Photos: Ehalm from Three Lions.
It started with balloons: then came the Wright brothers,
Lindbergh, jets, and all the rest. Some reactionaries,
however, are still playing with balloons. Members of the
Balloon Club of America buy these gargantuan toys from
Army surplus, fill them with coal gas (it's cheaper than
helium), and float off into the trackless skies. Why do they
like ballooning? Because of the soul-satisfying advantages of
noiseless soaring and an unobstructed balloon's-eye view
of America the beautiful.
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Balloon
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The bag filled with gas, the basket stocked with sandbags, the balloonists are ready for take-off. Where to, none of them knows.
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o . - 'la urTPIP sometimes as high as 10,000 feet, crew members check their map just to see
y:X:!X M EhKta-X on)l,eirOTlyioSt,.n,e).,i,lme)er-butnotthei,direc)ion.
Ah, but what goes up must come down,
and not always in convenient places.
Family Weekly, January 12. I95J 7