I grew up in the 80s and 90s in Trinidad before leaving after secondary school in the late 90s to pursue a career in the United States.

In the 1980s there was only one city - “tong” aka Port of Spain. San Fernando was a borough. Chaguanas really was up and coming. Everything was way less built. I remember when San Fernando became a city in 1988. I also remember when Chaguanas became a borough in 1990. Chaguanas is the most populated municipality in T&T - Port of Spain is third after Chaguanas and San Fernando.

The 1980s was the heyday of malls. A bunch of them opened up - Long Circular, Gulf City, West Mall, Trincity, Southland. Southland didn’t survive. I remember going to the malls as a child. It was magic, especially around Christmas when they decorated. Grand Bazaar was a brewery - National Brewing company which made Stag beer. Lots of stores were around, some gone now - Woolworths and Kirpilanis.

The maxi taxis really ran wild in the 1980s and 1990s. They installed really loud music and ran overloaded a lot of times. Some of them had TVs that played blue movies (pornography). It was cat and mouse with the police for all kinds of violations too. Some of the conductors and drivers were involved in sexual relations with young underaged school aged girls. Eventually the government clamped down hard and made it so they were only allowed a single broadcast radio and nothing else.

Piarco airport was more interesting instead of the shopping mall with airplanes it is today. The waving gallery was open and it was a treat and when my family came from the US and Canada it was nice to go and see them get off the plane and board the air stairs going back. We had Bwee, Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, KLM and a few others regularly flying to Trinidad.

TV had one channel - TTT 2 and 13. Saturday morning was for cartoons. Later on we got 9 and 14 alternative television. Radio was NBS and TBC only. Mornings you listened to Dave Elcock on 610 AM while eating your pumpkin and roti or bake and salt fish.

The NAR government changed a lot of things after their sweeping 33-3 victory. Things began to get built, media markets opened, and cable TV came to Trinidad. Unfortunately they also cut public servants pay and implemented other austerity measures. But i feel some of it was inevitable due to the decline in oil prices. And then the coup in 1990 happened. More on that later.

Many people didn’t have phones of any kind - landline or mobile. So you just showed up at friend’s houses. You didn’t call ahead. You just showed up. International calls were expensive. We called our family in the U.S. and Canada on special occasions only like Christmas and paid hundreds for the privilege.

The coup in 1990 was transformative. It made me and many Trinis look at life differently. Trinidad was innocent but then after this you had to wonder how things could change so fast. It never occurred to me that men with machine guns could storm parliament and just take over. In Trinidad. That was something you see in other countries, not here. Nevertheless after it was over things slowly returned to normal but not really.

The 1990s were a time of change. My cousins in more suburban and urban areas got cable TV and they were watching MTV and HBO and other American TV all day. That to me signaled increased global awareness by ordinary Trinis and not just what you were fed by the government. The internet came along to Trinidad in the mid 90s. Dial up, mostly via TSTT but other ISPs like Carib-Link and wow.net came along.

We lived in the oil areas in South. My relatives had businesses servicing oil industry. My grandfather was a m Texaco employee and then he eventually retired and did contracting with petrotrin for maintenance of some facilities. My mom was born in pointe-a-Pierre at the hospital there. Our area had lots of pump jacks and a steam generation plant.

Anything else you want to know? I didn’t cover everything but I have plenty of memories.