When I was a young child, I would rise early in search of the next intriguing adventure. Growing up in the north end of Concord near White Park provided me with many activities and many friends. We were young children of the 1960s living the kind of life that is now immortalized in novels and movies.
It was a time when simple things were many and luxuries were few. We would hear stories about the war in Vietnam with forlorn thoughts and reflect upon the possibility that we might some day be in Vietnam too. Those were fleeting thoughts for a young boy that was in search of the next fun thing to do on a Saturday morning.
As I completed my Concord Monitor newspaper route, I would return my bicycle to the side yard at my home and walk down to White Park in search of entertainment. There was always a pick-up game of tag football, baseball and kickball to find. Some young children would bring a fishing pole to the pond and sit upon the granite bridge practicing their casting skills. There were swings and hills and hide and seek. The swimming pool provided relief from the summer heat.
Then I saw it, high above the field at the park … a colorful kite sailing through the spring breeze under the dazzling sun. Winter was over and thoughts of flying a kite beckoned me. I walked over to the field and found a friend with his paper kite high above. He told me he just bought it at Foy’s Corner Market for 50 cents that included the roll of string . I slid my pea shooter into my pocket and walked down to the corner store to buy a kite for myself.
Plunking two hard earned quarters onto the counter, I engaged Mr. Foy in conversation as he upsold me a bit. Asking me if I was going to buy a cold drink on this warm day, I paid another 10 cents and retrieved a cold bottle of Pepsi from the bottom of the water-filled cooler. With my pockets lighter, I walked back to White Park slowly drinking my cold bottle of Pepsi. I put together my paper kite, crossing two light pieces of wood beneath and securing the lightweight paper.
Once secured, I summoned another friend to hold my kite while I ran to gain some height for my blue paper kite. After running around that field and feeling slightly exhausted, a slight breeze visited and my kite was finally flying. As I sipped my bottle of Pepsi, I kept tugging and tugging and releasing more string to gain some more height. I sure hope Mr. Foy gave me enough string for my kite. I ran a little more enjoying the encounter with flight and kept climbing higher. The wind was slowing and my kite was high above the trees at the base of King Hill. The string slacked and the kite started to descend. It descended right into the massive oak tree at the bottom of the hill. My kite flying days were doomed.
As I walked to school on Monday morning, I glanced at that big oak tree to see if it might have released the grip on my kite. It was still up there, branches grasping it tightly. The oak tree wasn’t giving anything up, especially to a 10-year-old boy.
Years later, I visited the Concord Public Library and located a book about kites. I was quite intrigued to learn that kite flying was a very popular sport in Concord during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Children enjoyed marbles and stick ball, but they would also fly kites early each spring. It was wildly amusing for the generations before my kite flying days at White Park.
I learned that children once made homemade kites and they tied a string with fabric to provide a tail for stability. I also learned the military used kites during World War I that were so large they could lift a soldier right off the ground. The kite-flying soldiers were used to observe the enemy from great heights. The British were known to experiment with large kites in 1910 where six man-lifting kites were bound to a steel cable that allowed soldiers tethered to the kite to soar up to 2,000 feet into the sky. I was very intrigued and wondered if I might build a larger kite that would allow me to soar too.
With these thoughts in my mind, I returned home with a project for the following Saturday after my paper route deliveries were completed. My good friend and I constructed a wing from lightweight materiel, the length perhaps four feet. We secured leather straps to this wing allowing us to place the wing on our shoulders securely. After our hasty construction project concluded we returned to King Hill at White Park. I placed the leather harness over my shoulders and stood at the top of the hill with a view of White Street in the distance. My objective was to run down the hill gain some lift and sail across the field to the street.
With thoughts of the Wright Brothers, I started running down the big hill with the four-foot wing attached. Things happened quickly and not as planned. I ended up at the bottom of the hill in a pile with broken wings but fortunately no broken bones. As the story was told and then retold it seemed to gain a fine patina of its own. Monday morning in the school yard provided some brief celebrity moments for me. Of course, the other children couldn’t see the scrapes and bruises under my shirt.
As my thoughts return to that fateful flight down King Hill in the 1960s, I recall it fondly to this day. It was inspired by a 50-cent paper kite from Foy’s Market, a history book and the boyhood ambition of a child that did not know the meaning of fear. The large oak tree never surrendered my paper kite. My fame ebbed after a few short days and I never again felt the urge to fly.