Thinking Sideways: Lost Boy Larry

in the fifties. But anyway, yeah, I remember, Yeah, I was live in the fifties. So we're gonna do a listener suggestion tonight, so peremptively. Thanks Teresa, I think is how you say your name? Maybe it's Teresa. I'm neither. Yeah, so one of you, two ladies, thank you, maybe both, I don't know. We're going to talk about, Oh, it's mostly just a story we're gonna talk about tonight. There's not really theories, and I'm just gonna tell a story, pretty much the story of a boy, a boy named Larry.

And that's kind of a sad story. Maybe this is like the second time that I've done kind of just a really sad story. About you always episodes. HI like upbeat things. I am a positive person, Steve, We're going to beat up this story, okay. Larry, the Lost Boy, the Lost Boil Larry. On August seven, nineteen seventy three, CB radio operators in California picked up a strange transmission. It was a cry for help coming from what I guess they soon found out was a seven year old

boy who said his name was Larry. Larry said that he was stuck in an overturned truck in a ditch and unable to get out. His father, who had been driving the truck and by most reports, had taken him hunting that day, was either injured or dead, depending on what version of the story you read, or it's also it's it's a little unclear, maybe that Larry just didn't know. It sounds like there's a little bit of interpretation, and and I'm sure once we talk a little more about

Larry that will kind of make itself. There is there is some interpretation happening here either way. Larry's transmissions were fairly sporadic. They faded in and out, and operators as far as Canada picked up his transmissions. And you know, I don't really understand how CEBE radio works very well. But that's a fairly large sprawl, I think, from southern California to Canada at AUM And we can talk about that more later. You know, you gotta talk anything about

the phenomenon known as skipping. I was gonna let you talk a little bit about that because I think you probably have a better handle on it than I do. But suffice to say for now, apparently the fluctuations could be attributed to atmospheric phenomenon, a feeding battery, or this skipping situation. Yeah, the skipping. That's that's one of one of the things is that's that's a kind of an

intermittent situation. It has to has to do what's what's going on in the eeonosphere, and so as that change, as conditions change, and you know, suddenly the skipping that occurred a minute before it goes away, it comes back. So anyright, but back to your story. When asked, Larry couldn't tell anyone what he had last seen before the

truck flipped over. He couldn't tell anybody apparently where he lived, what his last name was, or a phone number, anything that would have helped authorities identify him or locate where he was. Larry said he had no food or water, and the CB operator CB, I guess I should clarify CB stands for Citizens Band Radio. So these were just

amateur operators that picked it up initially. UM, and these amateur operators, being concerned normal human beings, called the police somehow, and I'm still not totally sure how they figured out, maybe with triangulation or something, that uh, Larry's signal was coming from somewhere close to Albuquerque, New Mexico, of course, now better known as the location of the One who knocks. If you get that, I get it. That's all that's important. It's fine. Uh So in the days that followed, fairly

massive search started. They were hundreds of volunteers, police, and planes coming through the mountains that they thought the transmissions were coming from. But, of course, as one would expect, since this radio that Larry had access to was in a truck that was no longer running, his battery started to fade, so his transmissions became more and more sporadic. His signal was fading. They couldn't really track it, which is obviously a pretty big bummer in terms of being

able to find him. It would have been nice if Larry could have given him a few hints, like looked at the wind shield, because you know, he had to he had to have known where did they go into the ditch, like in the desert or in the in the mountains, in the forests. You know, you could have given them some some big old clues. But it kind of Larry was kind of useless. He was pretty useless. And we're going to talk about that in a minute.

You know, the newspapers and TV shows, even though it isn't a twenty for our news cycle yet, are still, of course, you know, gripping onto this story because it's it's fairly large news. This is great news, it's really great news. Oddly, no one had any kind of serious, credible reports about out a husband and son, brother and nephew, neighbor,

or anyone else missing that matched this description. There was one report that said a family had gone missing, but it was a whole family, a mother and a father and a couple of kids, one of whom was named Larry. But they found they found them a couple of days later, and it was a whole family. It wasn't a truck on a hunting trip. And because of this publicity in the nineteen seventies, versions of whatever trolls are came out to play. And this is kind of a sad part

of this story. You know, everybody, a lot of people have cbe radios or just like walkie talkies with broadcast on the same frequency, I believe, and people started filling the airwaves with copycat please uh. And also some taunts. There are some reports of people yelling, Larry, You're going to die out there, and you know, stuff like that. Really really kind hearted human being. Yeah. You know, actually if this was if this was a hoax, then it could have been a whole group of cb ors. We

knew each other. Yeah, so it could have been that, you know, the whole thing could have been engineered. It's an inside joke. Yeah, it was just a big inside It was code for bringing beer to the house. Yeah, I'm out of whiskey, moonshine. It was you know, we're moving the shipment over the border tonight, Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's right there. Um. And actually, Joe brings up a good point. We haven't we've you know, kind of hinted at the fact that it kind of came out that

this may may have been a hoax. As this story went on, Larry was remaining unable to give any kind of helpful details, and all these other copycats are coming into play. Since authorities had very little proof that Larry was in fact real, they eventually decided that it was a hoax and called off the search on August tenth, ninete. So this is um three days after the initial contact

was made. The New York Times actually ran a little I guess snippet on this story, and I thought that it was probably one of the best little STAPs of what was actually going on at the time. So of Joe, if you wouldn't mind my Walter cronk, I boys, here, can you put in the glasses too? I can't read with my glasses on, believe it or not, So okay, here we go boys. A very scared boy on August nine, resumes broadcasting on the Citizens band radio frequency in foothills

of central New Mexico. Searchers say they are closing in on area where seven year old is believed to be lost in his father's pickup truck. Boy, who says his first name is Larry, told rescuers in August eighth that he and his father were in accident and that his father is dead. Three pilots reports sighting truck and Red Rock Canyon area on east side of Manzano Mountains, southeast

of Albuquerque. Helicopter is dispatched to area. Army search plan had archard transmission from Boy during night that led searches to hills. Sergeant W. A. Schmidt says searchers lost contact with Boy for several hours and presume that he had either gone to sleep or battery of his radio had gone dead. Says its searchers have not this kind of possibility of hoax. Over a hundred persons using radio monitors and directional finders are searching foothills. That was the tenth

and on August twelve, Larry signal just went silent. They had a few week leads, but with the number of people hopping on and copying, giving false information or otherwise muddling everything, getting in the mix because they thought it was fun. Yeah, I think the police declared that it was a hoax and stopped the search, just called the whole thing off. And I guess for me it's a bit disturbing because even like the with with our episode on the ferries. You know, that was a massive hoax.

Um and people tend to claim responsibility for their hoaxes usually, but nobody has ever well, one person, one time, super unconvincingly claimed that they that this was a hoax and that they did it. But that the only persons who person who's ever claimed responsibility for this maybe being a hoax. And to me that's fairly disturbing because it makes me believe more that it wasn't a hoax. I don't know.

I mean, if I had committed this hoax, I don't think I've confessed to because a lot of people would be really angry. And who knows. I mean, probably the statute of limitations has expired, but totally by this time. But obviously in the weeks and months immediately after that, or even a few years after that, you probably could still be arrested for something like this, sure, but I mean probably not years, right, I think. I don't think that was a lot of manpower that police forces in

the military. That's a big cost. That's true. A lot of people are gonna be angry. Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. I hadn't really thought of that. The one of the amateur CB operators that was sing the whole time said quote, I personally have never had any doubt that this is the real thing. I heard the kid crying. I just can't believe it isn't the real thing, And that sentiment his echoed fairly strongly throughout people who actually heard the broadcasts.

There was a police chief who spoke to Larry for a long time, for I think three hours or something like that. He didn't get any useful information, but he also didn't seem to think it was a hoax. And I think that's that's a really interesting thing for somebody to say, is you know, this seven year old child who should be able to provide me with some kind of helpful information couldn't. But I still don't think it's a hoax. I think it's real. So I think that's

very interesting. And I think one of the things that I haven't seen, which will discuss a little bit more, is reasons why Larry maybe couldn't not that he wasn't willing to give information, but maybe that he actually couldn't give him. There's actually a lot of good reasons. I think so too. Um So there's some extra little fringe

tidbits about Larry or I guess the story. Most of the reports have Larry stuck inside the truck, which makes sense, right, that's the whole reason he's calling for help and you know, can't say, oh yeah, I'm in the middle of a desert things like that. But there's one report that I read that said the Larry claimed to have been outside the truck with a skinned knee. I don't really put

a lot of stock into that. And also there was one Another variation is that he was they flipped over and went went into a ditch, which is why the doors were jamsht. Well, that's the That's the version that I hear the most, is that it was in a ditch, so he couldn't look out the window and say I'm seeing this. It was just dirt. He couldn't get out because of that. The truck was in a ravine, flipped over and he rolled into ravine. Oh, I guess I

wasn't reading carefully enough. Like one sentence difference. It's very hard sometimes to find all these things. Other other accounts say that Larry may have actually answered to either David or Larry, that maybe his name was David, not Larry. Which I think I generally read in conjunction with the this is a hoax theories, um, like somebody slipped up once when they were making the hopes, Yeah, their name

was actually David accidentally said it. Yeah. They also apparently there are some stories, some tellings where the last name Peak pe a k was in the peak of a mountain, yeah, is attached to his name. So he's either Larry Peak or David Peak. I don't. I couldn't find a good source for that. It may have been. You know, there are a lot of at the time, like tiny little newspaper clippings that are floating around the internet, and I got to be honest, I did not read all fifty

of them. So maybe a sentence change like or like one, you know, the addition of one last name, And I don't. I don't have a good answer for why that is. I also just want to go ahead and point out again that theoretically he was in New Mexico in late August, it's super hot there. If he was stuck in a truck with no water, food, reality is he didn't last more than a day or two at best, Yeah, at best. So I just want to go ahead and talk about

that for a second, just mention it. And so I guess we're left with the two options, right, is that either it was a hoax or it wasn't a hoax. And I think both of them are awful choices. In my mind, neither of those are good choices, Like either a seven year old boy died alone and scared, basically just cooked to death inside of a truck next next to his dead dad while people were like, you're gonna die, Larry, right, or somebody was like, oh, you would be a funny prank.

And if I pretended to be a seven year old cooking alive next to their dead father in a truck, good job on making the trolls if this is real sounding like even bigger jerks, well they are jerks. Well yeah, they're totally jerks. But way to go on upping the anti on that guy. Yeah. The thing about this this time period two is like the the early mid seventies was the time of the CB craze in America, so a lot more people had CBS back in those days.

And well, yeah, think of how many Burt Reynold movies came out at that time where he was always on the CB Yeah, there's all these trucker movies. Everybody had a CD or CB. My mom had a car with the CB radio and it for crime And he say, yeah everybody, Yeah, we all did. They were everywhere. Yeah, we all did. Like the phone the seventies, Yeah, like the you know what else was really cool from that time period of eight track tapes. Yeah, I remember those

two eight track tapes. Yeah. Uh stop it. So, I mean, you know, I said already. Everybody pretty much who heard Larry was fairly convinced that he was real. I mean, the police kind of were faced with a no choice. You know, there's so many hoaxes going around. We don't have any good information it's a hoax. But most of the people who talked with Larry said, no, this is this is a real small boy who's just scared and alone and you know, stuck somewhere and we got to

help him. Um. He was able to describe the truck he was in. He said it was a red truck with a white camper attached to the back of it. He knew his name was Larry, he knew he had been on a hunting trip, but he didn't know what city he lived in or what his last name was, which actually, to me makes some sense if you're I mean, okay, so it's the seventies, like, do you have your seatbel fastened? Well?

Maybe maybe not right. If you're in a truck that gets flipped over and you whang the heck out of your head as a seven year old kid, the possibility for you to just forget everything, in my mind is fairly high. I mean, like, no, am I saying that he's going to survive something like that for very long? No? But you know he only had a couple of days

and water and food. And your inclination is to say, well, he's going to forget things like what colored the truck is first, But he's sitting in the truck and he can probably see parts of it. Right, he's going to forget that he was on a camping trip. Well maybe not. Maybe what he is going to forget, maybe where the bleed in his brain is is in his older memories. Maybe his name wasn't Larry. Maybe he just thought his name was Larry. Maybe you know, maybe he just made

up a name that he thought was there. Maybe seven, maybe he was thirty five, Maybe he was the father kidding Actually it's kind of plausible when you think about a head injury. But you know, so for me, I guess I have I don't have a huge amount of trouble seeing how something like that could affect someone's memory. If you're in a horrible car crash, it happens all the time, but you get hospitalized because you get care.

You know. The other thing that that I would jump in here to say is when was the last time either of you had a conversation with a seven year old and how fleeting is their memory? Well? Yeah, but you know when I was seven, I you know, I knew my I knew my full name, and I knew the city I lived in. But there was a lot of times where you had that information in your brain.

But your seven, it's not easily retrieved. And think about what little kids that get lost in the mall are, Like we all hear these stories and this kid whose seven gets lost in the mall and they say, what's your name? I don't know, what's your mom's name, I

don't know where do you? They don't know because they're panicked, and it's it just kind it shuts that kind of cognisant recalled down well yeah, but sooner or later, you know, you can only flood your body with adrenaline for so long, and then and then you come down off of that and you and you know, sort of gather your wits together.

Even a seven year old, I think, sooner or later would calm down and assess the situation, realized that panicking is not really helping, and that what he needs to do is get some useful information to these people that he's talking to. You're assigning a lot of adult thought to a seven year old brain. I have hung around seven year olds who were completely and totally irrational, and it's only because of the fact that there's seven. They

don't they don't think about that. You know. They get caughts and flights of fancy and panic and they just get all kinds of worked up. And it's easy, especially if dad is lying next to you and you don't know what's wrong with dad. That's going to continually cause panic. But I know seven year olds, they're they're just not real good with a lot of that details because they're seven. Yeah. The other thing about seven year olds is they get

often super cranky and panicked when they get tired. And if you're you know, steaming alive in a car, no food or water. I mean really, if you know, and you're panicking because your dad there and you can't get out, and you're tired and you're thirsty, and people are like yelling all different things to you, and people are like everybody's just asking you questions. I can understand how he would be a little freaked out. And I don't know. I don't, I don't know, I don't know. I just

want my mommy. I just you know, Yeah, it's very understandable, I think. So. So here's here's I don't I don't want to, I don't want to get off topic too much, but I do just want to try and understand something because Joe, you seem to understand it better than I do. Is is if we're going to flip back to how so many people heard this and maybe this was a trolling situation. Yeah, so how does you gave kind of a basic explanation, But how does this skipping thing really happened?

Because I couldn't get a good handle on it. Yeah, and now the way it works is uh, And I'm not a scientist. I don't understand it completely, but essentially it's it's you always talk about the Yeah, I don't know Chupacapa is real. So anyway, so the iodostre, which is I don't know what about fifty three miles after

about two sixty miles on the surface of the Earth. Uh, it's called the atmosphere because it's filled with ions, and apparently, especially particularly when the sun is going through high periods of high sun spot activity, there's a lot of coronal flares and things like that. It sends a lot of ionized particles towards the Earth and that they collect in the aist and they charge in a certain way that

makes it conducive. Essentially, radio waves traveling up in the surface at forty five degree angle are refracted and bent around down and according to one website I looked at, uh, sometimes it can actually reradiate the radio signals, so it picks up the charge from the radio signal, reradiates downward

back to the surface, and so apparently that can happen. Yeah, But in other case, is it just basically goes up as refracted back downwards, bounces off the ground, goes up as refracted back downwards, and so there have been cases of people skipping like halfway around the world, people in the US talking to people in Australia on CBS. But they say most of the people that do that usually they're they're they're using home based stations, and a lot

of them, a lot of people. Even though you're not supposed to operate over four watts on a CB, you can actually get amplifiers and supercharge your CB, and so you're a lot more likely to be able to do skipping and be actually be heard, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of miles away, because you're your average CB is very very limited line of sight range. Oh you know. Okay, so you just brought up a very good point which suddenly makes me doubt this whole story. Absolutely valid point

that I've never seen anywhere. You say, you've got to have an antenna, Yeah, which this guy, which this kid didn't have, because the truck is upside down. If the truck is upside down, the antenna is likely broke or partially buried. Well, I hadn't even thought about that until you said the booster tower. Yeah. So the next and the next possibility after that, so so so obviously, if it's if it's an in dash radio, if it's mounting inside the truck, the radio is going to be completely

useless radio. But there's also a handheld CBS, but that wouldn't work either, because the kid's in a metal box stell reflects radio waves, so the only the only place that that those radio waves are gonna be able to get out through is maybe through the windshield, possibly if that's not all covered with dirt and blocked. The kid was either in a ditch in a ditch or intervene depending on what versions so, or outside with a skin kney. Yeah, so a handheld CBE is like you know, the streetlights.

There's an antheld walkie talking had a c B, which, under ideal conditions, so you're you're on a mountaintop and the person you're talking to was on a mountaintop five miles away, that handheld might make it the whole five miles to the listener. But obviously this was less than optimal conditions for Larry here. So it's really unlikely to me that Larry even existed. This is why I don't believe this story, because there's no way he could have used either kind of CB to contact anybody, not unless

they were maybe a couple hundred yards away. Right, that's that's a good point. Um, So, yeah, that's a really good point. Actually, yeah, so Larry didn't exist, did you come across? There was one? There was some snippet, as you said, in a snippets section. There's a snippet one of the stories that I read about somebody tracking down a kid with a handheld radio who was goofing or CB that was goofing around two kids. And so I just I wonder if that's maybe where it came from.

But how the heck did they triangulate this, that's what he still I don't get it either. You know. The one person who came forward and said, oh no, that was me was this middle aged dude in the Midwest, and he tried to prove that he had been the prankster by doing Larry's voice for everyone, and apparently it was just hilariously inaccurate that it was clearly like a just a Midwestern dude trying to do like a scared seven year old voice that just nobody really seemed to

believe it. And he was claiming to have been broadcasting from the Midwest. And you know, again, I don't know how they triangulated it. I don't know if there's a uh, the actual ability to triangulate it, but you know, and I kind of wonder if perhaps there's something lost in the history of this, you know, if Larry didn't say, oh it was desert when we flipped over, or if you know, they were able to somehow track something. I don't I don't know how they do that. I don't

know either. It could have it could have been somebody actually driving around the area in a car with the boosted CB UM maybe, but they would have had to have been in the area, is my feeling. It's not that, you know, somebody in the Midwest could have been doing this unless they had been, you know, continually skipping to the near Albuquerque. Yeah, if they're actually skipping, I don't really see how you can triangulate. That's somebody within the

line of sight. So somebody reasonably close by. So you have several CB operators and they all pick up the same transmission, and they all see the signal strength of that's that transmission. Most of the most radio, especially home ones, have little dials and knobs and stadio. Yeah, so I can see the signal strength and and you know, the signal strength for that that thing from several different locations found it. You can sort of probably get a rough

idea of where it originated from. And I think that's maybe because I was rereading the piece from is it the New York New York Times New York Times, and they was talking about the monitoring and the transmission. Yeah, there's some stuff in there that leads me to believe that they were using multiple listening points to try and figure out it's stronger here, it's weaker here. You know, that kind of so accurate pinpointing of what you had

at the time. So that's that seems the only way I can you can see it plausibly that they could track it out. That makes sense. It's it's probably somebody in a car or truck in the area broadcasting this thing. And that's not counting all the other copycats that are out there jumping in sure, So that's what that would be my best guess. Okay, well you've totally ruined my best theory was super depressing and sad reality. And he

died horribly out in the desert. Yeah, that he was real, and that like the first you know, maybe day's worth of trans missions were actually him and then just he died. And how was it the best theory? I said, that was my theory, say best, at my best, it's my best. I apologized. I didn't mean for it to be like it's like some theory. Yeah, well no. But the other reason I think this was a hoax is it's been forty one years since it's happened. They would have found

the truck by now. Somebody would have stumbled across that thing, some hikers or somebody. Yeah. The interesting thing was that I read reports and in the in the New York Times, are Quality even mentioned three pilots reports sighting truck in Red Rock Canyon area, and there were there were, and then there were other reports that they some people saw an overturned truck in that kind of area, but there was never any follow up on that. So, but the thing about it is is they so they flipped the

truck and it goes in a ditch. Well, what's always right next to a ditch a road, a road that people are gonna be driving up and down. In forty one years, there's got to have been at least a few people that's driven up and down that road, and what it probably noticed the flipped over pickout truck. Actually, I'll counter that if you go into a ditch or a ravine, even if it's near Okay, well, what is a ditch to you? Is that three ft deep or

is that ten ft deep? Because I've you know, I've seen a lot of quote unquote ditches were actually ten ft deep or something next to the side of a road and they funnel a bunch of water through, and that winter there's a flood through. So let's we're talking. We're talking about our Arizona, right, New Mexico. Excuse me,

So that area is prone to flash flooding. So if you get a big swell of water that comes through, it's very possible that could have been buried in that first winter one one giant wash buries it un a bunch of crap, And yeah, you're right, it should have been found by now, But who knows how far could have traveled. Well, I guess I also, you know, my other argument would be like, I don't know if they're

still there or not. But when I was a kid and we got to Forest Park, you'd walk on these trails and they were like cars from the seventies and sixties that had just been abandoned in the middle of these forest park, you know, just like pushed into the forest a little bit and had been overgrown, and like obviously, you know, probably they weren't, you know, part of a message of man hunt for a seven year old boy. But they were left there on public land just to

you know, kind of the yeah, to basically rot. So things like that have happened. But I think you're probably right that there was enough publicity surrounding this thing that assuming they were on a road, because if they were off roading in the middle of the desert to go hunting, that's a different story. But still a lot of other people are going to cross that desert forty one years,

sooner or later, somebody's going to cross. Agree, somebody would think somebody would have found it, but enough time would pass. I'll bet you after five years, this is no longer in the public consciousness. And so I I mean, it was some rusty old pickup truck and go, well, what a piece of junk, and I keep going. Usually I shoot a few holes in it before I move on. Anyway, the best Joe, yeah, I know. But anyway, so so

to sum out my all my reasons, number one. All of the kid couldn't have been transmitting with the CB and the circumstances. I mean if he if he was, it wouldn't have reached more than a hundred yards or so. Uh. Nobody ever found the wreck. No family member ever came forward and said, hey, my son and my daughter, my son and my husband are missing. I mean, none of that, nobody. I mean, this guy, his his father had to have had a job right when he failed to report to

work the following Monday. Do you think somebody would have maybe put two and two together considering this has been all over, this is all over the headlines. Yeah, it's just none of it makes any sense. I guess. I in the seventies, I can see somebody not having a job and being a single father, and you know, I don't know what um I think that's the eight t was a Friday that year, So they went missing on

a Tuesday. Who takes their kid hunting on a Tuesday except for somebody who doesn't have a job, if he's an unemployed single dad, they don't have any living family. It's happened before that. I mean it's not likely, right, but it's possible. I guess you know, I think with your one fell swoop of Oh yeah, by the way, the CB radio couldn't have been broadcasting. Okay, I'm on your side, but I am going to continue to say I think there's a lot of likelihood around Larry's story,

whether or not. And um, what was the Jane Doe something something that you did the story on. Yeah, I can't remember this. A lot of numbers, Jan, lots of numbers. The same thing with her. We all said, well, how come nobody reported her missing? Well, it could have been as simple as people and oh, well they moved. Oh, I guess they moved out of the house. There was a story I just read from the BBC of they found some woman in her flat dead. She had been

there for six and a half years. Because her car was gone, her neighbors just assumed that she had moved. Okay, this guy's read pick up with a camper is gone, and they just go, oh, I guess he moved. I've told you both about the neighbor I had who just randomly disappeared for a couple of months, and I thought, well, I guess that guy just moved until I found out what the story was dead. Very simple story just kind of took off for a while I was on walk about.

But the same thing. It's like, oh, well, I guess my neighbor moved out. Well, they'll the landlord will do something about it. When they do something about it, or the owner of the property, whoever, maybe it takes a long time and they don't figure it out. Well. And even I mean, you know, I guess not to like push this too hard. But even if he's not unemployed, he takes the day right. But if he's uh, you know, a single parent, and he's a delinquent, maybe he like

doesn't show up, he's laid a lot. His manager just assumes, oh, John decided to quit, didn't show up, better fire him. Well, well, yeah, that's as possible. Or his manager could, like, you know, having just read the newspaper, could put two and two together at stage. Yeah, I wonder if it's John that's trapped in that pickup truck that would take the kid. The kid doesn't show up for school, but maybe the school authorities will just say, must have moved, you know. Okay, again,

the guy stops paying his rent to the landlord. So the landlord finally comes by and realized there's no nobody there, and he like puts two and two together the authorities. But you're you're you're expecting a lot of people who read very small snippets. You gotta I don't think what a lot of people to understand. And when we're doing this story, because I was looking at the clippings, because people have scanned the man. That New York Times bit that you read was probably one of the larger stories

that it's out there. Most of them are about a paragraph and a half on page n B, next to the O bits. So it's very easy to get missed. It's not like today where we have and I've said this before and I'll say it again, where there's social media cramming all of this in front of us. Instead, it's back there and I might read it, and I might, you know, work at the same place, but not make the connection. But you're the manager, but you don't read it,

so you don't make the connection. And I don't think to tell you anything because I'm busy doing my job. Because we don't stand around in chit chat and email these stories to each other. And you know, I guess it was started and finished within what like within a week. But but at the same time, it did get some it did get a lot a lot of local play because forget a hundred volunteers showed up to comb it absolutely did. So it's kind of the word was out. Yeah, no,

I think you're I think you're right. I think it's there's there's good arguments on both sides. Yeah, do you guys have I mean, I know Joe's favorite theories that Larry wasn't real. I was ambivalent at the start, but I also don't believe that Larry was real. Yeah. Unfortunately, it reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons, which show is the best show is always in, which reminds

me of an episode of The Simpsons. Ye, sir, oh well, Bart, Bart gets his he gets a walkie talkie set, so he so he lowers one of the walkie talkies down that's really really deep. Well, and then he gets on the other on it and he's like, oh, somebody helped me since in the hole town of Springfield. It's like, oh my god, I forget what he calls himself. Maybe he called himself Larry, but he's like, you know, he's

got everybody all concerned and and Anyways. You know what's funny is I think I've seen like ten episodes of Simpsons in my life. Yeah, and that is one of them. Yeah yeah, yeah, so maybe they maybe they were sort of riffing on Larry particular. The genius of the Simpsons, right, is that, like they make references that are so obscure pop culture references that only a few people get them. And it's still good. Yeah, still so good. Yeah, I

guess um. So anyway, if I'm wrong, If I'm wrong, I apologize to your desiccated skeleton somewhere out there in the desert. But I don't think many people hate you. Now, Yeah, Larry is fine. Whoever whoever was the voice of Larry is h living in Fiji. Yeah, he's he's middle aged adult now and you know middle age. Yeah, well he would have been born in assuming he was actually seven, he would have been born in the mid sixties. Yeah'd

been middle aged. What is what is middle aged? It's like, you know, like thirty to sixty or something like that, is it? Really? I never I never know. I always here I'm middle aged. I never know what the classroom anymore? Yeah, I don't know. I think middle aged is half the average lifespan. Okay, I always said, I think of it is around fifty or so. I was like my doctors years but years ago, and well not that many years ago, I guess, but decades. He said. I was like thirty three,

and he says that was all. You know, your middle aged white male and what are you talking about. Apparently that's the way doctors see it, is like thirty to sixty or something like that. I better start taking better care of myself. I'm gonna be middle aged soon. You are. Um, well, I guess not always sell the mystery. It's time for the closing credits. Yeah, it actually totally is pictures. There's not there's no photographs of anything because obviously, like we

don't know where it was problem. But a picture probably of this news snippet will put up. But also the links I did. Go out to the web, and there are lots of pictures of red and white pickup trucks. That's fair. Go out to the web. You'll find them. Yeah, we'll put those on the website. We won't know, we won't. But links to a couple of links. There's not a whole lot of thinks around the internet. And also you may be listening on our website thinking sideways podcast dot com. Uh,

you can always find us on iTunes. If you do listen to us on iTunes. If you're not already subscribed, subscribe and leave us the comments and a rating. How does how does that tune go? Again? Nope? You got it once. You can loop it. You edit these shows. I am so looping that now, and I don't know. If you forget, we're going to get the Devin subscribe song that will not be in there. Make them together perfect?

It was terrible beaut If you forget to download us, you can always stream us to right from stitcher on any mobile device I get, except for a CB. They don't have any apps, unfortunately, although we may just broadcast the show on CB and ways to use our HAM radio. That seems like too much work to you. The only HAM I can't I have comes in plastic packages. That's not a radio kind. Yeah, I don't have a CB. Somebody bring me some? Hey? No, okay, you can find

us on Facebook. You can change like us, don't forget to like us. Yeah, you can either like us or you can join the fan page. That guess that's the terminology the group Uh, there's lots of stuff going on there actually right now. And if you're Larry, or you heard Larry, or you just want to talk to us, send us an email. That email address, as always, as Steve would say, is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.

I guess on that super awesome upbeat short note. Yeah, we're going to get out of here, so so long, everybody, break record, niner. We'll talk you next week and Larry give us a call. Just oh my gosh,