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 started to make my own mas'

I started to make my own mas' was when we did not play mas' one year, and we went and we played with Merry Makers. I couldn't bend wire that good to make a helicopter. I said to Buree, "Bend out a helicopter like this here." When I reached, I decided to strip down the helicopter and duplicate the parts, part by part. When I was finished taking out all the parts, I mounted back the one that he made. I mounted up my own, but what I did was improvise quite a lot of my own, by putting on a dash board, steering wheel and so on to make it look real. I took it back to him and told him, "Look ah make this one." He said, "You make this one?" I told him yes. He said, "You sure you made this one? Alright sit down there." He gave me wire and I made it. I made it so good he couldn't believe it.

I will tell you a story that I do not bring up too often. But everything that reached to the top, everything that made the grade, everything that gets honored everybody wants. Like the steelband, I have a paper with Ellie Mannette like he claiming all. Not so, there are so many inputs from different people. I can remember making a mas' for George Bailey in Queen Street, a helicopter. There was a conflict with a guy named Peter Villaran who was the Fire Chief at the time and used to live on Queen Street, he has resigned. He played Indian and I played Fancy Sailor. Later on he started telling people that he made the mas' for George Bailey. I said, "But how you would make a mas' for George Bailey if you playing Indian and I playing Fancy Sailor?" He said, "I say I didn't want to make it". I said, "Man doh give me that." I never really carried it on anymore, and I hardly mentioned it. Some of the people know that he played and I said that I made it. That was the end of the story and I never encouraged it, but I knew that I made it.

From then on we came back and the first big mas' I made I can remember. But coming back to Buree, we played Coach and Carriage like the queen coronation thing. There were four of us with that type of mas'. Buree, Vivian, myself, and so on. I remember there was a man they called Simon, who was the best Clown man in those days. I did not know that angel hair that you put on the Christmas tree used to itch so much. Buree decided that we would take the wire and we would cover from inside, we could also take the wadding that you put on the shoulders, and then spray it, which was how we did it before we came to all these nice modern parts. He said we would put it here; we would put the fiberglass, and wrapping this in red, white and blue braid, which came from one of the old stores before they closed down. After we wrapped all of that, and when the sun had hit it, it was beautiful.

There was a fella named George who was a shoemaker. He used to make mas' too, and he made a mas' for Smithy. Smithy had a nice mas' but he had to bend it out of soft wire and while dancing it collapsed. He took the stick that he was dancing with and he pushed it up and it went off all right. Bakey Nose now, was coming up the road and as he reach by a well known rum shop back then, his wadding started to fly and when you looked at it all you could see was cardboard. People started to tease him and say, "After you spend all that money, look what the man give you."

We played a mas' called Operation Korea when the war was going on, which was with the same 'Facinators'. We had people in the band like Geraldo Vieira, Cito, Roy Romain and those guys. In those days we had the cream of the wire benders. We stopped Belmont from playing Fancy Sailors; the same Jason and those fellas, because we started coming with a massive amount of Fancy Sailors. Our band was small, about thirty or forty people, but when you line up, the size of the mas' was something else. Then you had other bands that came up like 'Desperadoes' and those fellas from behind the bridge. Skerrit and them played 'Cash Registers'. 'Elephants' and they were also Woodbrook bands that played. In those days King Sailor was the norm.

When I got into full swing, is when we played Operation Korea and I could not get the mas' to come out of my mother's house because it was made so big. I had a pulley and I used to pull it up, so when I go to work I would pull it up and tie it. We used to meet the big mas' when the band came down on Duncan Street into Queen Street. When you play big mas' you do not go up, they come to meet you, who living near will come down with the band. I hear them saying, "Senor, look the band coming boy," and another one saying, "Bend the mas'." But how I could have bent it, I would have mashed up my costume. There was a guy on the opposite side and he came over and asked, "Who is the owner of that mas'?" I said, "Why?" But you know when there is excitement, you do not see things in proper persepective, but he was on the outside, and he showed me what to do to fix the mas' and it really came out. From then on I became a crack shot in the band then. The bigger fellas like Nobel, Lamy and Max and them used to come around when mas' was making and if your mas' was not looking good, they would tell you one time, "Doh bring that in the band yuh know, make something good, if you can't get something good we will help you, but doh bring that."

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