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September 3, 2025 45 mins

Interesting Pod #5 - LawnChair Larry and Backyard Aeronauts Take Flight. 

 

Today we finally get to the inspiration for this set of episodes: Lawnchair Larry himself - the man who tied a bunch of balloons to his lawnchair and flew off into history. A great, great story - and a cautionary tale. 

 But before we get to that, let me do the typical podcast host drivel for a moment. As an Indie show not hosted by a celebrity, the Interesting Pod relies on word of mouth. Please tell folks about us, and share episodes on social media. Our growth depends, in large part, on you guys. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts would be helpful as well. I’ve been podcasting since 2005, and believe in the medium as an excellent way to communicate. From about 2005 to 2015, podcasting was a ground-leveling way for normal people to reach lots of people with all kinds of fascinating topics, but now the podcasting world is flooded and saturated with celebrities. That’s fine, I suppose, but I hope there’s still a place for indie shows and little podcasts like this one, and when you tell people about it, you help little efforts like this carve a niche. Thank you! 

On our last episode, we introduced you to the real Wonder Twins - The scientists, aeronauts and deep sea exploring Piccard Twins, likely the inspiration behind Starfleet Captain Jean Luc Picard. Before the Piccard twins inspired the creation of Captain Picard, however, they inspired another luminary, this one much more like Dr. Zefram Cochrane than Picard. A high-strung - in more ways than one - truck driver and aeronaut named Larry Walters. He dreamed of becoming an ace pilot in the USAF, but poor eyesight and maybe other factors grounded him. At least, it grounded him temporarily, but not permanently!

I’m Chase, and today we’re telling the story of Lawnchair Larry—the man who lashed helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair, rose to an altitude that Isaiah might call “mounting up with wings like eagles,” and drifted his way into American folklore, aviation case studies, and even a blackout in Long Beach. This is a story about ingenuity and longing, the thin line between gumption and folly, bravery and recklessness, and some of the depressing factors of life after kissing the sky. 

It’s July 2, 1982, and Los Angeles is doing what Los Angeles does best, sunshine, smog, and improbable dreams. The front page of the LA Times for that day discussed the benefits and dangers of radio therapists - around 11 years before Frasier appeared on the airwaves. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were, unsurprisingly, going at it, and Ronald Reagan weighed in on the insanity plea of his would-be assassin John Hinkley. The weather that day called for a high of 78 and a low of 59, a bit cold for LA at that time of year. 

 In the backyard of a San Pedro home, a Sears aluminum lawn chair is tethered to dozens of weather balloons like a suburban version of Jules Verne. A rope slips loose earlier than planned, and our hero, Larry Walters, truck driver and thwarted Air Force hopeful, shoots into the relatively cool Southern California sky. Not metaphorically. Literally. Up, up, and away…straight toward controlled airspace. A Delta pilot gawks. A TWA pilot confirms. And somewhere on a CB radio, Larry calmly informs the REACT volunteers: “Ah, the difficulty is, ah, this was an unauthorized balloon launch.” You don’t say, Larry.

Long before he tangled with those power lines, Larry tangled with a different kind of line: the Air Force’s vision requirements. He wanted to fly, but his eyesight grounded the dream. Like many of us who don’t get Plan A, he did what you do, he settled. Truck driver by trade; dreamer by nature. And that dream, according to Larry, started early. At 13, he walked into a military surplus store, looks up at a ceiling of weather balloons, and thinks: there’s a way to get airborne without a fighter jet. The seed is planted.

Fast forward to 1982. Ronald Reagan’s in the White House, E.T. is in theaters, and Larry, now in his early thirties, decides to cash in the dream. The plan is simple in a Rube Goldberg kind of way: attach roughly 42 (sometimes Larry said 43) eight-foot weather balloons to a lawn chair, fill them with helium, lift off gently, drift over the Mojave, and, this is the key, shoot a few balloons with a pellet gun when it’s time to descend. What could go wrong besides literally everything?

Oh yeah,  about that lawn chair. It was reportedly a Sears special, about $109 at the time…

Pause - $109 for a lawnchair in the early 1980s?? That’s like 350 today. On the one hand, if you are going to take your lawnchair up to the edge of space, then I get wanting to have the absolute best lawnchair possible. On the other hand, that’s a LOT of money for a lawnchair! 

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