HO GOES THERE?

May 09, 2011 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

---

I entered the dimly lit establishment in Antigua with one purpose in mind. I needed a hoe pretty badly.  In the dim light I could barely discern the hoes that were lined up for my viewing pleasure but these days my sight has faded faster than the hopes of West Indies Cricket fans that we will once more reach the pinnacle of world cricket.  To do that, you need vision.  This is something that I also lacked as I blundered around feeling the unresponsive merchandise.  When I could take it no more, I shouted to the owner of the hardware store, “How come you selling bulbs and this place so dark?”
I can go on and stretch this out asking questions like, “What came first- the hoe or the fork?” but I will eschew this and call a spade a spade, or in this case, a hoe a hoe.  Wikipedia describes the hoe as an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used to move small amounts of soil.  Since I also qualify as an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used by my wife to move small amounts of soil for her fledgling kitchen garden, mow the lawn and perform sundry other domestic husbandry duties, what does that make me?  I will stand on my dignity and insist that even if I qualify as a hoe, I am the right sort of hoe.
Is there a wrong sort of hoe?  Well, the ones I found in the hardware store were definitely as wrong as the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) in dumping Chanderpaul.  However, it was not their shape nor their stamina, but the price of the hoes that astounded me.  In fact, when I told my wife that the hoes in Antigua cost about US$40 for one, she retorted that at such a price the two-legged ones should cost less and that maybe I should get my friends in Trinidad or in Guyana to get one for me.  It is clear that the decline in agriculture has caused the demand for hoes to diminish and this has affected the production which is now reflected in the price.  There was a time when the hoe was indeed an agricultural implement and every household had its own hoe.  Now that farming is more technology intensive and everybody has a “weed whacker”, only specialists use hoes and the humble tool has ceased to be an implement and has become an instrument.  The price has risen to suit the hoe’s new status and today hoes are increasingly being used by archeologists especially in connection with mummies.  Did anyone say “Tut,Tut”?
This brings us to the unfortunate homophone that has made calling a “hoe” a “hoe” more complex than it should be.  Before we continue, please note that homophones are not telecommunication instruments used by gay persons but words that sound alike.  One would hope that coincidence alone was responsible for the name of the world’s oldest agricultural implement and the term used to describe a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession sounding the same.  However, Wikipedia does not help when in an article on the implement, and not the other type of “hoe”, one reads that there are many different types and some can perform multiple functions while others are intended for a specific use.  There is the “Dego” (the way Trinidadians pronounce the “Diego” in the town called “Diego Martin”) with a heavy, broad, delta-shape, and the Dutch hoe (scuffle, action, oscillating, swivel, or Hula-Ho), a design that is pushed or pulled.  People who have been to Amsterdam say that this is indeed an apt description of the capabilities of Dutch hoes and although Amsterdam is not a rural community, there are a lot of them there.  It also does not help when someone quips, “The best way to garden is to put on a wide-brimmed straw hat and some old clothes.  And with a hoe in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.”  My wife definitely won’t dig that.
This mixup between gardening and prostitution leads to considerable confusion.  It is true that they both involve beds but consider what happened to this graduate from a University in a small farming community in the U.S.  Her fiancée had another semester to go to finish his degree and then they planned to marry in the spring.  The young woman decided to get a job until her fiancée finished school but the only job she could find in the town was on a farm doing manual labour. Her duties consisted of grooming the fields and ridding the crops of adjacent weeds, in other words using a hoe. Then came the end of the semester and her fiancée graduated, so they decided to get on with the wedding. They went to the courthouse and requested a marriage license.  The county clerk asked the usual questions like name, place of birth, occupation. The groom-to-be answered everything and, of course, gave his occupation as “student” as that was his most recent occupation. The bride to be answered everything until the clerk asked her for her occupation.  She thought about it a moment and then answered: “I’m a hoer.”  The clerk looked at her soon-to-be husband and then back at the woman with a dumbfounded look on his face and then spoke up, “Well, at least it’s honest work.”
Trinidadians take the homophone even further.  Many years ago, in my partying days I went to an “Old Mas” contest in Trinidad.  “Mas” is short for masquerade and the “Old” part of it does not mean that it is intended only for senior citizens.  “Old Mas” is part of the tradition of carnival where the costumes are generally “old” materials instead of the glitzy thongs and tights, and the intent is humorous and based on word-play.  The idea was simple.  A man in a “sailor” costume took a small piece of battered and almost dry-rotted garden hose or hosepipe and fastened it to the back of his costume with the words above it, “OLD HOSE”.  I thought it was brilliant.  It was almost as good as when my friend Ross Arson accidently set fire to his mother’s house and we all laughed and made jokes like, “Double Arson – arson by arson” and “That is not just arson, it is damn arson.”  It was one of the boys, a troublesome but funny kid named King, who had the last word.  “That is not just damn arson,” he intoned.  “That is mother arson!”
* Tony Deyal was last seen saying that you have to blame Santa Claus for the confusion.  He comes through a chimney saying in glee, “Ho! Ho! Ho!”

---

---