He admired my sister, model trucks, Jesus, ten-speed bicycles, and the mournful pop lullaby “Sweet Baby James.” He had a half-brother he adored who was in and out of trouble, and talked about old friends as though they’d all existed together in a previous dire universe he’d barely escaped. He was a user of substances recently gone clean. Relaxed as he was, Dave seemed bedeviled at times. “It just seems like assistance.” He didn’t try to elaborate. It asked nothing of the flier except a willingness to be delighted.ĭave said he’d been “doing this a lot lately,” and I asked how come. The pterodactyl’s outstretched wings seemed to flap with pleasure. Launching required no running or indeed any effort at all-you held it up like an offering, and the breeze lifted it out of your fingers. We snapped the single crosspiece into place and tied the string to its bridle. The kite was awake and rippling in my hands. Dad flew them on baling twine that flayed your palms in the gusts. They were a man’s project of overwhelming weight and power. I loved them, but they were intimidating, taller than me, requiring gales of wind into which, if you ran hard enough, the kite would rise at a low angle over the fields and woodlots of west-central Minnesota. My previous kite experience was with the heavy homebuilt diamonds Dad fashioned from scrap wood and butcher paper. It shook out to become a floppy triangular kite. He said, “I brought you something, man,” and reached into the car, then handed over a tube of loosely rolled plastic. He was pale and slight, with red hair that flamed in all directions when he drove with the top down. I was too inexperienced to understand the full hippie scenario, but admired the bell-bottom pants, the easygoing attitude toward, for example, work, and especially the lexicon-Dave said man all the time, and cool, and best of all, with timing calibrated to annoy the previous generation, relax. I was sure he was mostly there to visit me.ĭave was the first hippie I knew well. For a while he came to visit all the time. Dave was a college friend of my sister Liz. The bonfire climbed out and grinned in the sun. The Corvair eased into the yard next to the chokecherry hedge. A small bright bonfire appeared to be driving. Its top was down and it trailed blue smoke. It was late April and a tan Corvair convertible came up the gravel drive.
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