Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Kite Rolling
Of all times to be without my camera! My daughter is still recovering from an operation and not yet able to care for her second son, Anthony, who is sick with a flue bug (that caused godawful sinus drainage and nausea and eventual vomiting of green stuff the consistency of oatmeal) and my dear wife volunteered to sit with the sick boy if I would keep the number one grandson, Kevin, out of everyone's hair. So after what seemed like a hundred errands for sick people, Kevin and I were on our own a little after lunch on a windy summer day.
My street, Emerald Street, is void of trees from the 2900 block west and has underground utilities and no traffic. One of the neighbors pulled the kids up and down on a sled with his jeep after the first good snow last year. The west wind comes across the river bottoms north of Terre Haute, across highway 41 and through the fields that surround Otter Creek and right past my door. There is nothing to stop it and if you have a slight breeze down in the city, I have eye squinting, turn your face away wind up here.
Today, we decided to use it. Kevin got his good kite out. He says you can tell it's a good kite by the arch at the top. Unlike those cheap bat kites that are triangular shaped, his looked like a stain glass window suspended in the blue sky with gray and white cumulus clouds. It was a black panther on multi colored back ground with 5 tails streaming beneath it and it danced in the sky and looped. Everything Kevin did with his wrist was amplified and sent as a control message to the kite. It didn't matter that he didn't know what caused what, he was learning as he went like the 10-year-old he is.
I heard the loud engine of a plane revving at Sky King Airport and knew it would take off soon. Sometimes they follow a pattern that would intersect with the path of Kevin's black panther kite but it was soon announced: Out of string. It sure was flying good and steady. Occasionally it would drop in altitude but Kevin had learned to pull the kite up with a sharp tug on the string and there we stood necks strained, chins up. I told Kevin about young boys riding large kites to spy on enemy troop movements during the civil war and he asked if they could be shot down. I told him that a more likely danger was the kite breaking or crashing into trees and he nodded solemnly if you can do that while looking into the sky.
Kevin wears Heelys, those sneakers with a single wheel in the back that allow you to roll by lifting your toes a fraction yet stop or begin walking by lowering them. It is a special art, Heely wheeling, and he is proficient. He's not the best skater or skate boarder but is smooth on two wheels.
I wondered if the kite would pull him down the street.
It did. He walked out to Emerald Avenue and positioned the kite due east, lifted his toes and was pulled for two blocks before the kite dipped into an evergreen tree near the hunting dog pen by the barn across from Fred's son's house. I could have warned him to stop before then. I could have warned him not to yank on the string until we found a more promising angle so that the panther might be pulled free but I'm too slow these days. He now knows better than I could have taught him and every time he comes to visit, he'll be looking in the tree. Maybe he'll remember the fun he had putting the panther there.
My street, Emerald Street, is void of trees from the 2900 block west and has underground utilities and no traffic. One of the neighbors pulled the kids up and down on a sled with his jeep after the first good snow last year. The west wind comes across the river bottoms north of Terre Haute, across highway 41 and through the fields that surround Otter Creek and right past my door. There is nothing to stop it and if you have a slight breeze down in the city, I have eye squinting, turn your face away wind up here.
Today, we decided to use it. Kevin got his good kite out. He says you can tell it's a good kite by the arch at the top. Unlike those cheap bat kites that are triangular shaped, his looked like a stain glass window suspended in the blue sky with gray and white cumulus clouds. It was a black panther on multi colored back ground with 5 tails streaming beneath it and it danced in the sky and looped. Everything Kevin did with his wrist was amplified and sent as a control message to the kite. It didn't matter that he didn't know what caused what, he was learning as he went like the 10-year-old he is.
I heard the loud engine of a plane revving at Sky King Airport and knew it would take off soon. Sometimes they follow a pattern that would intersect with the path of Kevin's black panther kite but it was soon announced: Out of string. It sure was flying good and steady. Occasionally it would drop in altitude but Kevin had learned to pull the kite up with a sharp tug on the string and there we stood necks strained, chins up. I told Kevin about young boys riding large kites to spy on enemy troop movements during the civil war and he asked if they could be shot down. I told him that a more likely danger was the kite breaking or crashing into trees and he nodded solemnly if you can do that while looking into the sky.
Kevin wears Heelys, those sneakers with a single wheel in the back that allow you to roll by lifting your toes a fraction yet stop or begin walking by lowering them. It is a special art, Heely wheeling, and he is proficient. He's not the best skater or skate boarder but is smooth on two wheels.
I wondered if the kite would pull him down the street.
It did. He walked out to Emerald Avenue and positioned the kite due east, lifted his toes and was pulled for two blocks before the kite dipped into an evergreen tree near the hunting dog pen by the barn across from Fred's son's house. I could have warned him to stop before then. I could have warned him not to yank on the string until we found a more promising angle so that the panther might be pulled free but I'm too slow these days. He now knows better than I could have taught him and every time he comes to visit, he'll be looking in the tree. Maybe he'll remember the fun he had putting the panther there.
