Kite Flying In America, Part II

Part II

In kite building, fine tuning is crucial.  For example, we learned that our kite was useless without the proper tension on the piece of string tied to both ends of the horizontal cross member that was bowed to create the concave shape of an airworthy kite.  String it too loose, and it wouldn’t fly at all; Too tight, and it might break in half on takeoff.  Tying the proper knots for your kite probably qualified you for a merit badge, not that we cared. 

The Diamond Bow Kite

 

And of course, there were accessories: everybody would attach some token to their kite: a GI Joe figure, a sticker, or some other small item that would be found when the kite finally landed, hopefully many miles away. 

All of these were preliminaries though, because everybody knew that a well engineered kite required a well engineered tail, and kite tails - fashioned from long thin strips of knotted bed sheet - did not grow on trees.  Nobody's Mom willingly retired a bed sheet back in those days, and when she did, she had a dozen different uses for it.  You might get first dibs for your kite tail, and maybe an extra few feet as you described the need for a little more ballast in order to go really high and really long, but woe unto you if you lost it.  There might not be a replacement the rest of the summer, and you would be relegated to paying some exorbitant price to the rare kid in your Hood who had a spare, or the one kid who’s Mom didn’t guard the household linens quite as religiously as yours did.

That is the origin of the phrase “losing your tail”, by the way.  You can look it up.

Losing your tail was a revolting development, and if you couldn’t find a replacement, you might be relegated to Wing Man status for the rest of the summer, spotting for your friends, holding the line while they tied on another roll of string, and perhaps even staging downwind for the Big Release and Recovery; Anything to stay in the game, but this sorry state made you an object of pity amongst your friends, kind of like the kid who sucked at Dodge Ball.  You know the one I’m talking about: Slow, unaggressive, the perpetual target resigned to his fate and just wanting it to all be over so he could get tagged early and slink to the sidelines, free from the performance anxiety that was so crucial to the game.  Anyway. 

Kite flying was serious business for the entire neighborhood.  Whole Saturdays and Sundays were devoted to the sport, with a half dozen kites going down the length of the street.  We flew exclusively on the street, by the way.  There were no parks of any size close to us, and precious few of those amenable to kite flying, Detroit being so very much a city of trees, at least back then.  Off-hand I can think of only two parks that were any good for kite flying – Farwell Park and some sections of Palmer Park, and both of those were a couple miles away from our neighborhood.  Besides, your typical city street was perfect for kite flying not only because it had a long flat runway, but also because there was a break in the canopy directly above the street.  Charles Schultz was entirely in the right of it when he portrayed the frustrations of Charlie Brown and the Kite Eating Tree.  None of that was an exaggeration.

On the street, everybody observed protocols that would have made the FAA proud.  There were up to four “runways” lined up vertically the length of the block, and nobody who started on one runway ever encroached on another; if you ran out of room, you lugged it back to the bottom of your runway and started over.  No additional flights were allowed until the previous takeoff had caught the good air above about 50 feet, at which point it generally stabilized.  Kids intending to extend their string beyond the 100 yard standard had to be staged the furthest downwind, so as not to tangle with anybody else. 

In essence, kite fliers duplicated modern air traffic control procedures without ever having been exposed to them.

We all prayed for wind.  With even a modest but steady breeze, you only needed about a hundred feet to run like crazy up the street, play out the kite as it rose and pray for it to get above the housetops, where the sweet, self-sustaining wind could be found. 

In our youth, Kite flying was the ultimate form of recreation, even for reasons we little understood.  Parents would happily boot us outside, knowing full well that we weren't going far, we would get exercise, we would be safe, and we would be absorbed in something that was demonstrably harmless - the complaints of the occasional motorist or homeowner with a tree notwithstanding.  As an added bonus, we would be out from underfoot for hours at a time, giving Mom and Dad some precious Alone Time. 

Everybody pitched in. The adults came out onto their porches to watch, shouting out helpful advice, but leaving the kids to themselves to do the engineering and the math necessary for a successful flight.  I always wondered why our next door neighbor Mr. Wilson was out on the porch at the very start of a kite flying Saturday, whereas Mom and Dad wouldn't show up until about an hour later.  I figured it was because he was a retiree and simply had more time on his hands. 

And yes, we really did have a next door neighbor named Mr. Wilson.  He had a son named Tommy who at age twelve shared with me - then an eight year old - everything he knew about sex.  Tommy Wilson was the kid who explained why the instructions for the kite were only pictures, so by now we’ve established that he was a spectacular font of misinformation and half-truths.  It didn’t matter.  Tommy made these proclamations with the authority that only a twelve year old could muster, and I remember verbatim everything he told me about sex.  It was hysterically wrong.  It didn't affect my well-being at all, but it did take me and my friends another decade to get reasonably accurate information on the subject. 

But that will have to be the subject of another Blog at some future date….