I don’t remember what year or how old i was, but I do remember my first kite. It was a warm spring day probably in March or April with fairly good winds, and the skies were filled with kites. I would wee them in the parks and being flown from schoolyards. Oh, how I wanted to fly one.
I asked my mother and my father about getting one, but there was no money to buy one. As a child I didn’t understand these things and couldn’t comprehend why I couldn’t have one. I remember reading about how people would have kite fights and thought about how much fun this would be. But it looked like there was going to be no days like that.
Then out of the blue my dad asked me to go with him. We went outside and we went up to one of the trees in the backyard and dad cut several branches from the tree. These were taken inside and he gathered some newspaper string and glue. Then on the kitchen table he made a cross with two of the branches which he had stripped into straight sticks. He then notched the four ends of the sticks and strung string around the perimeter. He then laid out a full sheet of newspaper and cut it just about an inch larger than the diamond shape of the sticks and string. He then applied paste along the edge of the paper and folded it over the string.
When it had dried, he made a tail out of some old rags and tied them to the bottom of the kite. Somewhere he came up with a ball of string and tied it to the main branch of the kite.
We went over to an empty parking lot and miracle of miracles it flew. I stilll remember how awesome this feat of my dad was.
