My name is Michael George and I making kites since I was ten years old. Sixty-two years making kites. My specialty is a red-white-and-black Trini kite.
I know it have a singer-fella named George Michael. He have my name, but back-to-front.
Boy days in East Dry River was nice. We used to play "water-bag." You fill a little plastic bag with water and run down one another pelting it.
We used to make tamarind-come-for-tea with pepper, salt and pot soda. Mix up everything. Them times gone. People don't make nothing again. They go and buy it in the shop.
We used to play football in the Dry River. I never fall down in the X-shape. When rain fall and river come down from St Ann's, it full, and the whole Dry River bottom cover. So you now, who born around, have to know that this is the centre of the X-shape. Where the water escape, nuh.
I learn to make scooter, trolley, box-cart, all them things from older fellas who teach me. If I ask my grandchildren to make a kite for me, they going to look for evil-stick glue. We never know 'bout that. A pound of flour them days was four cents. You mix up your flour, get your aloes, cut it, slice it, put it on the fire. When that boil, you let it cool and start to make your kite.Plenty patient you have to have, to make small kite.
Most of the time, I will make kite with Trinidad flag for Easter.
If I walking on the road a morning, regardless whether my mother and this lady here don't speak, I have to say, "Morning" to her. I am a child and she is an adult. You get into a maxi or taxi right now, you will say, "Morning," the people wouldn't answer. But it in me, still. My mother die when I was a little boy, so I grow with a sister and a grandmother. Everything I learned, in the way of manners, is from this lady.
I buy ice cream, penna cool and juice for grandchildren. Penna cool. Jelly cup. Only on a Sunday/public holiday, I give them ice cream. That is how my sister and grandmother bring me up: on a Sunday, public holiday, you have that.
Some of the fellas I come up with, they die. Because why? They taking cocaine, want to live like if they is 15, 16. You can't do that. You can't eat your cake and still have it.
A baby now come out of it mother womb. By tomorrow, that baby start to age. Some of my friends, they dye their hair, shave their beard and moustache. Because they don't want John Public to see that they old. Regardless of how much shave a mister shave he head or a woman dye hers, the age still show. Watch under they eye. As you see people with sink under they neck, they cross age 40.
We had a old steelband they called "Casablanca," based not too far from which part I born. I'm a Renegades supporter but I don't go these places again. I trying to live a life now that is pleasing to my God. My belief in life is: 1. I will see Jesus Christ at some particular time; 2. He is around me at all times. For what I pass through, he is around me at all times.
The best thing, for me, in making kite, is to see children happy. The onliest bad part in making kite is when it get cut.One of the greatest joys in life is to raise a kite and slack it out. I like kite. I will cut a kite and let it go free.
A kite in the air have no owner. That is the amusement when we was small. You can't say, "I ent playing no cut." Waste of time: your kite going! It have friendlies in marble but it have no friend in kite.
Every Carnival, when everybody else hustling to buy costume, I sit down home and make kite. If I see my kite flying anywhere, I recognise it as my kite: that is my blend.
I have dogs and the names I give them, I see on TV: Hitman! These is the things the young people see on TV and they fall in love with it and live that legacy.
I's buy six-seven movies and carry home. But all the movies is pure violence. Look how long I ent see a good Tarzan! Johnny Weissmuller, Larry Buster Crabbe. You don't see that no more.
A Trini is a fella who like freedom.
I love my country. But it shocking to me to see the changes.
Read a longer version of this feature at www.BCRaw.com. To order a Trinidad & Tobago kite ring Mr Mikey @ 373-2616