BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE

Sunday Observer staff reporter

husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com

SHE may not be able to walk around anymore, but that does not stop 100-year-old Florence Mullings, who lives at Ivor Cottage in St Elizabeth, from enjoying and rocking to what she considers good music.

Play her a Beres Hammond, Tarrus Riley or a Gregory Isaacs song and she will rock away.

“Some of the songs that they sing nowadays, mi nuh like them at all,” Mullings told the Jamaica Observer last week. “But mi like some of them.”

She said recordings by certain performers, such as Bounty Killer and Vybz Kartel, are among those she does not like and you would not catch her rocking to them if she hears them playing.

“Once the song is something that she loves, she will rock to the music,” her great-grandniece Rochelle Bruce explained. “She like songs by Gregory Isaacs and those old-time songs.”

But because of a stroke, which left her crippled five years ago, Mullings is unable is get up and dance and enjoy the music as she would like.

“Mi can’t walk. Can’t do a ting more than just sit down,” Mullings said. “Mi woulda want to walk, so as a result mi nuh all right. I can’t do anything, anything more than sit down and look,” she said.

As Mullings sat with her head bowed, cheek touching her chest, her daughter Elaine Mullings explained that this was not due to the stroke but was a family tradition as Mullings’s mother would do the very same.

But though she can no longer move around or do much more than sit and rock to good music, the centenarian could readily recall the love and kindness that existed in her heyday and which is now lacking from society.

“Those times were different times from these times now,” Mullings said. “People nowadays don’t kind, they don’t give me anything. They more to laugh at me. Back then, neighbours kind to neighbours. And things you could buy you can’t buy it again. The amount of things you could get for ‘truppence’ (three pence). You could buy the house full of food and have plenty of chance left,” she said.

Known to her family and relatives as Miss Clemming, Mullings was born in the nearby community of Content on February 8, 1913, then later moved to Ivor Cottage at the age of 19. She attended Mountainside Primary School not far from her home.

After leaving primary school, she worked as a farmer planting acres of escallion, which persons would come to purchase. She said she also weeded grass for others for a livelihood.

Though not able to recall what year she got married, Mullings said she met her husband, Walter, in Mountainside as a young girl. She laughed when she was asked how they met, then declared that she could not recall.

However, her daughter said they could have got married in 1937 when her mother was 24 years old.

They had eight children together, four of whom have since died. Walter died in 1959.

Elaine described her mother as a very kind woman and an “okay” mom.

“She never used to beat us more than so because we didn’t give much trouble,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe some of the children get beating, but I never get any because I never gave any trouble. And she always let us go out whenever there was sporting at school, and so forth. And on Christmas holiday we would go ‘spree’, that’s what we used to call it then.”

Elaine said while her mother was not much into sporting herself; she enjoyed going shopping for groceries or clothes in the nearby towns as she took care of her family.

Years gone by, Mullings attended Mountainside Wesleyan Church.

Despite the stroke, which impacted her left side, including the use of her arm, Mullings still sees and hears well, while her voice is soft.

Her caregiver, Marlene Bruce, who has been attending to Mullings for five years, said she loves to sing and invited her to sing a song for the Sunday Observer team. However, the request would only be met under one condition stated by the centenarian.

“You have to pay me to sing. And you have to give me good money too,” she said as those around her burst into laughter.

However, she soon conceded, but again on condition that she is not laughed at because that, she said, would hurt her feelings. After the assurance that no one would laugh, she began singing, “Poppy to carry Marie…”

When she was through, Mullings admitted to loving music with a pocomania beat, despite never having gone to a ‘poco’ church.

“I love drum music, but mi never go poco church. Mi never go dem deh place deh,” Mullings said. “Mi just love the music.”

Bruce said despite being 100, Mullings does not give any trouble but only complains of pains at times in her feet.

She loves soup and porridge — especially cornmeal porridge.

“She say the cornmeal makes her strong,” Elaine explained. “She calls it cornmeal pop.”

Neighbour Victor Mullings (related by marriage) recalled her being a godmother to the many young people in the neighbourhood.

“Is a whole heap of young people she grow and they dead leave her,” he said. “A whole heap of us around here that used to run up and down as children, she grow. I am 51 years old and she was a godmother to us. You see the elderly people in those times? They used to have love; is not like now where people don’t have any love. The earth lack of love right now because these young people corrupt. Most of the loving people them die out already. And who don’t dead is on their bed (elderly).”

He said one thing that stands out about the centenarian is that she never forgets a name.

“Once you come and introduce yourself to her, anytime you come back after that she can tell that is you same one,” he said.