The Frisbee Flies True

The frisbee is a colorful round piece of plastic. Suburban kids try to master spinning it to each other. College students play catch with it to the sounds of the Grateful Dead. Dogs catch and chew it. And the versatile mass-produced toy is a powerful cultural icon to every other American. Even the ones who can't make it fly to save their lives.

The first frisbees were pie tins (from the Frisbie pie company, according to legend) tossed across Ivy League courtyards by inventive co-eds. The practice was reputedly popular throughout the 40s, and when the Wham-o toy company came upon the idea in the 1950s, the match was made in heaven. Americans were having more kids, parking them in green-lawned suburban tracts, and buying them anything that was available at the local department store. Scientists gave us two great inventions in the latter half of the twentieth century -- Atomic bombs to test on someone else's island and plastic to make wondrous circular flying discs.

Frisbees grew and adapted along with their owners in the 60s and 70s. Serious collectors (yes, there are people who keep frisbees just so they can look at them) are always on the look out for early glow-in-the-dark, battery lighted, whistling, and UFO frisbee models.

A game of frisbee can be as loose or as organized as the "flingers" want. It didn't take long for American kids to turn the disc into serious sporting equipment. The most skilled of the counter-culture frisbee crowd would develop Freestyle, a highly individualistic skills competition that made for great video footage. Suburban teenagers created Frisbee Football, which would later become Ultimate Frisbee, a team sport along traditional lines, and Disc Golf, a casual group game that utilizes the suburban landscape perfectly.

Frisbee is alive and well in the United States -- you can still find them in your neighborhood drug store or toy store. Ultimate is a fast growing collegiate sport and Disc Golf courses pepper affluent communities across the country. Frisbee has expanded to fit the post-War America it was born into. When there's space, and occasionally when there's not, kids float and flick a Wham-o to each other, jumping and diving and perfecting the next trick catch.

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