Up, Up and Away, School Yard Play

The school yard at Lincoln School was a wonderful place for me to play as a child. It was my playground in the evenings after the school day was over and on Saturdays.

Right across the street from my house, along the Jackson Street end of the school yard were four basketball courts. Each court had two basketball hoops, one at each end of the basketball court. I got to play a lot of basketball with whoever happened to come along to play.

Another fun thing to do in the school yard was to fly a kite. I would buy my kite and string for a nickel each at the little school store. The kites came coiled up with a rubber band wrapped around them. I had to uncoil the kite. The sticks were coiled up with the kite paper. After I crossed the two sticks, I would connect the kite paper to each end of the sticks. The next step was to tear strips of cloth and put them on the bottom of the kite for a tail. If I neglected to do that, the kite would just flop around and not go up.

Not all the kites that I flew were store bought. Sometimes I would make them myself by using thin strips of wood for the frame. I would use either newspapers or tissue wrapping paper for my homemade kite. The first thing I did was to cut the paper in the shape of a kite, cutting it a little larger than I wanted my kite to be. I folded the paper down about a half inch along the edges of the paper and laid string along it. The next step required some sort of paste or glue. Using flour and water placed in a dish, I mixed my ingredients together to make a paste. The paste was used on the edges of the paper over the string. Once the paste dried, I could stretch the kite shaped paper onto the ends of my sticks, creating a homemade kite. After I put a tail on my kite, I took it across the street to the school yard to fly it. Up, up and away. Dad