The first written account of kite flying is in China in 200 BC. The Chinese General Han Hsin of the Han Dynasty flew a kite over the walls of a city he was attacking to measure how far his army would have to tunnel to reach past the defenses. Scientists used kites for various studies, most famously Benjamin Franklin's lightning experiment in 1752. Guglielmo Marconi used kites to elevate radio antennas to achieve the first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901 proving radio waves could bend around the Earth.
The earliest evidence of children flying kites appears in illustrations from around 1618, showing children in Middelburg, Holland, flying diamond-shaped constructions.
When I was six years old, Lamar Elementary School stood only five houses down Cline Road from my house in Amarillo, Texas. I was in first grade. My sister, in sixth grade, walked me down the narrow alley behind our house to school everyday. At noon we would race home for lunch with the conceit of insiders, pleased not to be marooned among the hoi polloi in the cafeteria. My mother’s bologna or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches seemed perfectly fine. Only years later did I understand what we’d given up. In the 1950s, school lunches were cooked by grandmotherly women in real kitchens with real ovens - meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, homemade biscuits smothered in cream gravy, fruit cobblers and pies. It was country-diner fare of the highest order - the kind I would one day seek out in celebrated rural Texas cafés and pay dearly for, never admitting that long ago I had sprinted home to avoid it.
Every weekend, the Lamar playground was the scene of what we called ‘Kite Wars’.
The school had been unintentionally designed for them - wide-open fields on two sides of the low-slung building, the relentless Panhandle wind blowing hard and steady, and a pack of swaggering pre-teen boys eager to earn their manhood in the safest way possible – hundreds of feet in the air, at the end of a string.
The object of ‘Kite Wars’ was to dominate – and ideally destroy – the other kites. It was aerial ‘Hunger Games’ on the school yard.
Kite War supremacy was achieved by arming your kite with metal arrow points on the ends of the cross bars – designed to rip your rivals’ kites to shreds. Some competitors glued ground glass to their strings, turning them into airborne saws that sliced competing kites loose and sent them fluttering to the ground in public disgrace. The last kite flying was the winner. Victors strutted around, already plotting kite improvements for the next week.
Here’s what I learned at six years old - from ‘Kite Wars’ - about becoming a male teenager in the Texas Panhandle - lessons disguised as playground wisdom. Act bigger than you are. Swagger sometimes works. When it doesn’t, the fights toughen you up. Develop a talent for inventive threats. “My friend’s brother is in the Army - he’ll come home and beat the daylights out of you.” Keep a posse. They didn’t have to do anything - but numbers menace. Claim influential connections - “Mr. Eads, (the Principal at Lamar Elementary) - he’s my uncle”. Establish status distinctions. “At least my house is on the south side of Route 66.” None of it had to be true. We were not dealing facts. We were trading in myth, reputation, and the ancient boyhood hope that confidence alone would conquer.
All that pre-teen macho posturing was our rehearsal for manhood. Long before consequences that mattered, we practiced who we might become, bluffing certainty and simulating strength two hundred feet in the air on flimsy balsa-wood and paper assemblages. Every kite eventually came down - cut loose, shredded, or surrendered - but the lessons endured. High above Lamar Elementary ‘Kite Wars’ tested our nerve, ingenuity, and the thin line between bravado and fear - all on the same fragile frame buffeted by the Panhandle wind.
(Don Minnick is a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant and the author of books linked to business and the arts. He has found a home in the creative and culture-rich Wimberley valley. He is a Board Member of Wimberley Arts.org. [email protected])
