Señor Gomez Speaks on Mas'

Mr. and Mrs. Gomez

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Staff Article
Interview Recorded: May 15, 2005
Posted: June 12, 2005

I had nice school days

I am the type of person who doesn't go and make myself be recognized. I do not bring down anybody; I praise everybody, because I figure if all of us as tradesman in the art form, and you could do something better than me in certain ways and I could do something better than you. We are supposed to get together. For instance like how NCC is doing it now to bring back all the old time Carnival. They picked us, the fellas who going out to pass it on. For instance Cito really cannot do anything right now; he cannot hold a pliers because of arthritis. Since Cito got that, when I went by him I started to rub my hand and so on. There is a lot of zinc and all these things in the wires that come out after a while.

I remember year before when I made a Queen in St. Kitts, I was staying by a fella they called Stacy Hopson. His wife is a doctor over there ... she is the former Chief Justice daughter. I showed her my finger and she said it is called a trigger finger. I asked her how dangerous it was and she said, "Well you have to see about it because it is a part of arthritis." She said that I should keep working my fingers. When I went to St. Kitts, I went there through the government exchange of culture. I used to go to all the schools and I also worked for Stacy Hopson. We used to win Band of the Year and King and Queen, the biggest mas' they have ever seen. I made a mas' and when I mounted it up, they had asked how it will come out and they were worried. I didn't have them to study; they didn't know anything about fiberglass and these things.

A morning I got up to work and I was using cane and rain started falling, so I took the cane and I pelt it out in the yard. When evening came I picked it up and started to straighten it. A fella said, "Watch, you see what the man doing there, look he bending wood now." They didn't know about cane, the other people who were doing craft would know, the average person would not know.

All my life I have been going to these different places and making mas', I have been well treated, and I thank the Lord and Buree too, because he observed that I was interested. In those days when I was going to school, how much do you think I used to pay for that? It was twenty-five and fifty cents. We would roll the biscuit drums down by where the biscuit factory was on Duncan Street. After school we would go there and a big man used to be scraping and painting the drums, and a fella who was a big man in Sunrise would tell them to give the boys who rolling the drums a bag of biscuits. The same Texieria at the beer place, we used to go and give it to him, and on weekends he would give us a little fifty cents or a dollar. That was plenty money at that time.

I had nice school days. I went to school with fellas like Clinton Bernard, George Chambers, Lynton Brown, Ivan Williams and so on. I remember Donald Pierre taught Chambers in Nelson Street. He was the first Minister of Education and he lived on Duncan Street and Chambers was living in Jackson Place. I was in fourth standard and they were in seventh standard. I was a good athlete and I used to captain the football team and cricket team. I was sprinter and I used to run B-Class barefooted and beat the fellas. One year I won one hundred, two hundred and four hundred and they sent me to join Georgie Lewis Club with All Stars. Then I started to train and I drank oil and beetroot for the first time. I never went back the next day, and when the man saw me he said, "Gomez what happened?" I said, "Sir, that thing you gave me there, I have never eaten it." It bothered me right through because we didn't know, but I was a perfect athletic. They used to bring fellas for us to run corner to corner and I used to give them two bicycle lengths. I used to box also, and I used to beat up Boswell St. Louis and Jimmy Black and them. We used to train in City Council yard.

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