Neil Larson Rentatrip1 -Neil Larson just another Baby Boomer born 1953 in Southern California. Raised in the South Bay in the Los Angeles County community of Del Aire. Father Bob Larson came to Los Angeles at age 3 in 1924 from Minot, North Dakota. Along with Grandma Mabel and Uncle Don Larson, Dad knocked around downtown. During the Great Depression Dad became an avid body surfer along the Santa Monica, California beaches; and between daily 8-hour jobs, Dad tinkered with his Model “A”. Before WWII Bob Larson was seriously involved with “Hop-Ups” becoming an early member of the Hollywood Throttlers Car Club, the Bung Holers Car Club, the Southern California Timing Association and helped organize the Mojave Timing Association. These Hot Rod groups around Southern California eventually gained momentum and developed into the NHRA. Dad raced the Dry Lakes of the desert before Drag Strips where invented. [[Ed: Commemorative tee shirt desing for original Throttlers made by Neil.]] After WWII , Bob continued his “wrenching” interest in performance hot
rods, sharing friendships with contemporaries such as Ed ”the Mole”
Donovan, Leonard Van Luven, Vic Edelbrock Sr., and
Ed Iskenderian
(Nitro Geezers). It was
in the post-war Los Angeles that Bob and the guys would hang out at the
Drive-In restaurant on Wilshire Blvd. …The same
Drive-In used in the
“intro” of the hit TV show Happy Days…. He fell in love with a
waitress there , Lala Tucker, from Nova Scotia, Canada , one of
many seeking to find a fresh life in sunny California. Aircraft, kites, and flying must be in my blood; there is a distant relative on my mother’s side of the family, back in Nova Scotia …Great Uncle Hector P. McNeil… Uncle Hector was the chief model builder and fabrication engineer for all of the early Alexander Graham Bell Experimental Flight Research Projects done in the early part of the 20th century. So it is no surprise, that about 70 years after Uncle Hector built some of his first propellers for Bell, that I assisted Jack Lambie in building the propeller for the Gossamer Condor of 1977. Most of the Self-Fly or Self-Soar ideas and dreams so many of us imagined as children back in our youth, seems to be a common human feeling . I think Dr. Chris Wills said it best in Big Blue Sky when he shared his very early remembrances of having flying dreams. Now the dream has sort of changed into a re-occurring dream for me. My preoccupation with a desire to establish a well deserved and long overdue commemorative landmark that will specifically honor the historic importance of the most pivotal early event in modern hang gliding. A simple ground marker to be placed near the location of the first hang gliding meet of the 20th century hang gliding renaissance: I refer to the famous Otto Lilienthal’s 123rd Birthday Anniversary Celebration and Universal Hang Glider Championship Meet held on May 23rd 1971, at Corona Del Mar, California; the meet was front page of Los Angeles Times and was featured for the world also in National Geographic magazine.
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