Bold Boulder: Catch the Wind by Alan Goya

A Note About Our Stories: Boulder City Social celebrates the stories, memories, and folklore that make Boulder City unique. Some accounts have been passed down over the years and may include personal recollections or details that cannot be historically verified. These stories are shared for community and historical interest and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Boulder City Chamber of Commerce or Boulder City Social.

This is the second in a series of articles featuring guest writer, Alan Goya. Alan is a long-time resident of Boulder City and somewhat of a raconteur who has collected a number of historical anecdotes about the people and history of our town. We continue this series with a fictional story based on the recollections of Ila M (Godbey) Clements-Davey, who passed away in August at the age of 95. Her obituary can be found HERE.

Catch the Wind

Based on the true story that Ila Clements Davey (Godbey) told me and I imagined it.
(revised 02/06/2019) by Alan Goya

There was a lot for a kid to do in Boulder City Nevada in the spring of 1935, a few months before the official dedication by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Hoover Dam. Now these were kids of very hardworking no-nonsense people who were building the biggest public works project since the Pyramids. The secret to doing the fun stuff kids like to do is to look like what you're doing is somehow productive and slyly have fun doing it. Like walking to school. Yes, kids once had to walk to school. There were a few cars, but their use didn’t usually include driving kids around. Everybody walked and explored the ground and found rocks to pick up and inspect and throw at things in the desert. And in the spring, there were the strong winds coming from the south to mess with your hair and dust your eyeglasses, The Haboob. Its exact linguistic origins come from the Sahara, but at some time in history a similar wind inspired an American Southwest version. And the kids would soon find out how long and steady the Haboob could be.

The Kelly boys, Dan and his little brother, looked kind of scraggly and poor but they were smart, liked to do interesting things and were very curious. On a windy Sunday spring day to be a kid, was to fly a kite. And the kite of choice was the box kite; which at first impression seems ill suited due to its squareness and lack of obvious aerodynamic qualities. They were tricky to get up in the air, but Dan Kelly and little brother Kelly knew how to catch wind.

The secret of launching a box kite is to see the wind. If you can see the wind, you know where to point it and push it into the wind. Dan could see the wind, and he dreamed of flying his kite to the moon. Now Danny, as his little brother called him, heard the leaves saw the wind and launched the kite into the sky. Ila, the little neighbor girl, squealed in delight and her older brother, Tom, frowned at his failure at launching his. But soon enough, all along Utah Street the kites were launched, and the sky came alive with the eyes of children.

Dan’s little brother loved the kite; he got to hold the kite-string during launch. When Danny said the word and launched the up and told little brother to run. Little brother felt the magic tug of the kite and held fast and turned around and felt the kite fly. Dan quickly grabbed the string from his little brother’s slight protest and watched as Danny flew the kite and let out his string. Box kites, once they catch the wind, like to fly higher and higher, farther and farther till the kite was a small spot in the sky.

Once the kite had reached its zenith Danny gave the string back to his little brother. When you're a kid you have superpowers. One of the most powerful is astroimaginary projection, which all children process in vast quantities until their parents train it out of them. Some bad parents ignore this time-wasting habit and produce abnormal kids like Albert Einstein. Little Brother was using his powers mightily and through the string he sailed high above the house and up the hill toward a cloud behind The Great Water Tank.

Now The Great Water Tank of Boulder City was a massive thing, said to hold two million gallons of Colorado River Water and was the first permanent structure in the town. It was also the highest point of the town and gave a great view of the Eldorado Valley, but also of the future Lake Mead.

Dan was now flying. The power astroimaginary projection was strong in Dan and he longed to fly further and maybe he was talking out loud or maybe Ila was a mind reader or maybe she just got tired of holding on to her brother’s string, but Ila handed Dan the string and said, “You can use ours”. Dan attached the string and to delight of Ila and the other kids, the kite flew higher and farther than all the others. The other kids all pulled down their kites and added their strings to the flight, until with the very last piece of string, given by Grandma Pickett, the kite flew right above the great water tank. They all took turns flying the The Kite feeling the magic of all that string flying in the wind. The sun was beginning to set, and no one even knew if it were possible to bring the kite down; so they tied it to a clothesline post and left it there for the night.

To everyone’s amazement and delight, the next morning as they walked to school the kite was still flying straight and true, up and up through the town over the top of the hill above The Great Water Tank. On the way home from school all the kids would stop and each take their turn to fly The Kite. And they did it the next day and the next, for a whole month the Kite flew above the town and every day the children could feel the power of astroimagination.

Then one day the kite came to earth during a windless night, and the string lay across the town. And the kids followed and collected the string through the town till they collected to the top of the hill where the kite lay beside The Great Water Tank. But they were not sad. Danny Kelly’s Little Brother summed it up best when they found the kite, “That was amazing!” Three months later at 2pm Eastern Standard Time on September 30, 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said basically the same thing at the dedication of the Dam.