Thinking Sideways: Lost Boy Larry

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey, everyone
thinking Sideways the podcast again as always. Yeah, I'm Devin,

(00:28):
joined by Joe and Steve. As we pointed to each
other saying you're it Steves jump of the gun, but
not our real names. So tonight, Godzilla Factor fiction no
prepare for the onslaught of requests, so please actually do that. Yeah,

(00:50):
thanks Joe. Thanks. There was a documentary made in Japan
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,

(01:15):
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

(01:35):
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.

(02:00):
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

(02:23):
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

(02:45):
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

(03:06):
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,

(03:29):
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

(03:51):
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,

(04:16):
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.

(04:41):
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

(05:02):
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

(05:23):
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,

(05:46):
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

(06:07):
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

(06:28):
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.

(06:51):
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

(07:12):
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

(07:33):
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

(07:54):
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,

(08:15):
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

(08:37):
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

(08:59):
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

(09:20):
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

(09:41):
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

(10:05):
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

(10:25):
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

(10:48):
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

(11:10):
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

(11:30):
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

(11:53):
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,

(12:15):
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

(12:36):
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

(12:57):
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

(13:17):
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

(13:41):
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.

(14:02):
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.

(14:25):
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

(14:48):
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

(15:10):
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

(15:30):
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

(15:53):
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.

(16:15):
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

(16:37):
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?

(16:58):
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?

(17:19):
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.

(17:40):
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

(18:01):
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

(18:23):
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

(18:46):
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,

(19:09):
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

(19:32):
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

(19:53):
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

(20:16):
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,

(20:37):
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?

(21:00):
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,

(21:24):
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

(21:46):
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,

(22:06):
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

(22:29):
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,

(22:50):
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

(23:11):
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

(23:33):
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,

(23:56):
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

(24:21):
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

(24:44):
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.

(25:05):
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

(25:26):
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,

(25:46):
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

(26:09):
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

(26:30):
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,

(26:51):
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

(27:13):
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

(27:35):
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,

(27:57):
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

(28:21):
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

(28:44):
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

(29:05):
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

(29:26):
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

(29:46):
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

(30:08):
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

(30:28):
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

(30:49):
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

(31:10):
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,

(31:30):
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

(31:51):
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

(32:13):
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

(32:35):
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

(32:55):
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

(33:16):
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

(33:36):
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

(33:58):
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,

(34:21):
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,

(34:43):
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

(35:04):
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

(35:26):
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

(35:48):
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

(36:10):
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,

(36:36):
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

(36:59):
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

(37:21):
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

(37:42):
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

(38:05):
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

(38:25):
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

(38:46):
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,

(39:09):
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.

(39:30):
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

(39:54):
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

(40:17):
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,

(40:38):
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

(41:01):
give us a call. Just oh my gosh,