Arizona Rick: The balloon Cowboy

The Balloon Cowboy – armed with a truckload of zany-looking, animal-shaped balloons – rode into town for a madcap show of interactive fun in the Sierra Vista Public Library’s Mona Gibson Room, where more than 75 children and their parents howled with laughter as one of Arizona’s most beloved and entertaining children’s performers rolled out a show pirouetting with a whirl of rollicking entertainment.

Also known as Arizona Rick, The Balloon Cowboy has been taking his one-man show through the Grand Canyon State for the last 30 years, thanks to the state’s summer reading program that has kept him entertaining children from Yuma to Sierra Vista. 

Part storyteller, comedian and stage performer who squirts his audiences with water bottles while involving them in his balloon shows, The Balloon Cowboy brought in his trademark whacky brand of entertainment that bordered on something close to the Marx Brothers.

While wrapping children in colorful balloons shaped like ducks and monsters that filled the room with squeals and screams, it was difficult to tell who was enjoying the hour-long hilarity more, the 73-year-old Balloon Cowboy or the kids.

At times – especially when he sent balloons flying through the audience while blasting high-pitched sounds from noisemakers – the show felt like a throwback to an era of children’s TV shows of the 1950s, like Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody, that were staples of early children’s television.

“I can’t tell you how much I love doing this,” said Arizona Rick, whose real name is Rick Fout, a former licensed practical nurse who once delivered a baby in the backseat of a Pontiac in a parking lot in Puerto Rico. “Most of the parents are in the back of the room, and the kids are having the time of their lives, volunteering, and getting involved in the show. They can’t get enough of this.”

It wasn’t an easy road for Fout when he first set out to make a living performing at birthdays and working a children’s circuit as a balloon-twister and all-around funnyman. Married with nine children and in between jobs, a friend told the former Ohio farm boy that if he set up a card table outside a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and made animal balloons, he could make some quick money.

“Ten hours and $84 later I was rolling,” he laughed. “When you’re between jobs, which really means you don’t have one, $84 was pretty big money. It meant we could eat.”

Fout not only saw that he loved making balloon animals and kids laugh; he realized there was potential to create a business for entertaining children.

“I practiced until I became pretty good at it,” he said. “There weren’t any books about balloon-twisting back then, but I learned from others and started making better balloons. I worked up a pretty cool show that’s made me a children’s entertainer more than just a balloon guy. It’s kept me busy for 30 years. It’s been a blast and a heck of a run.”

Especially in the summer, when he performs 40-60 shows at libraries across the state for the summer reading program, along with conventions and summer camps for autistic children.

A multi-talented performer who knows how to work a room and incorporate kids into his act, The Balloon Cowboy also learned one of the oldest maxims in show biz: Keep ‘em laughing and clamoring for more to the very end, even past the final curtain call.

The Mona Gibson Room was echoing with applause while Arizona Rick smiled as the crowd left.