This being Heritage Month, when we celebrate the rich mixture of our culture, what better way to reflect on the unique lifestyle of St. David's Island and its inhabitants than to sit down with Mrs. Polly Lamb, who has lived there all her life. This is her story, as shared with Lifestyle reporter Nancy Acton.

Eighty-six year old Polly Lamb doesn't so much talk as give a recital. Like so many genuine St. David's Islanders she is a born raconteur who loves nothing better than sharing her tales and memories with anyone who cares to listen.

And indeed, listening is by far the wisest course to take, for Mrs. Lamb's keen mind pursues a labrynthine trail as her stories unfold in true St.

David's style, which is as delightful as it is fascinating. All it takes is a simple question here and there to keep the dialogue flowing.

Ask her about her nickname, for example, and this is what you get: "I was born in 1914,'' she begins, "and there was a ship that sank off here.

They said it was full of horses and the poor sights drowned. It was named Evelyn, so my mamma turned right 'roun' and named me after a stupid ship! "Then there was this old, fat woman named Sophie Richardson. She named me Polly when I was small. When I asked her `Why?' she said, `Well, you always talk a lot!' "So my real name is Evelyn Ursula Vivian, and they call me Polly. Now what sense is it having three names?'' One of four daughters and a son born to Stuart and Kathleen Minors, little Polly grew up in a home where solid values and hard work were taught from an early age, and where wealth was measured in terms of human kindness and simple pleasures rather than money in the bank.

With no bridge connecting the easternmost end of the Island to the mainland, the St. David's community was resourceful and largely self-sufficient -- a place where neighbour helped neighbour, and everyone was a friend.

But life also had its sadness and harsh realities, and the little girl came to know both.

"I was very young when my only brother Billy was lost at sea,'' she recalls.

"The boat he was on was named The Cramp and it was really broken down. They'd hardly got out of sight of Bermuda when the bottom dropped out and everyone was drowned, poor sights.'' Animals -- cows, pigs, chickens and goats -- were the stock-in-trade of most households, providing food, milk and eggs for what were often very large families. Like everyone else, Polly often witnessed their slaughter, and the memories of the occasions when death was incorrectly dealt haunt her to this day.

School days were an integral part of the no-frills St. David's lifestyle, providing both education and adventure, which Mrs. Lamb recalls fondly.

"It was a wooden school right by the AME Church, and Eva Minors was my teacher. She had one great big room, and I never forgot her. When it was cold, she'd keep certain ones back and give them soup, and the others she'd let go home for lunch. Many a time she fed us. Sometimes she gave us a big party, and girl, she would cook up a storm!'' Like most children, Polly and her siblings had to return home after school to address the continuous round of chores which helped support the household.

"My mamma owned a little restaurant called The Log Cabin. It was given to her by Robert Fox, Tommy's brother, and because it was on Government property she had to pay sixpence a year for being there,'' Mrs. Lamb relates.

Mrs. Minors also made her own ginger beer, for which procuring the green ginger from faraway Hamilton took a whole day and involved travelling by boat, ferry, horse and trolley.

"Mamma would leave home at 6 a.m. and get back at night, then we children would have to mash it up with a rolling pin on a big breadboard,'' Mrs. Lamb remembers. "After that she'd boil it up and transfer it to a big crock. Then she'd add sugar, tartar acid and yeast cake, put the top on it, and leave it for a couple of days. When she saw it foaming, that was the time to bottle it up, and girl, I'm gonna to tell you, sometimes that cork would go right to the ceiling!'' In addition, the busy mother made her own syrups for snowballs, cooked for two pilots several days a week, and took in laundry for a world-famous scientific team.

"Mamma washed Dr. Beebe's clothes. He'd always have a gurt big basket of laundry, and she'd scrub the clothes on a washboard -- we didn't have no washing machines in them days, you know,'' Mrs. Lamb recounts. "I had to do all of the women's clothes -- silk undervests and like that. Sometimes we'd find money in the clothes, and mamma would put it in an envelope.

"We would take the basket down to the wharf and let it stay there all day.

You couldn't do that today, no sir! Mamma would call over and tell them where the money was hidden in the basket, and they appreciated everything we did. We worked hard, let me tell you.'' On Sundays, the children attended the Chapel of Ease. Following Sunday school in the afternoon, they would walk to Ship Point and pick freesias in season, or maybe visit a Mrs. Fox whose garden was always full of tempting fruit, including juicy Surinam cherries.

"She always told us to pick as much as we wanted,'' Mrs. Lamb remembers.

"She drowned you know.'' Years passed and romance entered the young woman's life in the form of Franshaw Lamb.

"I knew Franshaw growing up and then he went away. One Sunday morning I went to hang something on the line and I saw this boat with sails coming up by Cooper's Island. It was the Catherine May. She wasn't up to the mark you know, and just made it in. That evening, Franshaw came up to the house -- I don't know why. He said, `I saw this nice little girl sitting off,' and that's how come I got in with him.'' Their four-year courtship, highlighted by trips to the silent movies in St.

George's, ended at the altar. Wearing a dress made by Mabel and Myrtle Fox, and attended by two of her sisters, Nina and Ivy, the young bride was duly married by "Parson Tucker'' (Canon Arthur Tucker).

"He had me on my knees so long I could hear them playing a tune, sing-song, sing-song,'' Mrs. Lamb laughs. "Franshaw died last April, and I would have been married 67 years come July 20.'' So does she still have her wedding pictures? "Girl,'' she exclaims, "we didn't bother with no pictures in them days!'' Mrs. Lamb went on to give birth to six children, of whom Nelson, Rodney, Dora and Ursula survived, and despite having the use of only one arm from babyhood, she proudly declares that she not only raised her children successfully, but also did all the housework, "including the starching and ironing'' herself, and was a fine cook.

She also developed a life-long love of fishing, and has a host of anecdotes to prove it.

"One night Brownie, my daughter-in-law, Nelson and I anchored off. I was leaning over the side of the boat setting my line out when Brownie said, `It feels like my line is hooked','' Mrs. Lamb relates. "Nelson said, `Well, pull it in then,' and girl, this thing came up and blowed right in my face. I dropped my line right then and there, and what do you think it was? A gurt loggerhead turtle! He went right back in the water, and do you know Brownie caught him three times? You can't eat 'em, you know -- they taste too fishy -- and he just didn't want to go away.'' Having lived in a very unique area of Bermuda all her life, there isn't much about its goings-on, past or present, that Mrs. Lamb can't tell you.

She recalls with sadness how her late husband, among others, lost the "beautiful land'' they owned at what became the US base, and how they never received payment for it, but had to endure life in barracks-style accommodation while the Bermuda Government erected "a bunch'' of identical little cottages to rehouse the displaced families.

The advent of the bridge connecting St. David's Island to the mainland also wrought unwelcome changes, just as she envisaged.

Witnessing the ribbon-cutting ceremony from Ship Point -- "God there were some people there that day'' -- the young wife and mother predicted: "Now Mr.

Foreign (pronounced `Fern') is coming over to St. David's and take over.'' Indeed, its advent changed forever the old landscape and lifestyle.

"I remember when we were young you could count the houses on St. David's, but now they've got a lot of people coming over here who don't even speak. It's pretty rotten. They aren't St. David's Islanders, and there's so much of this drug business. It's terrible.'' Although Mrs. Lamb no longer has the use of her arms and legs, and gets about by wheelchair, she takes a lively interest in everything around her, and her sharp mind can skillfully interweave memories of the past with commentaries on the present, take phone calls, and greet a never-ending stream of droppers-in, virtually without pause.

Thus you learn of the woman who lived in a two-room wooden house and cooked for her family of 14 children on a one-burner, kerosene camping stove; of another whose baby "just dropped out'' while she was hanging up clothes, and was promptly cradled in the laundry basket at her feet; of Mrs. Lamb giving birth alone to one of her daughters on the floor; of her son being the only one of her children born in hospital after a protracted journey on foot, by boat and ambulance.

There was the unreliable maid with no clue about housekeeping and legs full of "vertical'' veins; a deaf friend who carries her $2000 hearing aid in her purse because she maintains "it's like a bunch of bees in her head'' when she wears it; and the late Tommy Fox who went to the ferry dock every day to collect fresh meat, which he wore on his neck to "treat'' his cancer and therefore "lived for years''.

Ever since her late husband was the lighthouse keeper and sent a stream of visitors to their home with the invitation, "Come on down, the price is right,'' the open-door policy at Mrs. Lamb's home continues, and she is never alone. Most passers-by toot, whether or not she is on her porch, although some process in silence.

"Oh, there goes the army,'' she remarks of a young family trooping by unseen.

"They go to the beach every day, you know.'' On Mother's Day the grandmother of eight was showered with flowers, cards and kisses by various members of her family and neighbours.

"She is our queen,'' they assured.

Suddenly, the telephone rings.

"Oh my gracious, how you, bye?'' Mrs. Lamb begins.

It is time to leave.

Main photo by Ras Mykkal, other photos courtesy of Mrs. Ronnie Chameau.

Still smilin' after all these years: Octagenarian Mrs. Polly Lamb (main picture) is a born raconteur who loves sharing stories about her long life in St. David's. These include (top left photo) a childhood shared with mother Kathleen (centre) and sister Nina (right), and as a young bride (bottom left).

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