Arkansas balloon lands in county

By Staff
Jonathan Willis
PHIL CAMPBELL – Charles Nix loves to sit on his front porch looking out over the open pasture just across Franklin 51 from his home.
Saturday evening was no different.
As Nix and two of his grandchildren, Courtney and Carley Nix, sat on the porch about 5 p.m., they saw something floating from the sky.
As it dropped closer to the ground they realized it was just a single balloon. The lone remaining balloon of what was once six, popped as it became entangled in Nix's barbed-wire fence.
"We got on the four-wheeler and rode over there to get it," Nix said.
But he was surprised to see what he found. The balloons had traveled from Conway, Ark., some 300 miles from the Phil Campbell home where they landed.
"I wondered how they got all the way down here," said Courtney, a fifth grader at Phil Campbell Elementary School.
Her grandfather suspects the balloons got picked up by the damaging storms that moved through Arkansas late last week.
"It probably got it high enough in the air that it helped get here," he said.
Though the girls and their grandfather were surprised by the find, they were even more thrilled about what the balloons brought.
The balloons contained an advertisement for Crain Pontiac Buick GMC. The ad made mention of winning a free car.
"I called them (Monday) but they said it didn't have anything to do with the balloons," Nix said.
While on the phone with the receptionist at the car dealership, Nix was told that they had a balloon found in Canada last year.
"She didn't seem to surprised that it made it down here, but I was," he said.
So surprised that he is going to keep the balloons to remember it by.
As for Carley and Courtney, they said they were surprised to find something all the way from Arkansas on their grandfather's land, but they really wish the car they thought they had won came with it.