Newspaper salesman Selwyn “Flash” Jameson puts on a show every morning in the Westmoorings area between 6 am and 9.30 am, lifting the spirits of motorists and saving, so far, one marriage.
It is Jameson’s extraordinary ability to move at lightening speed that earned him the nickname, “Flash” and enables him to entertain while selling newspapers.
Motorists and commuters using the two-lane Western Main Road every morning watch Jameson moving briskly between cars moving at nearly 100 km an hour to deliver newspapers and running back to serve customers coming out Columbus Circle near SuperPharm.
“I watch the red light by SuperPharm and know I have 45 seconds to get to the other side. Before the light turns green, I sell six on this side, four on the other side.”
Running backwards on the white line in the middle of the road, he sells newspapers to people coming up from Carenage while, at the same time, delivering to those coming down the road.
“Cars may be going at a certain speed but they slow down for the newspaper. It happens all in one motion, like passing a baton.
“I sell ten newspapers in 20 seconds. I’m super fast. I slip and slide, stroll and roll, flash and dash, kind of boxing my way through the cars. I put on a show every day, a spectacular show. “People say, oh my God, that guy’s going to kill himself. But I know what I’m doing.”
When Jameson, 49, is finished selling 150 newspapers, he works out on the grass at the side of the road, barebacked, providing another show.
“I kind of lift the spirits of people having a bad day,” he said. A man once handed him $500 in an envelope and told him he saved his marriage, he said.
“He said he used to be fit like me but got kind of fat. He said his wife admired my fitness and kept nagging him about how fat and lazy he was getting.
“This pushed him to sign up at a gym in Long Circular Mall and the two of them are now working out together.”
Jameson lived in “North East Philly” (Philadelphia), the murder capital of the US, he said. He migrated to the US with his mother when he was three but returned to the homeland he never knew, 11 years ago after he got in some trouble with the law.
“I beat up a guy and put him in a coma. He cuffed my mother and called her the B word and I went looking for him.” Jameson left six children and his mother in the US. He became an official newspaper carrier for the T&T Guardian four years ago. He can move like a boxer because he is a licenced middleweight boxer.
“I am a five time Golden Glove champion and hold the record for never losing a fight in 30 years and losing only one in 37 years. “And the fella who beat me? I’m looking for him right now. I have two retirements fights this year,” he joked.
So what else does Jameson do? “I praise the Lord all the time. Every day man.” He said in the US he sold drugs in his teenage years.
“I had cars, women, money. All that is gone now. Here may not be like the US but the Lord put food on my table and a roof over my head and gave me a beautiful daughter.” He lives in Belmont Valley Road.
Jameson said he was always getting into trouble in the US but hasn’t had one bad incident for the 11 years he has been in Trinidad.
“If I was in the US I might have been in prison or dead.
“Man’s mind is so finite he cannot see God’s bigger picture for us. “I am thankful to the Lord.”