Kites fly forever

Ovid Vickers
The Newton Record

NEWTON April 16, 2008 01:13 pm

— March, the best month of the year to fly kites, has come and gone. I don’t know why, but I saw very few kites in the air this past March. Perhaps young people now prefer to play Nintendo or watch a DVD rather than attempting to get a kite into the air. When I was a child, things were different. Building a kite and flying it was an anticipated outdoor activity.
Being a child of the Great Depression, money could not be spent to buy kites. We had to make our own. The process of kite making began many months before the winds of March would take our kites soaring into the distance.
All winter, we collected string. During those days, much of what was bought in a grocery store was not prepackaged. Such items as sugar, grits, and fruit arrived in a grocery store in bulk amounts and were sold in brown paper bags tied with a string. And there was also the string that came from the many sacks of feed needed to get the livestock thro-ugh the winter.
When the spring-like winds of March began to whistle around the corner of the house or made a roaring sound in the chimney, we began collecting the necessary materials for kite construction. The best kite frame can be made from the dried, lightweight, hollow stalks of dried “dog fennel.” A large brown paper bag, or two if the kite is going to be quite large, was then opened and glued to the frame. For paste we mixed flour and water and spread it along the edges where the kite was attached to the frame. At this point, the kite had to be put aside for a number of hours to allow the flour paste to dry. We then fashioned a tail for the kite from cloth such as a worn-out bed sheet or the back of a discarded shirt.
When everything was in place, we took the kite into an open field and away from the pecan trees surrounding our house. Sister held the string, and I ran down an old cotton row until the wind caught the kite and it bobbed about a bit before the wind lifted it up and away to become a wind-tossed object high above our heads.
Kites have been around for thousands of years. Almost all cultures both modern and ancient have made and flown kites. Kites were probably first flown by people of the orient. The Japanese are credited with inventing the box kite, and examples of the diamond-shaped kite which is most popular in this country have been found in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs.
A little research reveals that two of the most important users of kites were the Wright brothers. In 1899, when the Wrights were testing their theories for the control of an aircraft, they built a small maneuverable kite to verify their ideas for building a heavier-than-air craft that would fly. Between 1900 and 1903, they would often fly large kites or what they called “gliders” near the ocean at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. These experiments with kites led directly to a successful flight in their “flying machine” in 1903.
Kites are mentioned throughout history. Most Americans are familiar with the story of Benjamin Franklin’s experiment to prove that lightning is attracted to metal objects. The story goes that during a storm Franklin tied some keys to the tail of a kite and lightning did indeed strike the keys.
The five major types of kites are “sled,” “winged box,” “delta,” “diamond,” and “box.” Each of these kites looks different, but the forces acting on all kites are exactly the same. The forces acting on a kite are also the exact same forces which affect an airliner or a military fighter plane. Like an aircraft, kites are heavier than air and rely on a combination of wind currents to fly.
Kites have found their way into many literary works. In his short story “A Christmas Memory,” Truman Capote writes of flying kites with his old aunt to whom he was devoted. When he was notified that the aunt had passed away he wrote, “Her death was like a kite with a broken string. That is why walking across the school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky as if I expected to see, rather like two hearts a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”
While returning to Decatur from Jackson the last week in March, we passed an open pasture near Brandon, where some children were flying kites. They had gotten four kites into the air and were watching as the wind lifted the kites higher and higher. I was suddenly drawn back to my own childhood when Sister and I flew kites. I was also reminded of a painting by the American artist Winslow Homer of a group of children standing on a the New England coast intent on keeping their kites in the air while the waves broke on the shore below. I also thought how unfulfilled childhood would be without the experience of flying a kite.

Ovid Vickers, a retired East Central Community College professor, writes a weekly column for The Newton Record.

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