The adventures of a Florida boy (part 7)
In the 1960s, kids ran as far and wild as their imaginations would take them
ONE OF AN OCCASIONAL SERIES: My boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. My parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large expanse of Tampa Bay. Back then, parts of the island were undeveloped, which left plenty of room for climbing trees, digging forts in the sand, and swimming in shark-infested waters (though we didn’t give the latter much thought).
This is part 7 of a random and mostly light-hearted series that I might eventually combine into a memoir. I’m telling these stories to the best of my recollection and changing names and physical descriptions just because it seems like the right thing to do.
UP, UP, AND AWAY!
When I was a boy growing up on Coquina Key, the island was different in a lot of ways than it is now. The interior of the island was made up mostly of humble two- and three-bedroom homes, but even most of the waterfront homes that overlooked Tampa Bay were relatively modest. Our house on the water had four bedrooms, two baths, and was only about 1900 square feet.
More recently, McMansions now occupy all the once-empty waterfront lots, and hungry developers have plowed over and replaced many of the original waterfront homes. At least, it was that way the last time I visited the island, which was more than ten years ago.
When I was growing up in the mid- to late 1960s, the island had a lot of undeveloped spaces, including a small forest that covered maybe 10 acres; and of course, lots of sandy fields. Kids took advantage of the forest and the fields, though we always had our eyes out for sand spurs. They were the bane of our existence, and when one got stuck in you deep, it hurt like hell to yank it out.
However, we didn’t just play in the dirt. We also looked to the sky. One of the many advantages of having open spaces was you could fly things without worrying about landing on someone’s roof or getting tangled in a power line. I used to love the rubberband-propelled balsa airplanes. With the right breeze, they could fly fifty feet or more.
But as you’ll learn if you read this entire piece, I was never one to be satisfied with the way things were supposed to work. For example, rather than use one rubber band to fly my airplane, I would loop in three or four and then wind them so tight you could play them like a guitar string. I remember launching one of my super-powered airplanes and watching it fly clear out of sight. I never found it.
I was also obsessed with Estes rockets. This company first opened in 1958 and is still going strong today. Back then, there were a variety of kits you could buy. The rockets and the engines that powered them came in different sizes. I’m not sure if it’s the same today, but back then the “A” engines were the least powerful and the “D” engines were bad-ass. Some rockets also came with clear payloads, and more than once I sent a poor lizard (actually a green anole, if you want to get technical) up into space. My reptilian astronauts never survived their flights. They must have suffered horrifying deaths. I feel bad about it to this day, but as a boy I could not have cared less.
Being James Melvin (I now go by Jim), I couldn’t bring myself to stop at just an ordinary rocket. So I built the biggest one possible—a four-foot monstrosity powered by four D engines. It was the Estes rocket equivalent of NASA’s Saturn V.
It was so big, in fact, that I didn’t dare launch it on the island. There was no telling how high it would fly or where it might land. I needed a really large open area to test this beast.
My friend’s dad was a colonel in the army, and he was able to retire at a relatively young age. He was a kind and generous man, and he drove my friend and me all over the place, including to a school that had an open field of at least ten acres. It was a weekend, so the three of us were the only people there except for one older man who had a pitching wedge and a golf ball and was practicing his short game.
I set the rocket up and prepared it for launch. My friend and I were eager to see how high it would fly, and I think even his dad was into it. The guy with the pitching wedge didn’t seem to care, but he was about to.
The man was probably a thousand feet away from my launch pad, obliviously hitting a shot, walking to his ball, and hitting another. Meanwhile, the anticipation built at launch control. We counted down ten, nine, eight …. and at one, the cumbrous weight of the rocket caused the launch pad to topple over just as I hit the ignition.
Rather than soar miles into the sky, the rocket shot sideways and flew parallel to the ground like a guided missile. And when I said guided missile, I meant it. The four D engines were not messing around. It blazed along at what seemed like 200 miles per hour.
Even worse, it flew straight at the golfer.
“LOOK OUUUUTTTT!!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. But he didn’t seem to hear. Luckily, the rocket was about ten feet above the ground, and it roared right over his head, finally crashing into a tree and exploding into a million pieces.
Amazingly, the man only stared at us for a few seconds, and then went right back to practicing with his pitching wedge.
Whew!
Kites were also a passion of mine. My favorite was a clear plastic kite with a realistic illustration of a bald eagle on it. One day I was in a field flying my eagle kite when a feisty mockingbird attacked it. By the time I wound the kite back in, it was torn half to shreds.
Up next is another example of pushing the envelope. I wasn’t satisfied with one 500-foot spool of kite string. I had to have four. Our back yard faced east over Tampa Bay, and I waited until a day when the wind was blowing due east. Then I launched the kite into the sky and ended up using all 2,000 feet of string. The kite was so far away it was barely a dot in the sky. I stood there and admired it for about thirty minutes before beginning the laborious process of reeling it in. But as soon as I started, the string broke.
Rather than drop into the bay, the kite continued to rise until I could no longer see it.
Who knows where it ended up? Maybe it landed on the hull of a huge tanker headed to the Port of Tampa. Or perhaps it sailed clear across the bay and fell next to a kid in his yard. Maybe that kid is now grown up like me and is writing his own memoir about the time he was playing alone in his back yard and a kite floated down and landed at his feet.
Or maybe the kite is still in the sky and headed to the stars.
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Do You Believe in Magic? is book 1 of my new middle grade epic fantasy series titled Dark Circles. I have finished the first draft and am in the revision process of book 2 (Do You Believe in Monsters?). I plan to release book 2 in late September. Then I’ll jump right in to book 3. To learn more, please visit my author’s website.
Thank you!!!
Thanks, Dale! I probably will juice this up and publish it as a light-hearted memoir next year some time. I still have about 20 more parts to write for Substack, though.
I lived in Florida for about 40 years and traveled the entire state many times.