The test kite was damaged from the journey, so we had no time to waste. The next morning, we started rummaging through our aunt’s yard looking for old box boards to cut and make parts for our broken kite. We found a few pieces and with a cutlass started chopping down on the wood.
We looked round and there was this tall skinny man
pointing at us. “Stop that racket, is what you all, think you doing?”
We replied, “We’re trying to repair our kite”.
“Oh! I see” he said, “Come here let me help you all. I am the Kite Man. Wait here, Ah gon bring out my favorite knife Baby Gal! Boys she is the sharpest gal I ever had, when she cuts, she cuts real clean and smooth”. I use am to chop up nuff of them”. “Bring them boards, leh me help you all build a big man kite”.
His fingers were long, and his hands were steady as he chopped and planed the boards to be used for our kite. “Go get me some pace. Pacie is a gummy sticky fruit that grew on a large tree in Aunt Sybil’s yard. So we climbed the pacie tree and picked as many bunches of pacie as we could, as fast as possible, because red ants were biting us on all parts. Red ants always bite you in parts unmentionable. Red ants live in pacie trees, they love the fruit because it is so sweet.
Next we had to cut some bamboo to make the ‘bull’ of the kite. We then asked our mother for a few dollars and ran down to Main Street to buy some kite paper to place on the kite frame. Because the kite was so big we could not use our crochet # 0 twine, we had to buy a thicker twine more like a fine rope. Then for the tail we cut some old clothes and joined the pieces together. But the Kite Man said we had to get some rope so we found a big old rope in the yard and split it in two to make the tail. The Kite man said “I is a fight man and we gon battle any bad man kite that challenge we on the Back Dam tomorrow”.
Attached illustration for Once upon an Easter. Also Painting Dengulae which is now on sale for $2500.00. Please feel free to inbox on any at shown on my blogs.
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