Forgotten Toys and Pastimes: When we made kites

Spring was the season for making and flying kites

Photo by Lucas L on Unsplash

Every spring a representative from PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric would come to our school and hand out mini comic books about making and flying kites. They would give a short lecture about never flying kites near electric wires or in the rain, although the comic would always include the legend of Ben Franklin and his experiment flying a kite in a storm. Fortunately, our school had a large field and the area around it was still undeveloped, so we were itching to get on with things.

Reddy Kilowatt, our guide to making and flying kites (Source: Wikipedia)

The little comic was narrated by Reddy Kilowatt, the mascot for the electric company. He described kites from different countries, cool stuff about kites, and finally how to make them. It had instructions about making regular kites, and the more complex box kites, and a couple of other types. Every kid beyond the first grade had been through this annual ritual, so we knew what would be coming up. We squirmed in our seats.

This was an ordinary public school in Santa Clara, in the south Bay Area. Back in the 1960’s public schools still had art and music as part of the curriculum. And in the spring, kite making was part of that.

The smarter kids probably knew that we were being taught something about geometry, aerodynamics, and physics. The rest of us just wanted to get to the pile of newspapers, string, and balsa wood sticks.

Once we were handed our materials, we carefully crossed the sticks and tied them into a diamond pattern. Then we notched the ends of the wood with a pen knife. This was in a different time when boys all carried a small folding knife, including to school. No one ever thought anything about that. The more well to do kids had Swiss Army Knives with all the added tools. Girls of the tomboy persuasion had pocket knives too, but since we had to wear dresses and had no pockets, we left them at home. However, as soon as we got home we’d change into jeans that had loads of pockets.

String was threaded around the ends of each stick, forming a diamond shape and tied tightly. The frame was laid on newspaper which was cut an inch outside the perimeter of the string. The edges of the paper were folded over the string and smeared into place with our fingers using the ever-present library paste. Another string was tightly tied between the ends of the shorter stick and pulled so the kite arched slightly. We worked with extreme concentration, focused at the job at hand.

Next came the delicate precision work, where we turned our kits over and put a small hole half way between the top and the cross piece of the kite and another hole farther down. It was difficult not to rip the newspaper. More string was threaded through the holes and tied to the frame, so that a length of string formed the bridle on the front of the kite. Our kite strings would be tied to the middle of the bridle. They were almost ready to go.

Making the tail was the final stage. There were torn strips of cotton rags that we could tie on to the bottom of the kite. The tail was optional. Its purpose was to balance the kite. Otherwise, it would start spinning out of control when it was set loose. But too much of a tail would weigh the kite down and it wouldn’t fly. The tail and where the kite string attached to the bridle were a matter of fine tuning the kite so that it flew evenly. We approached our kites like rocket scientists. In fact some of the kids in my class had fathers who worked at Lockheed, so we all took rocket science very seriously. It was the early sixties and we were competing in a space race after all.

The teachers knew better than to let us all loose with kites during recess, so they were carefully placed near the back door so we could get them when we got our jackets and lunchboxes as we left at the end of the school day.

I rarely see kites flown these days. Back in the sixties, there would be a few of them in the sky at any time during the spring and summer, whenever there was a bit of wind and a clear space. Some would be home-made while others were store bought.

Getting a kite up sometimes proved to be a challenge, but once it caught the wind, it was wonderful. We became technicians, playing out the string or reeling it in, with string piling up around our feet, always trying to catch invisible air streams. Our imaginations were up in the clouds with the kites, feeling the tension of the string in our hands, we could feel every puff of wind. We were connected to the air. We were pilots and astronauts, birds and dragons. The kites lifted us up from normal reality. We danced and ran, keeping the kite up until it was a tiny speck in the sky. Occasionally the string would break, the tension disappeared as it fell slowly from the sky, but the kite continued sailing away. Maybe it would cross the ocean and make its way to some other country, or coming to rest in the mountains to the east. The kite took our imaginations with it, flying over the land, carried by the wind. And so we would go home to build another one and fly again.