Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 3, March 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
STAN'S LOOKOUT:
Fun with kites
By STAN STAPP
(Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the March 13, 1958 edition of the North Central Outlook, a community newspaper that Stan Stapp's family owned for more than 50 years until its sale in 1974. The paper was based for most of that time in the Wallingford neighborhood where Stan grew up in the 1920s and 1930s.)
Every year about this time, with the cool, fresh breezes of March, I get a nostalgic reminder of "my kite-flying days" when I was a kid. Although a few present-day youngsters still delight in this sport, I suspect that their more sophisticated social calendar limits their time for such childish activities.
In the 1930s, any kid with a dime could afford a kite a nickel for the paper and sticks, and another nickel for a ball of string. This would purchase a small bow kite that in theory needed no tail, but in practice always did. So pieces of mom's discarded stockings, or dad's worn BVDs were knotted together, or fastened with string, into tails up to 20 feet in length.
Having come from a do-it-yourself kite-flying family, my kites were always homemade. My preference was a six-foot bow kite, which when accurately constructed, did not need a tail. The advantage of this was that the chances of it getting caught in the power wires or in trees was decreased by about 10-to-1.
500 feet of mess
Now a six-foot bow kite requires pretty strong string. I found just what was needed in the cotton twine sold by Sunde & d'Evers Co. to fishermen for repairing nets. Their 36-pound test twine was about as heavy as I could go and still get the kite to fly in a small breeze, and yet any lighter might break in a real wind.
The big battle with this twine was generally getting it rewound on my big reel from the hanks that it came in. If you got started right it wasn't bad, but if you began with the wrong end, you soon had 500 feet of mess.
I accumulated about 3,000 feet of this twine and painted colored marks on it every 50 feet so that I could always tell how far away the kite was.
The main stick was about 1/2 x 1-1/2 cedar, and the bow about 1/2 x 1-1/2 pine found after much searching at Charlie Stewart's Stoneway Lumber Co. The paper was craft wrapping.
Although most people thought it looked too heavy to fly, I never saw the day that any kite was up that I couldn't get my kite up, too.
But, I'll have to admit that on some days the kite could barely lift the string off the ground, and it would be laying on housetops for several blocks out.
As Seattle's winds are generally either north or south, most of the time I was able to launch the kite in the neighborhood alley near N. 42nd and Ashworth, which ran in that direction. If the wind was from the south, I could fly right out of Mrs. Bessie Ware's garage at the end of the alley. Or if from the north, I could cross the street and fly it from my own back yard.
An east or west wind forced me to use the Wallingford Playfield, which had a little more room for maneuvering.
One time I was flying my kite and my friend Bill Finlay had his up, too. He had tied his string to a telephone pole while he went home to get a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. The kites were both flying high on a strong north wind when an unusual thing happened.
The wind, high up where the kites were, changed direction until it was coming from the east, but the string lower down still ran in a north-south direction. Thus the string formed a broad circular right angle.
The strain proved too much, for Bill's string broke and his kite headed for the Fremont District. Frantic cries from the neighborhood kids alerted Bill and he came running out of his house, still munching his sandwich. With several of the lads, he headed for Fremont.
While they were there looking around, my kite string also broke and the kite came down in the same general area, about a mile from my home. The kids looking for Bill's kite saw mine go down and retrieved it, but they never did find Bill's.
When I had my kite out the full distance it was quite a task to pull it in and often several kids would take turns pulling and reeling. If the breeze was strong it might take a half hour to get it down. At times we measured the "pull" and it would vary from a few pounds to 24 pounds. Whether it got over that the day Bill and I lost ours, I don't know. But I was using the 36-pound test twine.
Sometimes I'd fly my kite at night at the Wallingford Playfield with a penlight fastened to it. It would be spotted by nearby residents and I could hear them talking on their front porches, wondering about that bright star.
They got pretty excited when I'd make the kite dive or fall, or climb rapidly. As they couldn't see me, and they knew no airplane or star could act that way, it kept them guessing.
Or Sputnik, too!
It's a good thing this happened before flying saucers were invented or they'd have really been scared!
An improvement on this light was the addition of a small wire wheel with colored pieces of cellophane which slowly rotated to change colors, thus adding to the confusion.
The Wallingford Playfield was a popular place for kite flyers after school, with as many as 20 boys and girls trying to keep their kites up in the air at once. Needless to say, there were some pretty good tangles of string, for most kites behave in a skittish manner.
The biggest kite I remember was a "war kite" flown by Jack Shallow. It was a box kite with a lot of "boxes."
The smallest kite was usually flown by Jack Norton, who used thread instead of string. I think his kites were not over six inches high and had to be very accurately made in order to succeed.
Once in a while, I've seen birds land on my kite string. One time two robins sat quite awhile, side by side, on the string several hundred feet in the air.
An accessory to my kite, which always attracted a small crowd when it was used, was the "Bat." It was a device, invented by my brother Milton, consisting of two bat-like paper wings, which had a three-foot spread when open. The wings were fastened to an aluminum frame which had two rubber wheels to ride up and down the kite string.
Cocked wings
After the kite was up in the air, the Bat would be placed on the string, and the wings cocked open. Then by running a few feet to get it started until the breeze caught the wings, I could get the Bat to soar up the string until it struck an empty spool buffer near the kite.
A plunger on the Bat would release the wings which would snap shut via the tension of rubber bands.
The Bat, having folded its wings, would then coast down the kite string right into my hand. As it would be traveling pretty fast by the time it hit bottom, it was necessary to rapidly let out about 50 feet of string to slow its descent at the last moment.
We could send messages up with the Bat, which were released at the same time the plunger hit the spool some 2,000 or 3,000 feet away. Neighborhood kids had great fun retrieving these messages, which consisted of big sheets of paper, and which could be seen dropping from a long ways away. They'd ride off on their bikes and 15 minutes later come proudly puffing back with their "trophy."
One time I thought I'd be cute and drop a thousand or so small pieces of paper, expecting to see them twinkling to the ground in a dramatic fashion.