Kite Flying

One of the things my brother and I did for many summers was fly kites. We would go to the 7-11 store and buy a paper triangle kite and a ball or two of string. The kite came rolled up with the paper of the kite wrapped around the two cross sticks. I would put them together, unrolling them, putting the paper on the sticks, bending it just the right amount by attaching a string across the two ends of the horizontal cross stick, and then attaching the bridle on the front which the kite string attached to. We would then get some rags and tear them into narrow strips and tie them together to make a tail. We would fly the kites usually in the front yard letting the fly high up above the houses. Sometimes the string would break and we would run as fast as we could chasing the kite as it fell to the ground. One of the other boys in the neighborhood, GooGoo was his nickname, would sometimes fly kites with us but he never was able to get his to fly as well. I remember one time he asked what he was doing wrong and I said that he had the wrong brand of kite so he went to the store and bought a new kite of the same brand as mine. He still couldn't get it to work so I told him it had to be the same color and off he went to get one of the same color and it didn't fly very well either. I was joking with him but he believed me. I really don't know why my kite flew better for I told him how to do everything I did to my kite.

In later years they came out with the delta wing kite. These were a big improvement over the old triangle kites for they flew much easier and higher. One time we set out beat the "record" for height. I think we got out four or five balls of string until the kite was little more than a dot in the sky. Another time we wanted to set the record for how long we flew the kite. We started in the morning and it flew it all afternoon. When evening came we decided to tie the string to a stake in the ground and leave it up all night. When we got up the next morning, it was gone. We traced the string over the house, across some trees, out into the field but it ended there, the kite never to be found.

I once made a parachute dropping invention which attached to the string a few feet from the kite. I could then attach a parachute to it, fly the kite up into the sky and then drop the parachute.