This story is so funny I had a terrible time trying to read it to my
family, enjoy
I suppose most people have dreams, but how many people actually turn their
dreams into reality? Larry Walters is among the few who have. His story is
true, though you may find it hard to believe.
Larry was a truck driver, but his life long dream was to fly. When he
graduated from high school, he joined the air force in hopes of becoming a
pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left
the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the fighter
jets that crisscrossed the skies over his back yard. As he sat there in his
lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.
Then one day, Larry Walters got an idea. He went down to the local
Army-Navy store and bought a tank of Helium and forty-five weather balloons.
These are not your brightly colored party balloons, these were heavy duty
spheres measuring four feet across when inflated.
Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn
chair, the kind you might have in your back yard. He anchored the chair to the
bumper of his jeep and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed some
sandwiches and drinks and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few
balloons when it was time to return to earth.
His preparations complete, Larry Walters sat in the chair and cut the
anchoring cord. His plan was to float lazily down to terra firma. But things
didn't quite work out that way.
When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float up lazily; he shot up as if
fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and
climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height,
he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the
load and really experience flying! So he stayed up there, sailing around for
fourteen hours, totally at a loss as to how to get down.
Eventually Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles
International Air Port. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy
in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet with a gun in his lap. (Now that is a
conversation I would have liked to have heard.)
LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at night fall, the
winds on the coast begin to change. So, as dusk fell, Larry began to drift out
to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him. But the
rescue team had a hard time getting to him, because the draft from the
propeller kept pushing the homemade contraption further and further away.
Eventually they were able to hover over him and drop a rescue line with which
they gradually hauled him back to earth.
As soon as Larry hit the ground he was arrested. But as he was being
led away in handcuffs, a television reporter yelled out, "Mr. Walters, why'd
you do it"? Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, " A man
can't just sit around"
Howard Hendricks with Chip MacGegor from Standing Together
Hard not to laugh at this guy but in a way we are all like this, much of the
world figures we are about as goofy at what we do. Actually I wonder if it
wasn't this same guy who put the rockets in the back of his Merc. in Arizona
and touched them off. Is that story really true?
Well Goodbye, I guess this Florida election thing is getting to me,
Kvach
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