Slim Randles is my guest today with a touching story about the goodness of people. In these times of rancor and distrust among so many, it’s nice to have a reminder that kindness builds bridges.
I also liked the reminder of how much fun it is to fly a kite. That was a favorite early spring pastime for me and my friends when we were about the same age as Miguel, although I will admit I carried my kite flying days on well past third grade. Many years later I read a book written by a woman who was in her golden years, and she was advocating kite flying for adults.
Sadly, this handicapped brain of mine cannot recall the exact title and I no longer have the book. What I was able to find on the internet about adults and kite flying is an interesting article at the TribLive website about how clubs for the activity have gained popularity among adults. There’s even a sport called power kite flying.
I’d rather stick with the way Miguel does it.
Miguel wasn’t the fastest kid in his class, but he could run. Fast enough for third-grade softball, you know. And fast enough to get a kite up in the air. It was recess and several other kids were flying kites today. Just enough breeze to keep one up.
So Miguel went to the downwind end of the big playground and took off. He fed the string out quickly, and by the time he’d reached the monkey bars at the other end of the field, he discovered he’d been successful. The kite stayed up and swung with the breeze, and the tug on the string told him he had once again mastered flight.
He fed out even more string until his kite was over the street, then even more until it flew over the houses across the street. Finally, he was down to the stick itself. It was all there, in his hands.
Flight.
I bet if I had enough string I could sail this to the moon.
He grinned and looked around at the other happy pilots, and then he saw Joey sitting over to one side in his wheelchair, and Joey was smiling, too.
What fun, being a pilot … pretending this was your own jet fighter, waiting in the sky to do your bidding.
Carefully, Miguel moved his command post over to Joey’s wheelchair and handed him the controls.
The magic of flight is too special not to be shared.
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Brought to you by The Fly Fisherman’s Bucket List, available at LPDPress.com
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Check out all of Slim’s award-winning books at www.slimrandles.com, and in better bookstores and bunkhouses throughout the free world.
All of the posts here are from his syndicated column, Home Country that is read in hundreds of newspapers across the country. I am always happy to have him share his wit and wisdom here. If you enjoy his stories here on my blog, you will like his book Home Country, which is a compilation of many of his columns written over the years.
Slim Randles is a veteran newspaperman, hunting guide, cowboy and dog musher. He was a feature writer and columnist for The Anchorage Daily News for 10 years and guided hunters in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A resident of New Mexico now for more than 30 years, Randles is the prize-winning author of a dozen books and is host of two podcasts and a television program.