specialty.  Souse is a spicy soup-like dish with chicken and potatoes and is delicious.  In spite of experiencing many traditional Bahamian dishes in our travels, this was our first Souse - it was delicious!

Photo credit to Ken Aiken

The Abacos were our first destination 2 seasons ago.  We had hoped to return last year but ran out of time after traveling through the Exumas and the out-islands in southern Bahamas.  The Abacos are much different than the southern Bahamas.  First the majority of people here are of European (Loyalist) heritage, while the majority in the southern regions are of African (slave) heritage.  We find the African-Bahamians very warm and friendly;  the European Bahamians are often initially rather cool, until you invest some time in building a relationship.  The Abacos are also much more developed, with stores, restaurants, and vacation accommodations.

 Two very friendly Bahamians are Scott and Martha who run Sid's Grocery.  Their father Sidney Lowe started the store many years ago. Martha stayed in New Plymouth to help her father run the business, but as his health started to fail, it became too much for her to handle alone.  Her brother Scott, who had moved to Nassau and had a 25+ year career working for a large wholesale grocer there, decided to return to New Plymouth to help her run the store. 

In the small world category, while talking to Scott and Martha, we learned that Scott's son, Stu, had helped us mount the new dinghy outboard we bought at Abaco Yacht Services here in Black Sound.  I later had a nice talk with Stu when he was picking up lunch at Dave's.  For anyone in the market for a Yamaha outboard, AYS treated us very well - it was a great experience.

I (Tom) had a very cool encounter at Dave's the other day.  Dave often plays the 60-70's pop music channel in the café, but one morning he had on a 'classic country' channel - I love classic country and was enjoying the music along with a cup of coffee.  The first song I heard was "Make the World Go Away" followed by "A-11",  both songs written or co-written by a famous song-writer named Hank Cochran.  I  remarked to an African-Bahamian gentleman at the counter named 'Winky', how I loved classic country and noted that the last two songs had been written by a favorite writer.

Winky said that Hank Cochran used to come to Green Turtle all the time.  You need to have a certain skepticism about stories you hear (especially at a liquor store/bar) and initially I was not sure it wasn't just a tall tale.  But as I continued to talk to Winky, he obviously knew a lot about Hank Cochran.  Apparently Hank had a 50' Grand Banks trawler named "The Legend" that he brought to Green Turtle regularly.  A long list of artists had visited Hank here including Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, and others. To further validate the stories, Dave told me some additional stories about Hank's visits.  Apparently they featured some pretty hard partying and as Dave said, "It was in the old decadent days".   

If you are interested in sampling Hank's music, You might want to check our "Living for a Song - A Tribute to Hank Cochran",  a collection of his music put together by Jamie Johnson after Hank's recent death.  It features new recordings of many of his hits, featuring a who's-who of current country music artists.
http://www.jameyjohnson.com/

In closing, the following shrub caught our eye - it is a Poinsettia.  We only know these as potted plants you see at Christmas - who knew you could grow them as a shrub in your yard in the sub-tropics.  Corey (Ronny Sawyer's daughter who works at Daves) told us that it actually was much bigger before the last hurricane - wow!

Poinsettia Shrub in Ronny Sawyer's Yard

Tom
Moored Black Sound, New Plymouth
Green Turtle Cay, Abacos