Tail from Child's Kite Had Shelby Lights Flickering Saturday and Sunday, March 8, 1926

Kite Flying Caused Lights to Flicker Saturday NIght. . . String Made Old Blanket Become Wet and Part of Shelby in Darkness as Result

Boys will be boys and for no other reason “The City of Springs” was in darkness off and on Saturday night.

Down at the old Armory hall, Chas. Cordell, Shelby battler, had to stop a swing in midair because the lights jumped off and he couldn’t see the chin a which he was aiming; along the residential streets bridge players with “grand slam” hands had to wait, patiently or impatiently, until the lights came back on and routed the bleak darkness; in the uptown stores merchants and clerks had considerable delay in waiting upon their customers; here, there and every where about town there was confusion.

For, in brief, Shelby’s city lights were spasmodic, to say the least, practically all of Saturday night and Sunday. Unexpectedly they would go off and after some minutes of darkness would flash on again. And it kept repeating throughout the night.

Uptown, city electricians under the direction of Supt. R.V. Poms, looked perplexedly for the cause. After a time they found it.

Last week the March winds arose and flurried. It was kite-flying time and down by the laundry the boys sent their kites sailing into the air. Some of the kites had strings onto them, which is customary with kites. One boy had torn up an old blanket as a tail for his kite. In some way the kite became entangled in the high-powered wires. The old blanket wrapped itself around two of the main wires and remained fastened there. Nothing of consequence developed. But then it rained and the tail of the kite made of an old blanket became a conductor of electricity when thoroughly saturated with water, and therefore a short circuit and the off and on lights of Saturday night and Sunday.

If you became enraged Saturday night by the jumpy lights, just remember that you were once a boy and that boys will fly kites in March and that kite tails many times do things they are not supposed to do.

So ends another mystery.

From the front page of The Cleveland Star, Shelby, N.C., Monday, March 8, 1926

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