Winter Is My Middle Name

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It was now March and all of the snow was practically gone except for a small patch on the north side of the cemetery where it was in the shade most of the day. There was a small hill about fifty feet long with a few inches of slush still on it. I would spend all day sled riding down this hill and pulling my sled back up again. I was the only one there and I was happy. Everyone else was riding bicycles or shooting hoops at the playground. I would rather be doing this.

The next day even this small patch of snow had melted. It was a warm, windy day and I went to the West End General Store and bought a kite and a ball of string for fifteen cents. I went home and put the kite together and found some old material my mother had in the ragbag to make a tail.

I then went to the graveyard - where else would you go to fly a kite? I wasn't there too long when Ricky, one of the younger neighborhood kids, showed up with a kite too. He wanted to have a battle with our kites, but I told him if we did that, only one of us would be left with a kite, the other would just blow away in the wind after the string was cut. He said he didn't realize that and he didn't want to loose his kite. Me either, I just paid ten cents for it.

I had my kite out on all 500 feet of string. Ricky was not having any luck getting his kite up, so I asked him if he would watch my kite and give the string a few tugs when it started to drift down. He agreed and then I ran over to the little store and bought another spool of string for a nickel. I almost blew my whole weeks allowance of twenty-five cents in one day. I ran back with my string and tied it onto the end of the first spool and started giving the kite more string.

I told Ricky how to get his kite up in the air as I was giving my kite more string. He ran along with his kite over his head and started giving it a little string at a time. It wasn't long before he had his kite about 100 feet up in the air. My kite was almost up to 1000 feet in the air, when all of a sudden the string broke and my kite started lazily swaying from side to side and slowly descended into the trees up on the hill. I tried to figure out about where the kite came down, about halfway along the hillside, somewhere between the first and second road.

I wound up the remaining string, which was about a spool and a half, and told Ricky I was going to find my kite and wished him luck. I headed up the hill to where I thought the kite came down. I couldn't see it anywhere. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. There were no leaves on the trees yet, and I thought the brightly colored kite would stand out against the drab color of the trees. I zigzagged across that hillside all evening and the next day. I never did find it. So much for kite season. I only bought one kite a year and it always ended up in a tree somewhere. In the fall after the leaves fell off, I would see the skeleton of my kite. Almost all the colorful paper would be gone. Just the wooden frame and tail would be left hanging in the tree. A reminder of all the fun I had flying it.

A few days latter I saw Tubby over in the graveyard with what appeared to be a large cross in his hands. I couldn't imagine what he was trying to do. I ran down to see what was going on. As I got closer I could see that he had the largest kite I had ever seen. It was as big as Tubby and was made of clear plastic with a heavy wooden frame and a large tail hanging from it.

"Tubby, where did you get that giant kite?" I asked him.

"Oh, hi Dandy. My old man made it for me. They had a piece of equipment delivered to the mill wrapped in heavy plastic and they were just going to throw it into the furnace, so he asked if he could have it. You know him, he won't let anything go to waste. Then he got the idea to make a kite.

"That thing sure is huge. How is it to fly?"

"I don't know, I haven't been able to get it off the ground yet. I think it will have to be a very windy day before it will take off."

Just then the wind did start to pick up. It blew the baseball cap off of my head. I ran after my hat. Tubby held the kite over his head and started running down the hill while I held onto the string and ran after him. After a few tries, the kite did start to go up in the air, but it would not stay up. It would go up and then start to make a clockwise loop and then come straight down and bury the front of the kite into the ground. When it did finally take off, the string broke and the kite came straight down like a rocket. We both ran out of the way so we didn't get hit or it would have done some serious damage to us.

"I think you need to get a heavier string for this kite," I told Tubby.

"Yeah, I guess so. But if the string is heavier I don't think the kite will stay up in the air, it will be too heavy."

"Don't use a rope, just some heavier string or even better, some fishing line. Yeah, I bet that would work."

"I'll take this home and see if my old man has some heavier string or fishing line. But I won't be back today; I'm getting tired of running down the hill and dragging this thing back up. Maybe I'll see you tomorrow."

"OK, I'll look to see if I have some heavy fishing line at home, too. I'll let you know if I find any. See you tomorrow," I told him as I turned to go home.

Then next day we had a heavy snowfall and I forgot about the kite and got my sled out and went sled ridding. No one else came over to the graveyard; I couldn't believe I was the only one out. Everyone else must have been tired of sled riding. Not me; I just kept sledding down the hill and walking back up, all day long.

I was looking forward to the next day to go sledding again. But after eating my Puffed Rice, I saw that it started to rain. There is nothing worse than rain. It soaks you to the bone and makes you feel miserable. You can't go outside and play if it is raining. You can't do anything without an umbrella.

So I broke into my piggy bank and took out my life savings. I put on my big rubber boots, got an umbrella, and I walked down the brick road into the city. The fog was thick from the cold snow and warm air. It was a very dismal day with the warm wind blowing in my face. The water from the melting snow was running down the street like a small stream. As I crossed the road to the other side, the water kept running into my boots and flying up in the air and I had to face my umbrella into the spray to keep dry. I would jump off the road when a car came by, otherwise I would have been drenched from the slush and water being thrown up by the car.

I went to the West End General Store. This was one of my favorite stores. They had everything you could ever want. From puzzles and toys to carbide cannons and Ouija Boards, they had it all. I once bought a kaleidoscope that had various colored crystals inside that made different patterns as the front was turned. I spent many hours looking through it at all the different designs.

I bought a model of an Eskimo on a dog sled. This was the only model they had that reminded me of winter in the great north woods. It only cost seventy-five cents, so I didn't have to spend all of my money.

I worked all day on it. It was a very good way of passing the time on a rainy day with the snow melting away outside. After this I watched Sergeant Preston on TV. Hopefully tomorrow would be better. I hoped for snow, but I doubted if it would come. That was one thing about March - it could be seventy degrees with a warm wind blowing one day and thirty with blowing snow the next.

Tubby never did get that kite to fly, it was just too big. I guess that is why they are made of paper and light balsa wood. His father told him it needed a longer tail and with all that weight it would never get off the ground. He used the plastic to cover his pile of firewood.

After this, his father got Tubby's old steel tricycle, since he was too big to ride it, and took off the seat and handlebars, and turned the frame upside down. He then put the handlebars back on. It was the oddest thing I had ever seen. Then he placed padding on the back step and that is where Tubby would sit. With the low center of gravity, it would not tip over. Tubby could go twenty miles an hour down through the graveyard with no problem.

We spent many days taking this thing to all sorts ofplaces to see how fast we could go on it. We even tried taking it down thebrick road, but we quickly found out that without any brakes, that was not asmart thing to do. Tubby was going too fast to make the sharp turn at Hudson'sand went right through her flowerbed. Many years later the Marx Company cameout with the Big Wheel Tricycle; it looked just like the thing Tubby's fatherhad made, only theirs was plastic. He was a man ahead of his time!