I can't do this? Well, go fly a kite!

In 1958 while living in Floral Park, I saw a picture of a water skier suspended about 100 feet in the air by a huge kite, the same shape as those I had flown as a kid, only his was 10 times larger. I wanted to build one.

I had no documents on how to build a man-carrying kite, only that small photo of the flying water skier. From this, however, I roughly guessed the kite’s size and proportions – about 10 feet high and 9 feet wide. It would be made from whatever material my friends Bob and Dick Rossman could muster -- a rubberized canvas cut from an old World War II one-person life raft and the frame made from one-inch-by-two-inch scrap lumber.

When completed, I made some land-based test flights, sort of like the Wright brothers, with three friends running down the road towing the kite on a long line with me hanging onto a tow-bar attached to the kite. I jumped up while running to see if it was airworthy. It was, but it needed more speed for sustained flight.

A number of my friends had boats with 25-horsepower engines -- sufficient to pull water skis but not enough power to fly my kite. In fact, over the next few years, with the Great South Bay as my runway, my numerous attempts to fly with the kite failed for that reason. But all that changed in 1962.

That summer, I shared a Hampton Bays cottage on a sandy Peconic Bay beach. I was now 30 and would be single for just one more year. After a season of partying, sailing, beaching and having a grand old time, a gala beach party was planned for the final summer weekend. I would provide the entertainment with an airborne flight of my man-carrying kite. Although it had never successfully flown, our neighbor Wally had a powerful motor boat that should provide the necessary power.

Later that afternoon, with the festivities in full swing, the partygoers were looking for the advertised “entertainment.” It was time for me to perform.

I waded into the water carrying my skis and kite, preparing for the highly anticipated flight. I was fully aware that in prior attempts, the underpowered boats had sluggishly moved because of the drag caused by the kite in the water. But not this time.

With my head just barely out of the water and the kite resting on my back, I held the tow bar in front of me and yelled, “Hit it!” In what seemed like a split second, I was yanked to the water’s surface.

I expected to feel the rush of wind raising the kite and me into the air and hear the crowd cheer as I was lifted into the wild blue yonder. Instead, I heard the splintering sound of pieces of the wooden frame once again turning back into scrap lumber. I gasped out an expletive as I heard the speedboat’s motor fade into the distance. It had been going too fast. And as I floated in the water surrounded by the wreckage of what had been -- only seconds earlier -- my man-carrying kite, I heard groans from the crowd: “This was the entertainment?”

Reader Bill Domjan lives in Melville.