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yet another memory (yam)

Yet Another Memory - Fantazma Gordo

Honestly, this is a true story!



It's an understatement to say that I like kites. The walls of my home are covered with all kinds, from antique, hand-painted Japanese fighter kites and bamboo/tissue Indian fighter kites, to various large cloth mandalas and old stick/paper dime-store kites (remember dime stores?).

I have bunches of discontinued mylar and aluminum rod Vic's fighter kites, along with some very cool, two-string acrobatic kites that (I swear) can break the speed of sound just before they auger into the ground at the end of a not-so-successful power-dive (one of which is affectionately called "The Killer" ... it actually broke a friend's arm about a hundred years ago).

But, you know(?), in a way, my favorite kite of all time has been the Fantazma Gordo made by Gayla. You could buy these at any grocery/drug/gasoline/toy/department store back in the seventies (and maybe into the nineties ... I don't recall seeing them anywhere recently). They were all plastic, very cheap, ready-to-fly (string included) and they were just great if you wanted to just fly your hopes high on the spur of a moment.

They would launch from your hand in the slightest of breezes (you wouldn't even need to get out of your lawn chair) and they would fly almost straight up above your head. You could reel them in right back into your hand (again, never needing to leave your lawn chair).



Best of all, the Fantazma Gordo had this great screaming eagle in bright bold colors. OH,that reminds me of another memory (I'll get to the first one in a second): I was flying a Fantazma Gordo from a lawn chair on Gran Manan Island (in the Bay of Fundy), enjoying life with a pitcher of Margaritas, when three bald eagles flew overhead. The first two flew on, but the third circled around to investigate my kite. When he flew on, I swear I could hear the other two eagles laughing at him, calling him "Sucker!"

Anyhow, I was flying a Fantazma Gordo from my back yard in Connecticut back around 1973 or so, when the string broke. I tried to catch up with the dangling string dragging along the ground, but the wind was rather brisk and the kite took off over Route 2 in a generally easterly direction. I actually got in my car and tried to follow it, but I lost sight of it. Since these kites were very inexpensive, I didn't give it much more thought.

Now here's the part you won't believe: almost exactly a year later, I was in my back yard and I heard a fluttering and looked up over the trees to the west. There was a Fantazma Gordo kite wobbling and losing altitude and, yes, it landed in my yard, just a few feet from where I was sitting. Its string was broken.

I can't be sure, but I like to believe that it was the same kite coming home after circumnavigating the Whole Earth.

REALLY!