The Buckets by Greg Cravens for May 12, 2024

This one is really nice

My father made me a kite from newspapers. He was 99 when he died.

I was in San Francisco and saw people flying all kinds of fancy kites at a park.

Shades of my childhood (70+ years ago)!

This is what grandpa’s are for…..

A couple of fancy alternatives… a box kite flies very well in low wind, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Tetrahedral kite.

Newspaper? Where am I to get a newspaper? FWIW I do fly kites, big traction kites that are capable of lifting this 230 lb guy right off the beach!

I have a dragon kite my wife gave me, but there is rarely enough wind here to fly it. We have to drive out to the Coast to get reliable wind.

My dad taught my little bother and myself how to make kites out of newspaper and thin dowel rods. Later I learned to make small ones using milkshake straws and some newspaper. Spent a lot of time having fun with them. Thank you dad for teaching me and thank you mom for putting up with the inevitable mess I made.

My maternal grandfather would make kites that way – and fly them so high we couldn’t see them.

we were lucky to have a couple of high school football fields by us and they were near the river so we usually got a good breeze so we got a lot of kite flying time in. Looking back my childhood was really blessed.

Just leave the dragon kite for Dad, let him figure out how to fly it.

Never figured out why ‘Go fly a kite’ was derogatory.

When I was young dad got or made a kite several times. Never able to get the kite into the air. (Like everything else – a disappointment.)