Rick Harrington: Music

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This song is based on the true life story of Larry Walters (the man who one day decided to see if he could be lifted into the air by tying a host of weather balloons to his lawn chair).

Larry walked down to the Army surplus
He bought forty big baloons
He filled them up with helium
And late that afternoon
He tied 'em to his lawn chair
Which he'd anchored to his Jeep
And when he cut the nylon rope
You should have seen old Larry leap

Well he floated and he floated
'Til he could float no more
Then he leveled at an altitude
That he hadn't bargained for
A pilot called the tower
He said "This sight can't be beat
I just passed a guy in a lawn chair
And I'm at sixteen-thousand feet"

Bridge:
And when they asked him why
Larry casually replied

Chorus:
"You can't just sit there
Tethered to the ground
You can't just let this
Earth pull you down
There's a wide world out there
Beyond your TV screen
Oh you can't just sit there
Waiting to be seen"

Thirteen hours later
He did finally descend
When he saw the power lines
He feared he'd met his end
But he only got tangled
He didn't even singe his hair
But you should have heard the rescue squad
When they found him dangling there

Bridge
Chorus

Larry walked out in the woods one day
And he never did come back
They found him with a forty-four
There was a note pinned to his sack
I guess there weren't enough baloons
To take his pain away
He didn't heed his own advice
I regret to say

Chorus
Because you can't just sit there...