What happened to them?

March is the windy month and it certainly was windy here yesterday.  It got me to thinking about kites.

When I was a boy March was kite flying month.  The toy department at Woolworth had two kinds of kites.  The triangular kites for fifteen cents and box kites for a half dollar.  Box kites were wonderful flyers, even in a light wind.

Every kid in the neighborhood had a kite.  We flew them in school yards, empty lots, in the park, and down at the beach at Aquatic Park.

We used send messages up to our kites.  A small square of paper with a tear to the center and a hole in the middle.  We would slide the kite string through the tear up to the hole and the wind would carry that piece of paper all the way up to the kite.

I could never afford a box kite but I would go through two or three triangular kites a season.

Sometimes the would come down in someone's roof or get caught up in the wires strung along the telephone poles.

Most of us had the string wound around a stick and after being launched the string fed out quite easily.  But winding the string back up was a chore, especially if the kite was a high flyer.

You don't see kids flying kites anymore.  They probably have a kite flying game or app on computers now so kids don't have to go outside.

Noel

Edited March 15, 20224 yr by birdguy

I have a kite. It is about 3 foot across, two foot high. and looks like a great horned owl. It's a great wall decoration.

    My dad built a big box kite in 1961. It was about 4 ft tall and 2 ft square. We took it out once. Dad figured we had about a mile and a half of string out, when the string broke. Needless to say, it was not recovered. We didn't try. Dad was pretty sure we had strayed into the flight path for the Baltimore airport by then. We were about 4 miles north of what is now BWI.

LOL

 Sue

Edited March 15, 20224 yr by Penzoil3

My dad and I would go to the local empty lot (now a major shopping center). and would fly the man-in-the -moon kite.  Had about 4 balls of string out and could barely see it in the distance.  I think a tree finally ate it!

 

Do you ever fly it Sue?

BTW...Bon Voyage!

Noel

9 hours ago, birdguy said:

It got me to thinking about kites

Yes, those were the days.  We had lots of wind (near Ocean Beach), we were always flying kites. Something so simple can be so fun. Like said above, we sometimes combined all our strings to one kite to see how far we could get it to go.  The name I remember was Hi-Flier kites:

https://www.antiquetrader.com/collectibles/hi-flier-rise-and-fall

I also had a Jolly Green Giant kite that was huge.  Got it by sending some Green Giant labels to get it (remember getting stuff from cereal companies? Send 2 box tops & 25 cents to: 😄).  http://www.junkbox.com/kites/GreenGiantPromoKites.shtml

In later years, I used to borrow kids (nieces, nephews, cousin's kids, etc.) and take them kite flying.  Purely selfish on my part; I wanted to fly kites, so having some kids along made me not feel so out of place as an adult flying a kite alone, but the kids always enjoyed it too. 🤣

It's been decades since I've flown kites.  I think I'll order one on line and try my hand at it again.

Noel

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

It's been decades since I've flown kites.  I think I'll order one on line and try my hand at it again.

Noel

Stay  away from those CBs then.

 

Decades here too. I may try it again when "the wind comes whipping down the plain".

 LOL

Sue

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

You don't see kids flying kites anymore.  They probably have a kite flying game or app on computers now so kids don't have to go outside.

Noel

That’s probably the best assumption. 

I also liked to fly kites as a kid but those were different times. Back them we played outside, rode bikes, skated, played ball in the driveway/street, shot BB guns, obeyed our parents, tried to get good grades in school, read books for entertainment, and were even motivated to do to the public libraries to read books on things we were interested in.

I’m afraid for a lot of the younger generation most of those things are out the window. Now it’s all about social media, texting, video games and doing the least possible to get by, at least for the vast majority I see daily.

I’ve noticed a difference from kids in my generation to todays youth. When you talk to them in person a lot of them kind of have a blank look in their eyes, kind of like they don’t understand or know what you’re saying. When I was a kid and conversed with adults most of the kids I knew didn’t come across like that.