When we last left our New Year’s Doll…
He was lyin’ around.
New Year’s Eve, and it was time to get with the proceedings…
Stuffing the doll with bags of sawdust…
And fireworks. All homemade right here in town. Five bags of them, mixed in with the sawdust. Crazy, right???? But the anticipation of the coming events held me in a charm.
Once the doll was good n’ hefty, he went outside, on display. Lots of dolls throughout town. All pretty unique.
Part of the tradition is to put witty, irreverent, sometimes a bit sexually tinged signs on the doll. I stenciled ‘No entiendo Español, pero, yo quiero.’ Which means ‘I don’t understand Spanish, but, I want to.’ Yes, I aimed to blow up my lack of Spanish knowledge.
And so we wait.
until
Noise, noise and more noise! We (Robert, Hector, Yamileth, Carlos and I) ran up to the plaza to alight our doll. It needed gas to get going…
And it blew up alright. I think it could have used more gas to really ignite. There were kids getting into the doll to snag the fireworks that didn’t go off. Tricky stuff.
Below is about a minute of film of the doll doing his thing. Bye-bye 2009. Out with some bangs.
