The fluffy curls atop his head immediately reminded me of balls of white cotton found in the fields of my former homeland, places I readily admit now lie there only in the afternoon thoughts of an aging middle-aged man who is convinced he gets younger by the hour. Of course he too is fooled as we all are in the end by our own destiny.

The white hair belongs to a man named Harvey Trapp. This day he is unruffled by the previous days hard work which ended in a car wreck in of all places a place called Cattle Landing, an incident that amounted to missing a right turn Mr. Trapp had negotiated time and again. Regarding the accident, seventy four years young Harvey Trapp of Sittee River, Stann Creek District Belize, confessed with his hearty smile, "Man, I always count my blessins..."

On this particular day as luck would have for Mr Trapp, the father to some thirty plus children and grandfather to at least three times that number, the Belikin beer bottles and the malato rum bottles were full for all those that could make their way to Miss Flordesitas cool spot there highwayside in the village of Jacintoville. The celebration was enough to bring Trapp from his current home in Punta Gorda to milepost seven heading north on the Southern Highway.

And so as each new round of drinks arrived to the crowded table in the back corner, the party revellers continued to sing along with Mr. Trapp, singing out countless choruses of "Que Sera, Sera, Whatever will be, will be". All the while as the choruses filled the bar room, Mr. Trapp was flailing relentlessly on three of the four possible strings located there on the tattered four string banjo. As Mr. Trapp played away on his old banjo, the sounds were accompanied by the contrasting chords of an offbeat but close to perfect harmony of his sidekick's Charlie's guitar.

Charlie and Mr. Harvey Trapp knew really all to well what to expect of each other, having worked side by side for many years in the construction business, the two were now inseparable. Therefore, besides being an excellent builder and housing contractor as well as a noted banjo picker, so were a few of my favourite reasons for choosing Mr. Trapp to build my first house.