KITE FLYING
By Ernie Walsh
During the summer of '55, my sister, Rosemary, had ordered seven different coloured nylon bandanna/kerchief/ scarves from Eaton's mail-order catalogue - one for each day of the week. Rosemary waited until the Garden Party on Lady Day, August 15, to start wearing them, and I believe she changed four different colours that day. Later on that week, when Rosemary was not at home, my best buddy, Freddy Best, and I were playing with the scarves pretending we were cowboys and outlaws. It was a fine sunny day with lots of wind blowing. We thought, "Wouldn’t these scarves be great for kites?” We persuaded mom to let us borrow the two not so popular colours, and we set out to make our kites.
We took apart one of Grandmother Walsh’s old damaged umbrellas, thinking the metal framing would be lighter and stronger than a wooden stick frame. We discovered the metal frame to be hard to balance evenly and went to whittling wooden sticks. We had success the very first time with our kites, but not perfection, as they both tended to fall off to the side a little. We felt that if we added tails it would help. So, into the house to mom, as the only tails light enough to work would have to be, of course, the other bandannas.
We tied the other bandannas on the kites for tails, and they now flew brilliantly, rising at about a 70 degree angle into the sky. We were using a hundred feet or so of parcel twine, and our kites were tugging harder as if to say, "We can go higher — give us more line!" In again we went to mom, saying, "We need more light twine, please.” The only thing she had that had any length was coarse thread, a full black spool for me and a white spool for Freddie. We hitched on the spools of thread, wondering if thread would be strong enough.
The kites flew higher up into the sky with the strong winds, lifting them. The thread became very tight, and we wondered how we would pull the kites back down without breaking the thread - but that was a problem for later. We found, that because the kites were out the 200 yards (600 feet), we could hitch them onto the fence or the hen house and not even attend to them, and they would keep flying, no pulling or running required. We were now getting the attention of everyone walking the roads between the church and the Co-op Store, and as well Rosemary, who had been up in the Mooring Cove with Marguerite and Cecily Pittman, and had also seen our coloured kites. She came home in a huff, not too pleased by what we had done to her kerchiefs without her permission.
By this time, it was noon and lunch time, so we hitched the kites on the doorknob and the fence, promising Rosemary that we would pull in her kerchiefs after lunch. When Freddy returned, we decided to walk towards the kites and try to reel them in. When we got on the road, about ten or fifteen or our chums were gathered, looking at our kites in admiration, so we decided to walk up the road. We did great until we got to the Post Office and encountered the wires across the road and discovered that we would have to walk around the poles in Grandmother Leah Ennis's hay meadow to go farther, so we turned back for home.
By this time, Paddy and Tony Hann had a kite each in the air down by the Co-op Store, so we joined them. More kites came from Little Merasheen and Soldier's Point and Charlie's Height area. Paddy, of course, not to be outdone, went to his father Paddy in the Co-op Store and got a second spool of coarse thread and let his kite out the full 1200 feet until she looked like she was over the top of the Big
Hill. There were now about fifteen kites of all descriptions in the sky - a marvellous sight!
After a while, someone suggested that we all go down on the Graveyard Hill above the Chain Rock. Some also went to the Fender to fly their kites. The winds were not getting any lighter and after probably a half hour or so, Paddy knew he would have a hard time reeling in his kite from such a height, so he said, "I think I'm going to see if my kite will fly down to the Harbour Islands," so he let the whole works go blowing down the bay. Many more, including Jim Pitcher and Donatus Fulford, did the same thing. The kites stayed aloft until they went out of sight. Freddie and I were tempted to do likewise, but thought better. We spent probably the next two hours helping each other pull in slack until we got to reel in the two kites and return the bandannas to Rosemary - none the worse for wear!
N.B.: About ten years later, my cousin, Clara Wilson, came to me, saying, "Can you make a kite for Gerard, your Godchild, as everyone is flying theirs up in Mr. Ned Hennessey's Meadow by the Church, along with his brothers Ernie and Cam, and they can't get one to fly?"
"Well," I thought, "Clara, you came to the right person. It won't take me long."
Well, I made my best kite ever, I figured, with Gerard waiting anxiously. Up in Mr. Ned's Meadow, with Gerard on a knoll, he let the kite go. She made a nose dive to the left and broke off one of the sticks. I replaced it, and she broke it again. I added two or three feet of tails, but with no luck. We spent about another two hours trying to make that kite fly, but she wouldn't stay in the air. So much for my expertise! I felt most disappointment for the boys, but they shrugged it off and went playing Kat.