go fly a kite

Ask me what I know about Decatur, Illinois, and I’ll tell you that that’s where Hi-Flier kites come from. Came from, at least, in the era when I was an ardent consumer of kites. This was from about 1960 to 1966, roughly when I was in second through eighth grade, on the Northwest Side of Chicago, near Talcott Road and Canfield, right on the border with Park Ridge.

I say “consumer” of kites because that’s how it worked: I saved up a dime, bought a kite down at Bud Maday’s Talcott Hardware Store at Talcott and Canfield, and flew it until I destroyed it, which was anywhere from five minutes to five days after standing up in the Edison School playground and committing my doomed possession to the Windy City’s erratic winds. The poor kites were doomed because we flew them too near the trees that grew in the parkway around the schoolyard, we flew them in winds too strong for the string we had, and we flew them with second-hand string that other kids had left lying around in the damp grass.

As for Hi-Flier kites, well, we flew them not because of any strong brand loyalty, but because that’s what Bud stocked in his hardware store, and Talcott Hardware was the closest source of kites we had. I knew of TopFlite kites, and Alox kites, but those could only be had at exotic places like Walgreens and S. S. Kresge’s that you had to take a car to get to. Bud passed away in 2005, and his children decided to close the store in the summer of that year, after 55 years in business. I was honored to receive the last kite to go out the door at Talcott Hardware, though it was not a