…Spirit
It is the spirit within us that makes us, human.
It is the fuel of discovery, the fuel of art, the fuel of music, philosophy, adventure, risk, dreams and goals.
It is why we have this symbol…“?”
It is language, it is writing, it is 2+2, science, knowledge and the why behind our gazing upon the stars.
There sits in a museum a tiny seashell with a geometric pattern carved on it and science has dated the shell and the carvings to at least HALF-A-MILLION YEARS AGO.
There is within our DNA, intwined in the double helix of all of us, Simply…Spirit.
Human Spirit.
There was a blind man who built kites…
…he could never see fly.
“Doesn’t matter to the kites whether I can see or not, all that matters to the kites I build is that they can fly.”
And fly they did.
Huh, what, kites, blind guys, say what…yeah, I’ll back this up fill ya in some.
Here goes…
I am 16 years old and I have 4 jobs…
…on Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings I put on a white jump suit and a mask and walk into an automotive paint booth and prime cars about to be painted, I then in the afternoon drive to Sears Roebuck on Main Street in Buffalo and sell records and phonographs…I do this to get High School credits in a program called: Work Study.
They are teaching me about something I never figured out.
I also have a job at the Delaware YMCA as a part time back desk attendant (hand towels to people) part time Lifeguard and in the summer a camp counselor.
At the “Y” I made $1.25 an hour.
Painting cars and selling records I made $1.65 an hour.
On Saturday & Sunday I delivered pizza’s. I got paid cash. Lots.
When I turned 17, I got another job…I was a bartender on “Nickel Beer Night” at a gin mill a friend of mine owned.
My main job was to man the draft beer taps, I got that job because I had a motorcycle and a motorcycle helmet which I wore on “Nickel Beer Night” because people would throw nickels at the bar for beer and I was okay with that because the nickels would just bounce off my motorcycle helmet and into the bar ice.
I got paid cash for that too until I turned 18 and could legally be in the joint not to mention behind the bar.
BTW…I came up with the most famous drink in the gin mill, I called it a “19.” My famous drink was this a “7 & 7”…with a nickel in the ice in the glass.
Payback for all the nicks on my motorcycle helmet.
“Hey Bones delivery for Cheese Pepperoni Hot Peppers guy ready to go…”
“Bones” was my nickname back then, I was once real skinny, 28 inch waist when I got married…get over it, shit happens.
It was Saturday, late afternoon, C.P.H.P guy was a regular, same time every Saturday, 4 blocks down Delaware Avenue then through a side door and up a flight of stairs to a spacious apartment above a tailor shop.
Top of the landing was a small table that had a pewter plate sitting on it filled with change and some dollar bills…you took the money it took for the pie, left the rest…unless…
“Hey Bones, that you out there.”
“Yeah man I’m taking all your money and leaving a pie with a slice or two missing…”
“Ha, hey you got time…”
Every late Saturday afternoon I had time.
Time for a blind guy who made kites.
His entire flat was enclosed in glass…
…it was basically one big room with several huge picture windows along 3 sides, best view on the block for a man who never saw it.
Up against the 4 picture windows that looked out over the Village of Kenmore he had placed 3 very large oak tables that held all the materials that one day would become a kite.
There was one tiny gooseneck light in the room, attached to the middle “building” table, not placed there for him, but placed there for me, “the only delivery guy with time.”
Robert is what he said his name was, it might have been, it might not have been, “It was given to me by the nuns at the orphanage, my parents may have given me another name but they took that back when they found out I was blind at birth.”
I never saw a birthday card in his glass house, never saw a Christmas Card, Hanukkah Card or any other mail that looked the least bit personal.
No family, no mail, just a check from the state.
Robert was old, real old, didn’t know his exact age but I always thought he was around 28 or 29 maybe even 30!
I was pretty much a punk at the time, gang member, other things, wound tight and dangerous, Robert always said, “Keep Bones outside, you’ll have plenty of time to be angry, plenty of time to add to the pass-around hurt.”
In the middle of the room was a dining room table, a large table with fancy legs, “It seats 8 you know,” I did know that, also knew there was never more than two chairs and two red checked placemats on which every Saturday there were two glass bottles, one of Pepsi, one of Coke.
I always poured his Pepsi first.
“What’s your poison today young man.” Told you he was old.
The longer it took me to answer, the bigger his smile, “So…”
“…all of it.”
“Ah wise choice, the orchestra…”
It was the same choice I made every late Saturday afternoon in the 2nd floor glass flat above the tailor shop…
“Close your eyes young Bones…”
And so I did.
“…so you can see the music like I do.”
Sometimes it began with a clarinet.
Other times…
…a saxophone would come out of the “music closet,” depending on his mood, the “Sax” was my favorite because it was apparent it was his favorite as well, the mouthpiece for it was always kept in wood box lined with the purple & gold velvet pouch of Crown Royal Whiskey.
Something was up though, he only played a song or two on each instrument even to the point of playing…
…jazz on an old blues harp he found on the grounds of the “Big House (orphanage)”
“You ok,” I asked while picking off the hot peppers from my slice and tossing them onto his slices.
He just looked at where he thought I was which was about 3 feet from where I was at.
“What’s up.”
“Wanna play you something and ask you something.”
This was new, old people never asked me anything other than whether I was the one who did it or not.
Oh…’Ol Red, huh…
“Bones I heard this song the other day…”
Music was the air he breathed, the Magnavox console in the corner never stopped unless the small GE transistor radio was plugged into his ears…sometimes when I arrived both were playing TWO DIFFERENT SONGS.
Times when I opened the door quietly I caught him dancing, holding an imaginary partner and spinning around inside his upstairs flat of glass.
“Listen to this song, close you eyes so you can see it…”
And then suddenly he started playing and singing…SINGING something he had never done before: “Ah but I may as well try and catch the wind…” I recognized the song right away, “Catch the Wind” by Donovan played on a very old broken guitar with loose strings.
When the song ended came this: “Bones, can you help me, can you please, I want to for one time take my kites and, and, please, please, I just want to one day catch the wind.”
“…and catch the wind.”
It was Robert who taught me to not just hear the music but to see it as well, to close my eyes and let the sound and the meaning engulf me, to use “…it as your safe place, as your place of calm and peace.”
And now he stood a few feet from me in the middle of Buffalo’s beautiful Delaware Park, and above him a white box kite that he made just for this moment, caught for Robert…
…the wind.
When he asked me for this favor I told him, “stay here, don’t go anywhere,” to which if “duh” had been invented in 1968 he would have said it.
30 minutes later I came back on a motorcycle and said, “you ever been on a motorcycle before…”
“…um…”
And so I put a non nickel scared helmet on him, told him to “make sure that kite doesn’t fly before you want it to…” and took off down Delaware Avenue to the park.
“How much time we got Bones,” he yelled as he stood in the grass smiling upward at his kite in the wind.
I never answered him, would leave the time element up to him and the wind.
It is the spirit within humans that allow us to reach for the wind.
It was a blind man who taught me to see the wind and to know it was catchable.
He did so not with lectures but with music, did so with paper, sticks and rolls of string.
And a breeze.
It was once again late Saturday, “Hey Bones here’s the cheese pepperoni and hot pepper pie…”
So I took it, took it not to a glass enclosed flat above above a tailor shop but to Lockport, New York and a cemetery that in the back had an overgrown, lonely grave.
And on that grave I left the pizza box this late summer Saturday afternoon.
Cheese, Pepperoni and Hot Peppers.
It was simply…
…simply a blind man who showed me the spirit within us all.
It was simply…
…simply up to an orphan to know that if you caught the wind it was here to stay and would not abandon you.
Which is why the blind man, kept building kites.
Simply…
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