Mention Roswell to someone from out of the region and they almost always make a space alien or “unidentified flying object” (UFO) joke.
To most of us around these parts when we think of Roswell is that town down the road a bit…used to play ‘em in football, stuff like that.
I remember when I moved to Roswell it was basically just known for cattle, oil company offices and pecans.
I tell folks about the time I left Roswell in 1992 was the time the UFO-ologists started trickling in to town all for that UFO crash off to the northwest of town back in 1947.
I tell folks I’ve seen two UFOs in my day. Most everything else I know about UFOs is from stories other folks told me.
My UFO encounter happened back in the spring of 1979 when I was living in the mountains of Appalachia. It was night and I had the family dog out for a pre-bedtime walk.
A light skimming along the ridge of mountaintop caught my eye. It was moving from north to south. A strong, steady light skimming right along the top of the mountain and not making a sound. I watched as it came to the southern peak of the range and continued on off to the south. I’d seen many planes come over that mountain, most of them B52s and jet fighters on training runs from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, but this light was different. And those jets made noise, this didn’t make a sound.
It would be years before I’d see another UFO. It was within days of arriving in Roswell. Like I said, back then about 30 years ago, Roswell was known for cattle, oil and pecans. I had no idea about the 1947 spaceship crash. The UFO I saw was bright and shiny in the western sky just after sunset. The next day I was told it was a weather balloon, they launch them from Ft. Sumner from time to time. I was so disappointed.
Now my friend Kent, Bard of the Pecos, saw something one evening that summer, again just after sunset: four bubble-like things moving one after the other slowly south to north in front of the growing darkness from the east. When the last one disappeared a small red light appeared to chase after them going about four times as fast as the bubble-things. Now I know Kent liked to have an after-work whiskey, but that wasn’t affecting what he saw; his wife and kids saw it too.
But then, you know, I was watching “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” not too long ago and that movie had UFOs just like that…hmmmmm….
Then there was the Roswell woman I knew who may have been abducted by aliens on her way back to Chaves County from Albuquerque one night.
At least that’s what she said.
She had picked up a hitchhiker just south of Cline’s Corner.
It was a normal ride south on US 285…
…until…
Between Cline’s Corner and Vaughn she noticed lights dancing erratically in the east. Moments later one of the lights came zooming in at her. About a quarter-mile off the highway the thing stopped…a hovering triangular craft.
Her car went dead.
The hitchhiker started freaking out and hollering out Bible verses.
She got out to get a closer look at the craft. She started to walk toward it, all the while the hitchhiker sat in the car hollering and praying.
There was a bright flash of light and the next thing she knew she was standing by her car again.
“AHHH, AHHH, YOU CONSORTED WITH DEVILS, DON’T GET NEAR ME!” screamed the hitchhiker.
“Would you please shut the hell up,” she said as she got back in the car. “What the hell are you talking about.”
“YOU WENT UP IN A BEAM OF LIGHT INTO THE DEVIL’S SPACESHIP!!!! YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR A GOOD HALF-HOUR.”
“Oh bullshit,” she said as she turned the key and her car started right up.
She headed down the highway, all the while the hitchhiker yelling out Bible verses and prayers.
As she rolled into Vaughn and slowed down the hitchhiker opened the door, rolled out and hit the pavement. She watched as he got up and ran off into the night.
She pulled into the Allsup’s store there in Vaughn.
“I need to call the cops,” she told the clerk. “I just saw a UFO.”
The clerk and people in the store were laughing at her when a black car pulled up and a man in a black suit got out, walked in and told the clerk that he too had seen a UFO.
She thought it was weird, this man in a suit so she left without talking to anyone else.
Well, that’s what she told me anyway.
I often wondered about this story, she told it so convincingly. But she told other stories too that made me scratch my chin, like she was the person who invented the nationwide advertising slogan, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”
I’ve often wanted to have a good UFO encounter, like the famous “Phoenix Lights Incident” of March 1997. I was so disappointed to be just 100 miles away when that happened.
It seems so strange to be on this giant organic spaceship zipping through the cosmos and to believe that there’s not another single civilization in the universe…there’s only us.
Frank the Trinidadian, my co-driver from my trucking days, dismissed talk of UFOs and extraterrestrials with the wave of his hand.
“There are no such things as space aliens or worlds with people like us,” Frank said with his Caribbean accent. “The Lord gave us the moon and the stars so we wouldn’t be so lonely at night. We are the only civilization out here.”
Well whatever, Frank.
But I’d still like to talk to these folks who zip around in our skies.
Imagine the places they’ve been!
-30-
I've never seen a UFO, but late one night, while sitting around the kitchen at home in the late '70s, a friend of mine, my mom, and I heard something that sounded just like those "flying saucer sounds" from old sci-fi movies. It got loud enough that we couldn't hear anything else and went outside to look around. Saw nothing.
ReplyDeleteI first heard of the Roswell UFO crash when I was in elementary school in Waco, Texas, in the early to mid '70s. A classmate told us his dad or grandfather (I can't remember at this point) was stationed at Fort Worth when wreckage from a crashed flying saucer was shipped there from Roswell. He told us of dead "Martians" and all the now well-known Roswell crash stuff. I find it interesting that in the past decade or so, the "official story" has been that, after the initial newspaper headline and retraction, no one talked about a UFO crash at Roswell until the mid to late '80s, but I know from personal experience that's not the case-- that it was all made up around that time. And I know I had to have heard the kid tell about it during that time since I only lived in Waco about 3 years, and I know that's where I first heard about it.
Before that, all I knew about Roswell was that it was where my grandparents could get one of their snowy TV channels from.
Hey Kent, thanks for stopping by.
ReplyDeleteYeah, stories circulated in the Roswell community about the "incident" including the tale that the rancher who brought the stuff to the air base was held in a stark cell for days and coerced into agreeing to not telling anyone what he actually saw at the crash site, most notably the bodies of alien beings and wreckage with strange writing on parts.
But like all stuff like that what is one to do with it?
I personally believe the dudes flew here to warn us of the dangers of playing with atomic bombs. They detected the first tests in 1945 and got here as fast as they could but their ship was not equipped to handle terrestrial lightning. A theory proffered by the writer Whitley Strieber in one of his books.
I also think the labeling of it as a Roswell incident is a misnomer because it happened closer to Corona. But hell, they took the stuff to the air base in Roswell and, well, there ya go.
Always enjoy your comments, Kent!