Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey, everyone
Speaker 1: thinking Sideways the podcast again as always. Yeah, I'm Devin,
Speaker 1: joined by Joe and Steve. As we pointed to each
Speaker 1: other saying you're it Steves jump of the gun, but
Speaker 1: not our real names. So tonight, Godzilla Factor fiction no
Speaker 1: prepare for the onslaught of requests, so please actually do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Joe. Thanks. There was a documentary made in Japan
Speaker 1: in the fifties. But anyway, yeah, I remember, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was live in the fifties. So we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: listener suggestion tonight, so peremptively. Thanks Teresa, I think is
Speaker 1: how you say your name? Maybe it's Teresa. I'm neither. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so one of you, two ladies, thank you, maybe both,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're going to talk about, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: mostly just a story we're gonna talk about tonight. There's
Speaker 1: not really theories, and I'm just gonna tell a story,
Speaker 1: pretty much the story of a boy, a boy named Larry.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of a sad story. Maybe this is
Speaker 1: like the second time that I've done kind of just
Speaker 1: a really sad story. About you always episodes. HI like
Speaker 1: upbeat things. I am a positive person, Steve, We're going
Speaker 1: to beat up this story, okay. Larry, the Lost Boy,
Speaker 1: the Lost Boil Larry. On August seven, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: CB radio operators in California picked up a strange transmission.
Speaker 1: It was a cry for help coming from what I
Speaker 1: guess they soon found out was a seven year old
Speaker 1: boy who said his name was Larry. Larry said that
Speaker 1: he was stuck in an overturned truck in a ditch
Speaker 1: and unable to get out. His father, who had been
Speaker 1: driving the truck and by most reports, had taken him
Speaker 1: hunting that day, was either injured or dead, depending on
Speaker 1: what version of the story you read, or it's also
Speaker 1: it's it's a little unclear, maybe that Larry just didn't know.
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's a little bit of interpretation, and
Speaker 1: and I'm sure once we talk a little more about
Speaker 1: Larry that will kind of make itself. There is there
Speaker 1: is some interpretation happening here either way. Larry's transmissions were
Speaker 1: fairly sporadic. They faded in and out, and operators as
Speaker 1: far as Canada picked up his transmissions. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand how CEBE radio works very well.
Speaker 1: But that's a fairly large sprawl, I think, from southern
Speaker 1: California to Canada at AUM And we can talk about
Speaker 1: that more later. You know, you gotta talk anything about
Speaker 1: the phenomenon known as skipping. I was gonna let you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that because I think you
Speaker 1: probably have a better handle on it than I do.
Speaker 1: But suffice to say for now, apparently the fluctuations could
Speaker 1: be attributed to atmospheric phenomenon, a feeding battery, or this
Speaker 1: skipping situation. Yeah, the skipping. That's that's one of one
Speaker 1: of the things is that's that's a kind of an
Speaker 1: intermittent situation. It has to has to do what's what's
Speaker 1: going on in the eeonosphere, and so as that change,
Speaker 1: as conditions change, and you know, suddenly the skipping that
Speaker 1: occurred a minute before it goes away, it comes back.
Speaker 1: So anyright, but back to your story. When asked, Larry
Speaker 1: couldn't tell anyone what he had last seen before the
Speaker 1: truck flipped over. He couldn't tell anybody apparently where he lived,
Speaker 1: what his last name was, or a phone number, anything
Speaker 1: that would have helped authorities identify him or locate where
Speaker 1: he was. Larry said he had no food or water,
Speaker 1: and the CB operator CB, I guess I should clarify
Speaker 1: CB stands for Citizens Band Radio. So these were just
Speaker 1: amateur operators that picked it up initially. UM, and these
Speaker 1: amateur operators, being concerned normal human beings, called the police somehow,
Speaker 1: and I'm still not totally sure how they figured out,
Speaker 1: maybe with triangulation or something, that uh, Larry's signal was
Speaker 1: coming from somewhere close to Albuquerque, New Mexico, of course,
Speaker 1: now better known as the location of the One who knocks.
Speaker 1: If you get that, I get it. That's all that's important.
Speaker 1: It's fine. Uh So in the days that followed, fairly
Speaker 1: massive search started. They were hundreds of volunteers, police, and
Speaker 1: planes coming through the mountains that they thought the transmissions
Speaker 1: were coming from. But, of course, as one would expect,
Speaker 1: since this radio that Larry had access to was in
Speaker 1: a truck that was no longer running, his battery started
Speaker 1: to fade, so his transmissions became more and more sporadic.
Speaker 1: His signal was fading. They couldn't really track it, which
Speaker 1: is obviously a pretty big bummer in terms of being
Speaker 1: able to find him. It would have been nice if
Speaker 1: Larry could have given him a few hints, like looked
Speaker 1: at the wind shield, because you know, he had to
Speaker 1: he had to have known where did they go into
Speaker 1: the ditch, like in the desert or in the in
Speaker 1: the mountains, in the forests. You know, you could have
Speaker 1: given them some some big old clues. But it kind
Speaker 1: of Larry was kind of useless. He was pretty useless.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 1: You know, the newspapers and TV shows, even though it
Speaker 1: isn't a twenty for our news cycle yet, are still,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, gripping onto this story because it's
Speaker 1: it's fairly large news. This is great news, it's really
Speaker 1: great news. Oddly, no one had any kind of serious,
Speaker 1: credible reports about out a husband and son, brother and nephew, neighbor,
Speaker 1: or anyone else missing that matched this description. There was
Speaker 1: one report that said a family had gone missing, but
Speaker 1: it was a whole family, a mother and a father
Speaker 1: and a couple of kids, one of whom was named Larry.
Speaker 1: But they found they found them a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: and it was a whole family. It wasn't a truck
Speaker 1: on a hunting trip. And because of this publicity in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, versions of whatever trolls are came out
Speaker 1: to play. And this is kind of a sad part
Speaker 1: of this story. You know, everybody, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have cbe radios or just like walkie talkies with broadcast
Speaker 1: on the same frequency, I believe, and people started filling
Speaker 1: the airwaves with copycat please uh. And also some taunts.
Speaker 1: There are some reports of people yelling, Larry, You're going
Speaker 1: to die out there, and you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Really really kind hearted human being. Yeah. You know, actually
Speaker 1: if this was if this was a hoax, then it
Speaker 1: could have been a whole group of cb ors. We
Speaker 1: knew each other. Yeah, so it could have been that,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole thing could have been engineered. It's
Speaker 1: an inside joke. Yeah, it was just a big inside
Speaker 1: It was code for bringing beer to the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm out of whiskey, moonshine. It was you know, we're
Speaker 1: moving the shipment over the border tonight, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: It's right there. Um. And actually, Joe brings up a
Speaker 1: good point. We haven't we've you know, kind of hinted
Speaker 1: at the fact that it kind of came out that
Speaker 1: this may may have been a hoax. As this story
Speaker 1: went on, Larry was remaining unable to give any kind
Speaker 1: of helpful details, and all these other copycats are coming
Speaker 1: into play. Since authorities had very little proof that Larry
Speaker 1: was in fact real, they eventually decided that it was
Speaker 1: a hoax and called off the search on August tenth, ninete.
Speaker 1: So this is um three days after the initial contact
Speaker 1: was made. The New York Times actually ran a little
Speaker 1: I guess snippet on this story, and I thought that
Speaker 1: it was probably one of the best little STAPs of
Speaker 1: what was actually going on at the time. So of Joe,
Speaker 1: if you wouldn't mind my Walter cronk, I boys, here,
Speaker 1: can you put in the glasses too? I can't read
Speaker 1: with my glasses on, believe it or not, So okay,
Speaker 1: here we go boys. A very scared boy on August nine,
Speaker 1: resumes broadcasting on the Citizens band radio frequency in foothills
Speaker 1: of central New Mexico. Searchers say they are closing in
Speaker 1: on area where seven year old is believed to be
Speaker 1: lost in his father's pickup truck. Boy, who says his
Speaker 1: first name is Larry, told rescuers in August eighth that
Speaker 1: he and his father were in accident and that his
Speaker 1: father is dead. Three pilots reports sighting truck and Red
Speaker 1: Rock Canyon area on east side of Manzano Mountains, southeast
Speaker 1: of Albuquerque. Helicopter is dispatched to area. Army search plan
Speaker 1: had archard transmission from Boy during night that led searches
Speaker 1: to hills. Sergeant W. A. Schmidt says searchers lost contact
Speaker 1: with Boy for several hours and presume that he had
Speaker 1: either gone to sleep or battery of his radio had
Speaker 1: gone dead. Says its searchers have not this kind of
Speaker 1: possibility of hoax. Over a hundred persons using radio monitors
Speaker 1: and directional finders are searching foothills. That was the tenth
Speaker 1: and on August twelve, Larry signal just went silent. They
Speaker 1: had a few week leads, but with the number of
Speaker 1: people hopping on and copying, giving false information or otherwise
Speaker 1: muddling everything, getting in the mix because they thought it
Speaker 1: was fun. Yeah, I think the police declared that it
Speaker 1: was a hoax and stopped the search, just called the
Speaker 1: whole thing off. And I guess for me it's a
Speaker 1: bit disturbing because even like the with with our episode
Speaker 1: on the ferries. You know, that was a massive hoax.
Speaker 1: Um and people tend to claim responsibility for their hoaxes usually,
Speaker 1: but nobody has ever well, one person, one time, super
Speaker 1: unconvincingly claimed that they that this was a hoax and
Speaker 1: that they did it. But that the only persons who
Speaker 1: person who's ever claimed responsibility for this maybe being a hoax.
Speaker 1: And to me that's fairly disturbing because it makes me
Speaker 1: believe more that it wasn't a hoax. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I had committed this hoax, I don't
Speaker 1: think I've confessed to because a lot of people would
Speaker 1: be really angry. And who knows. I mean, probably the
Speaker 1: statute of limitations has expired, but totally by this time.
Speaker 1: But obviously in the weeks and months immediately after that,
Speaker 1: or even a few years after that, you probably could
Speaker 1: still be arrested for something like this, sure, but I
Speaker 1: mean probably not years, right, I think. I don't think
Speaker 1: that was a lot of manpower that police forces in
Speaker 1: the military. That's a big cost. That's true. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are gonna be angry. Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought of that. The one of the
Speaker 1: amateur CB operators that was sing the whole time said quote,
Speaker 1: I personally have never had any doubt that this is
Speaker 1: the real thing. I heard the kid crying. I just
Speaker 1: can't believe it isn't the real thing, And that sentiment
Speaker 1: his echoed fairly strongly throughout people who actually heard the broadcasts.
Speaker 1: There was a police chief who spoke to Larry for
Speaker 1: a long time, for I think three hours or something
Speaker 1: like that. He didn't get any useful information, but he
Speaker 1: also didn't seem to think it was a hoax. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a really interesting thing for somebody
Speaker 1: to say, is you know, this seven year old child
Speaker 1: who should be able to provide me with some kind
Speaker 1: of helpful information couldn't. But I still don't think it's
Speaker 1: a hoax. I think it's real. So I think that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. And I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen, which will discuss a little bit more,
Speaker 1: is reasons why Larry maybe couldn't not that he wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to give information, but maybe that he actually couldn't
Speaker 1: give him. There's actually a lot of good reasons. I
Speaker 1: think so too. Um So there's some extra little fringe
Speaker 1: tidbits about Larry or I guess the story. Most of
Speaker 1: the reports have Larry stuck inside the truck, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: that's the whole reason he's calling for help and you know,
Speaker 1: can't say, oh yeah, I'm in the middle of a
Speaker 1: desert things like that. But there's one report that I
Speaker 1: read that said the Larry claimed to have been outside
Speaker 1: the truck with a skinned knee. I don't really put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock into that. And also there was
Speaker 1: one Another variation is that he was they flipped over
Speaker 1: and went went into a ditch, which is why the
Speaker 1: doors were jamsht. Well, that's the That's the version that
Speaker 1: I hear the most, is that it was in a ditch,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't look out the window and say I'm
Speaker 1: seeing this. It was just dirt. He couldn't get out
Speaker 1: because of that. The truck was in a ravine, flipped
Speaker 1: over and he rolled into ravine. Oh, I guess I
Speaker 1: wasn't reading carefully enough. Like one sentence difference. It's very
Speaker 1: hard sometimes to find all these things. Other other accounts
Speaker 1: say that Larry may have actually answered to either David
Speaker 1: or Larry, that maybe his name was David, not Larry.
Speaker 1: Which I think I generally read in conjunction with the
Speaker 1: this is a hoax theories, um, like somebody slipped up
Speaker 1: once when they were making the hopes, Yeah, their name
Speaker 1: was actually David accidentally said it. Yeah. They also apparently
Speaker 1: there are some stories, some tellings where the last name
Speaker 1: Peak pe a k was in the peak of a mountain, yeah,
Speaker 1: is attached to his name. So he's either Larry Peak
Speaker 1: or David Peak. I don't. I couldn't find a good
Speaker 1: source for that. It may have been. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of at the time, like tiny little
Speaker 1: newspaper clippings that are floating around the internet, and I
Speaker 1: got to be honest, I did not read all fifty
Speaker 1: of them. So maybe a sentence change like or like one,
Speaker 1: you know, the addition of one last name, And I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer for why that is.
Speaker 1: I also just want to go ahead and point out
Speaker 1: again that theoretically he was in New Mexico in late August,
Speaker 1: it's super hot there. If he was stuck in a
Speaker 1: truck with no water, food, reality is he didn't last
Speaker 1: more than a day or two at best, Yeah, at best.
Speaker 1: So I just want to go ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: that for a second, just mention it. And so I
Speaker 1: guess we're left with the two options, right, is that
Speaker 1: either it was a hoax or it wasn't a hoax.
Speaker 1: And I think both of them are awful choices. In
Speaker 1: my mind, neither of those are good choices, Like either
Speaker 1: a seven year old boy died alone and scared, basically
Speaker 1: just cooked to death inside of a truck next next
Speaker 1: to his dead dad while people were like, you're gonna die, Larry, right,
Speaker 1: or somebody was like, oh, you would be a funny prank.
Speaker 1: And if I pretended to be a seven year old
Speaker 1: cooking alive next to their dead father in a truck,
Speaker 1: good job on making the trolls if this is real
Speaker 1: sounding like even bigger jerks, well they are jerks. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: they're totally jerks. But way to go on upping the
Speaker 1: anti on that guy. Yeah. The thing about this this
Speaker 1: time period two is like the the early mid seventies
Speaker 1: was the time of the CB craze in America, so
Speaker 1: a lot more people had CBS back in those days.
Speaker 1: And well, yeah, think of how many Burt Reynold movies
Speaker 1: came out at that time where he was always on
Speaker 1: the CB Yeah, there's all these trucker movies. Everybody had
Speaker 1: a CD or CB. My mom had a car with
Speaker 1: the CB radio and it for crime And he say,
Speaker 1: yeah everybody, Yeah, we all did. They were everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we all did. Like the phone the seventies, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the you know what else was really cool from that
Speaker 1: time period of eight track tapes. Yeah, I remember those
Speaker 1: two eight track tapes. Yeah. Uh stop it. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I said already. Everybody pretty much who heard
Speaker 1: Larry was fairly convinced that he was real. I mean,
Speaker 1: the police kind of were faced with a no choice.
Speaker 1: You know, there's so many hoaxes going around. We don't
Speaker 1: have any good information it's a hoax. But most of
Speaker 1: the people who talked with Larry said, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is a real small boy who's just scared and
Speaker 1: alone and you know, stuck somewhere and we got to
Speaker 1: help him. Um. He was able to describe the truck
Speaker 1: he was in. He said it was a red truck
Speaker 1: with a white camper attached to the back of it.
Speaker 1: He knew his name was Larry, he knew he had
Speaker 1: been on a hunting trip, but he didn't know what
Speaker 1: city he lived in or what his last name was,
Speaker 1: which actually, to me makes some sense if you're I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's the seventies, like, do you have your seatbel fastened? Well?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not right. If you're in a truck that
Speaker 1: gets flipped over and you whang the heck out of
Speaker 1: your head as a seven year old kid, the possibility
Speaker 1: for you to just forget everything, in my mind is
Speaker 1: fairly high. I mean, like, no, am I saying that
Speaker 1: he's going to survive something like that for very long? No?
Speaker 1: But you know he only had a couple of days
Speaker 1: and water and food. And your inclination is to say, well,
Speaker 1: he's going to forget things like what colored the truck
Speaker 1: is first, But he's sitting in the truck and he
Speaker 1: can probably see parts of it. Right, he's going to
Speaker 1: forget that he was on a camping trip. Well maybe not.
Speaker 1: Maybe what he is going to forget, maybe where the
Speaker 1: bleed in his brain is is in his older memories.
Speaker 1: Maybe his name wasn't Larry. Maybe he just thought his
Speaker 1: name was Larry. Maybe you know, maybe he just made
Speaker 1: up a name that he thought was there. Maybe seven,
Speaker 1: maybe he was thirty five, Maybe he was the father
Speaker 1: kidding Actually it's kind of plausible when you think about
Speaker 1: a head injury. But you know, so for me, I
Speaker 1: guess I have I don't have a huge amount of
Speaker 1: trouble seeing how something like that could affect someone's memory.
Speaker 1: If you're in a horrible car crash, it happens all
Speaker 1: the time, but you get hospitalized because you get care.
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing that that I would jump
Speaker 1: in here to say is when was the last time
Speaker 1: either of you had a conversation with a seven year
Speaker 1: old and how fleeting is their memory? Well? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know when I was seven, I you know, I
Speaker 1: knew my I knew my full name, and I knew
Speaker 1: the city I lived in. But there was a lot
Speaker 1: of times where you had that information in your brain.
Speaker 1: But your seven, it's not easily retrieved. And think about
Speaker 1: what little kids that get lost in the mall are,
Speaker 1: Like we all hear these stories and this kid whose
Speaker 1: seven gets lost in the mall and they say, what's
Speaker 1: your name? I don't know, what's your mom's name, I
Speaker 1: don't know where do you? They don't know because they're panicked,
Speaker 1: and it's it just kind it shuts that kind of
Speaker 1: cognisant recalled down well yeah, but sooner or later, you know,
Speaker 1: you can only flood your body with adrenaline for so long,
Speaker 1: and then and then you come down off of that
Speaker 1: and you and you know, sort of gather your wits together.
Speaker 1: Even a seven year old, I think, sooner or later
Speaker 1: would calm down and assess the situation, realized that panicking
Speaker 1: is not really helping, and that what he needs to
Speaker 1: do is get some useful information to these people that
Speaker 1: he's talking to. You're assigning a lot of adult thought
Speaker 1: to a seven year old brain. I have hung around
Speaker 1: seven year olds who were completely and totally irrational, and
Speaker 1: it's only because of the fact that there's seven. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't think about that. You know. They get
Speaker 1: caughts and flights of fancy and panic and they just
Speaker 1: get all kinds of worked up. And it's easy, especially
Speaker 1: if dad is lying next to you and you don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong with dad. That's going to continually cause panic.
Speaker 1: But I know seven year olds, they're they're just not
Speaker 1: real good with a lot of that details because they're seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing about seven year olds is they get
Speaker 1: often super cranky and panicked when they get tired. And
Speaker 1: if you're you know, steaming alive in a car, no
Speaker 1: food or water. I mean really, if you know, and
Speaker 1: you're panicking because your dad there and you can't get out,
Speaker 1: and you're tired and you're thirsty, and people are like
Speaker 1: yelling all different things to you, and people are like
Speaker 1: everybody's just asking you questions. I can understand how he
Speaker 1: would be a little freaked out. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: want my mommy. I just you know, Yeah, it's very understandable,
Speaker 1: I think. So. So here's here's I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to, I don't want to get off topic too much,
Speaker 1: but I do just want to try and understand something
Speaker 1: because Joe, you seem to understand it better than I do.
Speaker 1: Is is if we're going to flip back to how
Speaker 1: so many people heard this and maybe this was a
Speaker 1: trolling situation. Yeah, so how does you gave kind of
Speaker 1: a basic explanation, But how does this skipping thing really happened?
Speaker 1: Because I couldn't get a good handle on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now the way it works is uh, And I'm
Speaker 1: not a scientist. I don't understand it completely, but essentially
Speaker 1: it's it's you always talk about the Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know Chupacapa is real. So anyway, so the iodostre, which
Speaker 1: is I don't know what about fifty three miles after
Speaker 1: about two sixty miles on the surface of the Earth. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's called the atmosphere because it's filled with ions, and apparently,
Speaker 1: especially particularly when the sun is going through high periods
Speaker 1: of high sun spot activity, there's a lot of coronal
Speaker 1: flares and things like that. It sends a lot of
Speaker 1: ionized particles towards the Earth and that they collect in
Speaker 1: the aist and they charge in a certain way that
Speaker 1: makes it conducive. Essentially, radio waves traveling up in the
Speaker 1: surface at forty five degree angle are refracted and bent
Speaker 1: around down and according to one website I looked at, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes it can actually reradiate the radio signals, so it
Speaker 1: picks up the charge from the radio signal, reradiates downward
Speaker 1: back to the surface, and so apparently that can happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But in other case, is it just basically goes up
Speaker 1: as refracted back downwards, bounces off the ground, goes up
Speaker 1: as refracted back downwards, and so there have been cases
Speaker 1: of people skipping like halfway around the world, people in
Speaker 1: the US talking to people in Australia on CBS. But
Speaker 1: they say most of the people that do that usually
Speaker 1: they're they're they're using home based stations, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them, a lot of people. Even though you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to operate over four watts on a CB, you
Speaker 1: can actually get amplifiers and supercharge your CB, and so
Speaker 1: you're a lot more likely to be able to do
Speaker 1: skipping and be actually be heard, you know, for hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of miles away, because you're your average CB
Speaker 1: is very very limited line of sight range. Oh you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you just brought up a very good point which
Speaker 1: suddenly makes me doubt this whole story. Absolutely valid point
Speaker 1: that I've never seen anywhere. You say, you've got to
Speaker 1: have an antenna, Yeah, which this guy, which this kid
Speaker 1: didn't have, because the truck is upside down. If the
Speaker 1: truck is upside down, the antenna is likely broke or
Speaker 1: partially buried. Well, I hadn't even thought about that until
Speaker 1: you said the booster tower. Yeah. So the next and
Speaker 1: the next possibility after that, so so so obviously, if
Speaker 1: it's if it's an in dash radio, if it's mounting
Speaker 1: inside the truck, the radio is going to be completely
Speaker 1: useless radio. But there's also a handheld CBS, but that
Speaker 1: wouldn't work either, because the kid's in a metal box
Speaker 1: stell reflects radio waves, so the only the only place
Speaker 1: that that those radio waves are gonna be able to
Speaker 1: get out through is maybe through the windshield, possibly if
Speaker 1: that's not all covered with dirt and blocked. The kid
Speaker 1: was either in a ditch in a ditch or intervene
Speaker 1: depending on what versions so, or outside with a skin kney. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a handheld CBE is like you know, the streetlights.
Speaker 1: There's an antheld walkie talking had a c B, which,
Speaker 1: under ideal conditions, so you're you're on a mountaintop and
Speaker 1: the person you're talking to was on a mountaintop five
Speaker 1: miles away, that handheld might make it the whole five
Speaker 1: miles to the listener. But obviously this was less than
Speaker 1: optimal conditions for Larry here. So it's really unlikely to
Speaker 1: me that Larry even existed. This is why I don't
Speaker 1: believe this story, because there's no way he could have
Speaker 1: used either kind of CB to contact anybody, not unless
Speaker 1: they were maybe a couple hundred yards away. Right, that's
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Um, So, yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: good point. Actually, yeah, so Larry didn't exist, did you
Speaker 1: come across? There was one? There was some snippet, as
Speaker 1: you said, in a snippets section. There's a snippet one
Speaker 1: of the stories that I read about somebody tracking down
Speaker 1: a kid with a handheld radio who was goofing or
Speaker 1: CB that was goofing around two kids. And so I
Speaker 1: just I wonder if that's maybe where it came from.
Speaker 1: But how the heck did they triangulate this, that's what
Speaker 1: he still I don't get it either. You know. The
Speaker 1: one person who came forward and said, oh no, that
Speaker 1: was me was this middle aged dude in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: and he tried to prove that he had been the
Speaker 1: prankster by doing Larry's voice for everyone, and apparently it
Speaker 1: was just hilariously inaccurate that it was clearly like a
Speaker 1: just a Midwestern dude trying to do like a scared
Speaker 1: seven year old voice that just nobody really seemed to
Speaker 1: believe it. And he was claiming to have been broadcasting
Speaker 1: from the Midwest. And you know, again, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they triangulated it. I don't know if there's a uh,
Speaker 1: the actual ability to triangulate it, but you know, and
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder if perhaps there's something lost in
Speaker 1: the history of this, you know, if Larry didn't say,
Speaker 1: oh it was desert when we flipped over, or if
Speaker 1: you know, they were able to somehow track something. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know how they do that. I don't
Speaker 1: know either. It could have it could have been somebody
Speaker 1: actually driving around the area in a car with the
Speaker 1: boosted CB UM maybe, but they would have had to
Speaker 1: have been in the area, is my feeling. It's not that,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody in the Midwest could have been doing
Speaker 1: this unless they had been, you know, continually skipping to
Speaker 1: the near Albuquerque. Yeah, if they're actually skipping, I don't
Speaker 1: really see how you can triangulate. That's somebody within the
Speaker 1: line of sight. So somebody reasonably close by. So you
Speaker 1: have several CB operators and they all pick up the
Speaker 1: same transmission, and they all see the signal strength of
Speaker 1: that's that transmission. Most of the most radio, especially home ones,
Speaker 1: have little dials and knobs and stadio. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can see the signal strength and and you know, the
Speaker 1: signal strength for that that thing from several different locations
Speaker 1: found it. You can sort of probably get a rough
Speaker 1: idea of where it originated from. And I think that's
Speaker 1: maybe because I was rereading the piece from is it
Speaker 1: the New York New York Times New York Times, and
Speaker 1: they was talking about the monitoring and the transmission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some stuff in there that leads me to believe
Speaker 1: that they were using multiple listening points to try and
Speaker 1: figure out it's stronger here, it's weaker here. You know,
Speaker 1: that kind of so accurate pinpointing of what you had
Speaker 1: at the time. So that's that seems the only way
Speaker 1: I can you can see it plausibly that they could
Speaker 1: track it out. That makes sense. It's it's probably somebody
Speaker 1: in a car or truck in the area broadcasting this thing.
Speaker 1: And that's not counting all the other copycats that are
Speaker 1: out there jumping in sure, So that's what that would
Speaker 1: be my best guess. Okay, well you've totally ruined my
Speaker 1: best theory was super depressing and sad reality. And he
Speaker 1: died horribly out in the desert. Yeah, that he was real,
Speaker 1: and that like the first you know, maybe day's worth
Speaker 1: of trans missions were actually him and then just he died.
Speaker 1: And how was it the best theory? I said, that
Speaker 1: was my theory, say best, at my best, it's my best.
Speaker 1: I apologized. I didn't mean for it to be like
Speaker 1: it's like some theory. Yeah, well no. But the other
Speaker 1: reason I think this was a hoax is it's been
Speaker 1: forty one years since it's happened. They would have found
Speaker 1: the truck by now. Somebody would have stumbled across that thing,
Speaker 1: some hikers or somebody. Yeah. The interesting thing was that
Speaker 1: I read reports and in the in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: are Quality even mentioned three pilots reports sighting truck in
Speaker 1: Red Rock Canyon area, and there were there were, and
Speaker 1: then there were other reports that they some people saw
Speaker 1: an overturned truck in that kind of area, but there
Speaker 1: was never any follow up on that. So, but the
Speaker 1: thing about it is is they so they flipped the
Speaker 1: truck and it goes in a ditch. Well, what's always
Speaker 1: right next to a ditch a road, a road that
Speaker 1: people are gonna be driving up and down. In forty
Speaker 1: one years, there's got to have been at least a
Speaker 1: few people that's driven up and down that road, and
Speaker 1: what it probably noticed the flipped over pickout truck. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'll counter that if you go into a ditch or
Speaker 1: a ravine, even if it's near Okay, well, what is
Speaker 1: a ditch to you? Is that three ft deep or
Speaker 1: is that ten ft deep? Because I've you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of quote unquote ditches were actually ten
Speaker 1: ft deep or something next to the side of a
Speaker 1: road and they funnel a bunch of water through, and
Speaker 1: that winter there's a flood through. So let's we're talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking about our Arizona, right, New Mexico. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: So that area is prone to flash flooding. So if
Speaker 1: you get a big swell of water that comes through,
Speaker 1: it's very possible that could have been buried in that
Speaker 1: first winter one one giant wash buries it un a
Speaker 1: bunch of crap, And yeah, you're right, it should have
Speaker 1: been found by now, But who knows how far could
Speaker 1: have traveled. Well, I guess I also, you know, my
Speaker 1: other argument would be like, I don't know if they're
Speaker 1: still there or not. But when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and we got to Forest Park, you'd walk on these
Speaker 1: trails and they were like cars from the seventies and
Speaker 1: sixties that had just been abandoned in the middle of
Speaker 1: these forest park, you know, just like pushed into the
Speaker 1: forest a little bit and had been overgrown, and like obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, probably they weren't, you know, part of a
Speaker 1: message of man hunt for a seven year old boy.
Speaker 1: But they were left there on public land just to
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the yeah, to basically rot. So
Speaker 1: things like that have happened. But I think you're probably
Speaker 1: right that there was enough publicity surrounding this thing that
Speaker 1: assuming they were on a road, because if they were
Speaker 1: off roading in the middle of the desert to go hunting,
Speaker 1: that's a different story. But still a lot of other
Speaker 1: people are going to cross that desert forty one years,
Speaker 1: sooner or later, somebody's going to cross. Agree, somebody would
Speaker 1: think somebody would have found it, but enough time would pass.
Speaker 1: I'll bet you after five years, this is no longer
Speaker 1: in the public consciousness. And so I I mean, it
Speaker 1: was some rusty old pickup truck and go, well, what
Speaker 1: a piece of junk, and I keep going. Usually I
Speaker 1: shoot a few holes in it before I move on. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the best Joe, yeah, I know. But anyway, so so
Speaker 1: to sum out my all my reasons, number one. All
Speaker 1: of the kid couldn't have been transmitting with the CB
Speaker 1: and the circumstances. I mean if he if he was,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have reached more than a hundred yards or so. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever found the wreck. No family member ever came
Speaker 1: forward and said, hey, my son and my daughter, my
Speaker 1: son and my husband are missing. I mean, none of that, nobody.
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy, his his father had to have
Speaker 1: had a job right when he failed to report to
Speaker 1: work the following Monday. Do you think somebody would have
Speaker 1: maybe put two and two together considering this has been
Speaker 1: all over, this is all over the headlines. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just none of it makes any sense. I guess. I
Speaker 1: in the seventies, I can see somebody not having a
Speaker 1: job and being a single father, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what um I think that's the eight t
Speaker 1: was a Friday that year, So they went missing on
Speaker 1: a Tuesday. Who takes their kid hunting on a Tuesday
Speaker 1: except for somebody who doesn't have a job, if he's
Speaker 1: an unemployed single dad, they don't have any living family.
Speaker 1: It's happened before that. I mean it's not likely, right,
Speaker 1: but it's possible. I guess you know, I think with
Speaker 1: your one fell swoop of Oh yeah, by the way,
Speaker 1: the CB radio couldn't have been broadcasting. Okay, I'm on
Speaker 1: your side, but I am going to continue to say
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of likelihood around Larry's story,
Speaker 1: whether or not. And um, what was the Jane Doe
Speaker 1: something something that you did the story on. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't remember this. A lot of numbers, Jan, lots of numbers.
Speaker 1: The same thing with her. We all said, well, how
Speaker 1: come nobody reported her missing? Well, it could have been
Speaker 1: as simple as people and oh, well they moved. Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess they moved out of the house. There was
Speaker 1: a story I just read from the BBC of they
Speaker 1: found some woman in her flat dead. She had been
Speaker 1: there for six and a half years. Because her car
Speaker 1: was gone, her neighbors just assumed that she had moved. Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy's read pick up with a camper is gone,
Speaker 1: and they just go, oh, I guess he moved. I've
Speaker 1: told you both about the neighbor I had who just
Speaker 1: randomly disappeared for a couple of months, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that guy just moved until I found out
Speaker 1: what the story was dead. Very simple story just kind
Speaker 1: of took off for a while I was on walk about.
Speaker 1: But the same thing. It's like, oh, well, I guess
Speaker 1: my neighbor moved out. Well, they'll the landlord will do
Speaker 1: something about it. When they do something about it, or
Speaker 1: the owner of the property, whoever, maybe it takes a
Speaker 1: long time and they don't figure it out. Well. And
Speaker 1: even I mean, you know, I guess not to like
Speaker 1: push this too hard. But even if he's not unemployed,
Speaker 1: he takes the day right. But if he's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a single parent, and he's a delinquent, maybe he like
Speaker 1: doesn't show up, he's laid a lot. His manager just assumes, oh,
Speaker 1: John decided to quit, didn't show up, better fire him. Well, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's as possible. Or his manager could, like, you know,
Speaker 1: having just read the newspaper, could put two and two
Speaker 1: together at stage. Yeah, I wonder if it's John that's
Speaker 1: trapped in that pickup truck that would take the kid.
Speaker 1: The kid doesn't show up for school, but maybe the
Speaker 1: school authorities will just say, must have moved, you know. Okay, again,
Speaker 1: the guy stops paying his rent to the landlord. So
Speaker 1: the landlord finally comes by and realized there's no nobody there,
Speaker 1: and he like puts two and two together the authorities.
Speaker 1: But you're you're you're expecting a lot of people who
Speaker 1: read very small snippets. You gotta I don't think what
Speaker 1: a lot of people to understand. And when we're doing
Speaker 1: this story, because I was looking at the clippings, because
Speaker 1: people have scanned the man. That New York Times bit
Speaker 1: that you read was probably one of the larger stories
Speaker 1: that it's out there. Most of them are about a
Speaker 1: paragraph and a half on page n B, next to
Speaker 1: the O bits. So it's very easy to get missed.
Speaker 1: It's not like today where we have and I've said
Speaker 1: this before and I'll say it again, where there's social
Speaker 1: media cramming all of this in front of us. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's back there and I might read it, and I might,
Speaker 1: you know, work at the same place, but not make
Speaker 1: the connection. But you're the manager, but you don't read it,
Speaker 1: so you don't make the connection. And I don't think
Speaker 1: to tell you anything because I'm busy doing my job.
Speaker 1: Because we don't stand around in chit chat and email
Speaker 1: these stories to each other. And you know, I guess
Speaker 1: it was started and finished within what like within a week.
Speaker 1: But but at the same time, it did get some
Speaker 1: it did get a lot a lot of local play
Speaker 1: because forget a hundred volunteers showed up to comb it
Speaker 1: absolutely did. So it's kind of the word was out. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think you're I think you're right. I think it's
Speaker 1: there's there's good arguments on both sides. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: guys have I mean, I know Joe's favorite theories that
Speaker 1: Larry wasn't real. I was ambivalent at the start, but
Speaker 1: I also don't believe that Larry was real. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons, which
Speaker 1: show is the best show is always in, which reminds
Speaker 1: me of an episode of The Simpsons. Ye, sir, oh well, Bart,
Speaker 1: Bart gets his he gets a walkie talkie set, so
Speaker 1: he so he lowers one of the walkie talkies down
Speaker 1: that's really really deep. Well, and then he gets on
Speaker 1: the other on it and he's like, oh, somebody helped
Speaker 1: me since in the hole town of Springfield. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I forget what he calls himself. Maybe
Speaker 1: he called himself Larry, but he's like, you know, he's
Speaker 1: got everybody all concerned and and Anyways. You know what's
Speaker 1: funny is I think I've seen like ten episodes of
Speaker 1: Simpsons in my life. Yeah, and that is one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, so maybe they maybe they were sort
Speaker 1: of riffing on Larry particular. The genius of the Simpsons, right,
Speaker 1: is that, like they make references that are so obscure
Speaker 1: pop culture references that only a few people get them.
Speaker 1: And it's still good. Yeah, still so good. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess um. So anyway, if I'm wrong, If I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I apologize to your desiccated skeleton somewhere out there in
Speaker 1: the desert. But I don't think many people hate you. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Larry is fine. Whoever whoever was the voice of Larry
Speaker 1: is h living in Fiji. Yeah, he's he's middle aged
Speaker 1: adult now and you know middle age. Yeah, well he
Speaker 1: would have been born in assuming he was actually seven,
Speaker 1: he would have been born in the mid sixties. Yeah'd
Speaker 1: been middle aged. What is what is middle aged? It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like thirty to sixty or something like that,
Speaker 1: is it? Really? I never I never know. I always
Speaker 1: here I'm middle aged. I never know what the classroom anymore? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think middle aged is half the
Speaker 1: average lifespan. Okay, I always said, I think of it
Speaker 1: is around fifty or so. I was like my doctors
Speaker 1: years but years ago, and well not that many years ago,
Speaker 1: I guess, but decades. He said. I was like thirty three,
Speaker 1: and he says that was all. You know, your middle
Speaker 1: aged white male and what are you talking about. Apparently
Speaker 1: that's the way doctors see it, is like thirty to
Speaker 1: sixty or something like that. I better start taking better
Speaker 1: care of myself. I'm gonna be middle aged soon. You are. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I guess not always sell the mystery. It's time for
Speaker 1: the closing credits. Yeah, it actually totally is pictures. There's
Speaker 1: not there's no photographs of anything because obviously, like we
Speaker 1: don't know where it was problem. But a picture probably
Speaker 1: of this news snippet will put up. But also the
Speaker 1: links I did. Go out to the web, and there
Speaker 1: are lots of pictures of red and white pickup trucks.
Speaker 1: That's fair. Go out to the web. You'll find them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll put those on the website. We won't know, we won't.
Speaker 1: But links to a couple of links. There's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of thinks around the internet. And also you
Speaker 1: may be listening on our website thinking sideways podcast dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can always find us on iTunes. If you do
Speaker 1: listen to us on iTunes. If you're not already subscribed,
Speaker 1: subscribe and leave us the comments and a rating. How
Speaker 1: does how does that tune go? Again? Nope? You got
Speaker 1: it once. You can loop it. You edit these shows.
Speaker 1: I am so looping that now, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: If you forget, we're going to get the Devin subscribe
Speaker 1: song that will not be in there. Make them together perfect?
Speaker 1: It was terrible beaut If you forget to download us,
Speaker 1: you can always stream us to right from stitcher on
Speaker 1: any mobile device I get, except for a CB. They
Speaker 1: don't have any apps, unfortunately, although we may just broadcast
Speaker 1: the show on CB and ways to use our HAM radio.
Speaker 1: That seems like too much work to you. The only
Speaker 1: HAM I can't I have comes in plastic packages. That's
Speaker 1: not a radio kind. Yeah, I don't have a CB.
Speaker 1: Somebody bring me some? Hey? No, okay, you can find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook. You can change like us, don't forget
Speaker 1: to like us. Yeah, you can either like us or
Speaker 1: you can join the fan page. That guess that's the
Speaker 1: terminology the group Uh, there's lots of stuff going on
Speaker 1: there actually right now. And if you're Larry, or you
Speaker 1: heard Larry, or you just want to talk to us,
Speaker 1: send us an email. That email address, as always, as
Speaker 1: Steve would say, is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I guess on that super awesome upbeat short note. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to get out of here, so so long, everybody,
Speaker 1: break record, niner. We'll talk you next week and Larry
Speaker 1: give us a call. Just oh my gosh,