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GO FLY A KITE!
It’s March, the windiest month of the year, when I was a youngster places like “Flat Top†in Lincoln Heights, Elysian Park, Belvedere Park, the LA River bottom, City Terrace, Elephant Hill in El Sereno, they were all full of kids flying kites. Those kites were cheap and fun, you could have kite fights, do loop de loops, scare the hawks, see who could fly their kite the highest until the kite string almost came of the stick, you can do all kinds of tricky shit with a kite. Do kids still fly kites? Kite flying is one of the best ways to spend your time or time with your kids, “Man In The Moon†kites, homemade kites (it’s easy!), a box kite, or one of those fancy tetragon kites. It gets you out in the fresh air at this time of the year when the grass is green and the wind blows the smog away and the views are spectacular.
Hey listen up! Go Fly a Kite!
don quixote and son flying a kite on Flat Top, Lincoln Hts 1975
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Yes! The memories of Bi-rite Kite fights at 1000 feet! Travesuras in the sky! Flat Top was our spot and if your kite took that inevitable dive, you’d have to walk the length of a couple of football fields to retrieve it! Great pic,DQ.
Thanks XicanoSerg, sometimes we would be flying our kites up on Flat Top for hours and then it would start to get dark, and the wind would kick up, and with almost all the string let out it would break, and I would watch the kite sail over Happy Valley heading towards El Sereno and finally disapear into the darkness on the way to Alhambra.
Great photo DQ! You’re probably sick of my asking but when are you gonna write a book??? Seriously, you have the best stories!
Twice in the past week I’ve seen my neighbor’s granddaughter out flying her Dora the Explorer kite, so I think some kids still fly kites!
Thanks Chimatli! Maybe someday, but until then I enjoy relating my stories right here at LA Eastside.
Pitbullgirl, I’m glad to hear your neighbors grandaughter is enjoying flying a kite! Flying kites should not fade into obscurity they way many of those old pre-computer game, pre-I pod, pre-HD media control center, those Games that kids used to have fun playing and mastering have all but disapeared.
Games like marbles, tops, yo-yo’s, flying kite’s, roller skating in the Lincoln Park Gym, playing till dark at the school playground or Downey Playground or Lincoln Hts Playground or the LA Times Boys Club, or just playing football or baseball in the street,
What’s up with youngsters nowadays? They’re always in the house, maybe it’s all the bogus homework the schools lay on them, (another sore subject to me for another time), maybe it’s just fear of street crime on the parents part, maybe it’s due to smaller families and having more room in the home.
Funny now that I think of it, but growing up in the fifties in a stone Roman Catholic neighborhood (Lincoln Hts), a working class neighborhood of Mexicans, Italians, and Irish, there were no small families then. I remember us kids wondering why a friends family was only four kids total! We thought it was because they were rich or something.
Every family I knew had a shitload of kids running around, six or seven or 10 kids in a family was normal then, I even had some Okie friends from a family that had 16 kids and whose Mother eventually had 24 children. They were Catholic’s too of course, and the Irish Priests loved them.
But my point is, there wasn’t any room in the house for all those kids, so most parents would lock the kids out and tell them to go away somewhere and be back before dark.
It seemed those games and pastimes like kite flying were somehow healthier for kids than playing computer games all night, or fighting with parents over the two hours of homework the teacher sent them home with.
Don quixote “had some Okie friends from a family that had 16 kids and whose Mother eventually had 24 children. They were Catholic’s too of course, and the Irish Priests loved them.”
The Irish priests still “love” all those kids. Check out countmeout.org. It seems the pervert priests have inadvertently spawned a movement within Ireland (98% Catholic) that is catching hold and none too soon.
I too grew up in a Catholic household, attended parochial school, had the frustrated bitchy nuns rap my knuckles with their rulers, and even had a priest proposition me as I donned my altar boy cassock. It’s time the evil in that murky water rose to the surface so they can get on with the business they were assigned to 2000-odd years ago.
I second the DQ book. I remember years ago when I read a comment of yours at another blog I told you that your comment read like a book, DQ. Keep the great stories coming.
Thanks for the compliment Rob, and know that I always appreciate your fighting the good fight against ignorance, racism, and pushing back against the rising tide of fascism in this country of ours.
DQ- Yes, it’s a lost pastime, for kids of all ages, you are so right, in our days as kids it was the simple pleasures that we had. Flying a kite was always fun… my top, and marbles, and my cap gun were alot of fun also!! Do kids still have coloring books?
If you want my advice Ramon then yes, ignore all the comments about the country becoming “more” socialist.
Fascist’s are the enemy of the people and need to be relegated to the place of clowns and fools that they are.
But if you don’t want my advice then I suggest you find a more sympathetic blog spot than LA Eastside can offer,
for example the Glenn Beck or Minuteman websites.