San Diego Caper - Part VI

San Diego Caper - Part VI

     We walked through the hotel and out onto the boardwalk. It was a gorgeous day, bright blue sky with a few white clouds. The boardwalk was alive with people. Some were riding bikes and others on rollerskates; most were just walking. It was a day that you felt great to be alive. 

     We walked out a few paces from the sidewalk onto the beach, scanning the sky.

     “Where are the kites?” asked Hank.

     “I don’t know,” I said. “Some kite festival, not a kite in the sky.”

     “Must be the national convention,” I replied.

     “Yeah, they’re probably having their business meeting,” Hank said.

     Then we heard a voice, high-pitched, and half yelling at us, say.

     “Kites?  Are you looking for the kites?”

     We turned to see an old lady sitting on a bench. She wore sunglasses that had a rainbow colored swirl on each lens, and she held a large orange canvas bag in her lap, which didn’t match her baggy bright green dress that appeared to have a white prehistoric fern pattern on it. On her feet were pink running shoes and with white ankle socks.

      She sat on the bench, clutching her large canvas purse, and looked straight ahead. She sat there stoically. I wasn’t sure if she or some disembodied voice had just spoken.

      “Excuse me?” I said. 

      “Are you looking for the kites?” she asked.

      “Yes. Yes, we are,” responded Hank.

       “They were here yesterday.”

       A man was approaching the bench. He was slightly bent at the waist. He moved slowly. He wore a faded blue sweater, wrinkled tan pants, and a white polo shirt. He sat down next to the woman, and said. “They weren’t very good.”

      The woman nodded.

      “What do you mean?” I asked.

      “Well,” said the man shakily taking his fore finger to brush the bottom of his nose where a little bit of moisture had formed, “they didn’t fly very well.”

       “Looping and diving,” said the woman.

       “That’s right,” said the man. “Even with two strings on either side of the kite they couldn’t stop them.”

        “Two?” said the woman, as she fished in her purse and brought out a sandwich in a plastic bag and handed it to the man, who began to take it out of the bag. “Some of those kites had four lines!”

       “And they still couldn’t control them,” said the man, who then took a bite of his sandwich.

       “They needed more tail,” said the woman.

       The old man nodded, his mouth full. There were crumbs of bread spilling out onto his lips and into his lap. “More tail.” He nodded as a cascade of crumbs came out of his mouth.

       “You would have thought they would have known,” I said.

       “Yeah,” said the man.

       “The kites were beautiful,” said the woman. “But they couldn’t control them. Except for those big bags that looked like fish.”

        The man nodded. “Those were real kites. Stayed in one place like a rock in the sky. They even had another kite on the same, line way up high. Never seen one like that. It was square.”

        The woman nodded, “Square kites and bag kites that looked like fish, who would have thought? We used to buy a kite for a nickel. Dad put them together, and we’d go to the school yard and fly them.”

        “Lots of tail,” the man said, “that’s what they needed. We’d put them out so far you could hardly see them. Had to send my little cousin to the store three times to get more string.”

        The woman nodded. “They don’t make them like that anymore.”

Finis