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Showing Original Post only (View all)With March recently passed it just occured to me that you never see kids flying kites anymore. [View all]
When I was a kid when it got windy in March corner stores sold kites...the paper of the kite with fanciful images on them, rolled around the two sticks...that you'd have to assembly. It wasn't hard. You'd also have to buy a roll of kite string.
Once you got it home you'd also need raid your mom's rag bin to make a tail of a few strips of rags tied together for a tail 10 or so feet long that you tied to the bottom tip of the diamond-shape kite, then you were finished and ready to fly once you attached the roll of string to the front of the kite.
It was all technique then as to how to get the kite aloft in the wind. You'd need a good field to run in with the kite behind you, hoping to catch a good gust that would take it to flight as you quickly allowed your string roll to unwind (a stick in the hollow tube of the string roll let you hold it with two hands.
A few tugs on the line would held get it alot. and voila, it was flying.
When I didn't have the quarter to buy a kite there was always newspaper for a homemade one. Broadsheet newspaper, flour and water for glue, the sticks from the bottom of old venetian blinds, some string and rags and you were set.
It worked in a pinch.