List
This really is a true story, the day it aired on the 5:00 pm news we also were
rolling on the floor and at the same time thinking'' you got to do what you got
to
do'' My wife didn't go along with it but what the hell he was the first and
what a
view of smoggy LA.
Glen
The Butters Family wrote:
> 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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