With the recent publicity about boys in hot air balloons, the word has spread and inspired the imaginations of many an artist and aspiring aviator. So it seems fitting to place the context in perspective after two hot air balloon pumpkin boys were featured at the 18th Halloween Pumpkin Contest. Reality to one may be fantacy to another. So let the story that follows inspire your imagination rather than pop the fantastic balloon.<\/p>\n
The original balloon boy
\nSarah Barmak
\n Special to the Star
\nPublished On Sat Oct 24 2009<\/p>\n
Meet the real-life Balloon Boy.
\nToday, Dan Nowell owns a contracting business in Corte Madera, Calif. But in 1964,
\nhe was known around the world as the original Balloon Boy, an 11-year-old who got
\naccidentally carried away by a hot air balloon.
\nLast week, the saga of Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old boy apparently imprisoned in
\na weather balloon high in the sky, seemed incredible. It was. The story turned out
\nto be a tall tale allegedly perpetrated by the boy’s parents in a bid to get media
\nattention.
\nBy contrast, Nowell’s trip into the sky 45 years ago was no hoax \u2013 it was terrifyingly
\nreal.
\nOn that day, Nowell remembers being one of a group of kids asked to hold some ropes attached to a hot air balloon at its launch in Mill Valley. But when the order came to let go, he couldn’t hear it over the roar of the hot air burner.
\nWith the rope cinched around his hand, the balloon jerked him up into the sky.
\n“Just like that \u2013 ffffffttttt \u2013 he took off,” said Ron Beigel, who had been standing
\nbeside Nowell, in an interview this week with the Marin Independent Journal. “Holy cow, I almost wet my pants. We didn’t know what was going to happen. To see
\nhim keep going and going and going, and then to see people crying and praying …
\nit still shakes me up now.”
\nUnaware that the rope was tightly wound around Nowell’s hand, many on the ground
\nfeared the boy was simply holding on and that his grip would fail.
\nNowell yelled for help to the balloon’s pilot, but the sound of the burner drowned
\nhim out. Friends and relatives watched in terror as he floated nearly a kilometre
\ninto the air, carried by a contraption out of
\nThe Wizard of Oz.
\n“I felt like I was in a movie theatre, looking down at the landscape of Tam Valley,”
\nhe said. “I was keenly aware of where I was, but at the same time I felt kind of
\ndetached from the experience.”
\nAfter what must have seemed like hours, the balloonist, William Berry, turned off
\nthe gas. According to media accounts of the time, he then heard a voice below him
\nsay, “Sir, could you please help me?”
\nThere was “almost a surreal quiet” around the balloon, Nowell said.
\nBerry brought the balloon down in a backyard. Amazingly, Nowell was unharmed aside
\nfrom his fingers, which were blue. He had been in the air for 10 minutes.
\nNowell remembers the strangeness of the ensuing media circus, as he was interviewed for countless newspapers and featured on a game show; fittingly, the show was To Tell the Truth.
\n“People still refer to me as the Balloon Boy,” Nowell said in a separate interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. The kid was made of hardy stuff. He was so unfazed by his flight that he later went up in another balloon with Berry.
\nAfter the flurry of attention this week over Heene, Nowell says his phone began to ring.
\n“I said, `Somebody is trying to steal my thunder,'” he told the Chronicle.
\nThey tried, but they couldn’t match the real deal. For now, Nowell remains the only lighter-than-air kid on record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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