Well, it’s Wednesday again and time for more of my incredulous stories, wit and wisdom from my days with the FLAT RABBIT PRESS. Here’s another rehash of a column past….
Welcome back, pal.
As promised, this is my take of my three different encounters with flying saucers. But, I need to carefully lay out my case to you, so that you don't gather up a posse and throw me into the nut house. I’ve been in there three times already this year…
I have been a pilot and a topographical surveyor. It follows that you might say my abilities at observation of things and distances are honed a tad above those of normal folks. Okay, so I'm abnormal. So, just zip it. And, I have, in at least two separate incidents, been in a situation that others might glom onto as "proof" of UFO's; one was fairly recent.
In the summer of 2002, I was firmly planted in a soft lawn chair in the back yard of my Wingfield Springs home, (Sparks, Nevada). My friend Ernest, an ex-Marine, pointed to the sky and exclaimed, "Do you see that?" We saw two dots of light in the northeast heavens moving in what can only be described as aerodynamically impossible maneuvers. One dot was chasing the other at high speeds and radically abrupt turns. The natural conclusion would be that we were watching two highly sophisticated and advanced objects that should be classified as UFO's. Well, pal, now that I'm down the road a few years and somewhat more sober, I have to rationalize that no two UFO's are going to travel billions of miles across the universe to play tag in the atmosphere above a relatively primitive planet. Remember now, YOU'RE primitive and I'm just abnormal. Anyway, my guess is that we saw some government "Star Wars" technology being tested.
The point here is that I don’t automatically rule every strange object I see to be a UFO, unless of course, it’s being driven by a politician.
In 1994, I was chased down a desert road in the middle of the dark night and in Nevada's southern desert by extremely bright flashing lights; the multi-colored lights were so bright that I became unable to see to drive and had absolutely no choice but to pull off to the side of the road. My friend, I was scared beyond belief. I so sincerely hoped and prayed that the savage aliens who were chasing me would not haul me off in their saucer to some foreign world where gray beings might probe my belly button and discover lint. Well, the damned cop gave me a speeding ticket. Nevertheless, I will forever insist that he was alien, and he was gray.
Now for the real stuff. Back in 1964, I was given a TDY assignment, (temporary duty for you gringos), to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. My mission was to train a couple of guys to be surveyors. As part of the training course that I laid out, we took off in the middle of a dark summer night to "shoot the stars." That is, in plain English, we traveled away from the base and nearby town lights to use theodolites, (surveying instruments), to determine differences in angles between known stars. With that information, and a relative chart of the stars and the application of some geometry, algebra and logarithms, we could determine our precise position on planet Earth. These days, it's all GIS and GPS.
We were about two hours into this exercise when one of my trainees, (I'll call him Larry), hollered, "Jeeeeezus! Look at that light!" There was a moderate hill near us and we could see very bright and white light from the other side of it. The light had not been there when we arrived; otherwise I would have chosen another location where bright lights would not interfere with "shooting the stars." And, when Larry insisted that he had seen the light come in from the sky and land there, curiosity grabbed us.
When we reached the top of the hill, we looked down and saw several very bright lights coming from a circular object that was on sandy ground surrounded by sagebrush. The object itself, as I remember it, was made of a very shiny aluminum-type material. It had a domed center, which is the classic description of a flying saucer. What's more is that there were two "beings" outside. They were in shiny uniforms with some type of helmet and they were doing something to the ground while using long sticks.
Looking back on it now, I would have to say that they were gathering soil samples and I would surmise that their biological makeup was not compatible with ours or they would not have needed to be wearing "space suits." But, at the time, none of us looked back. In fact, we exited the hillside like bats out of D.C., threw our gear into the pickup truck, and vamoosed back to the base. Seconds after we started down the road, the bright light took off and flew directly over us and disappeared into the horizon, almost instantly. Yes, please pass the gray poop on.
We agreed never to report the incident or to talk about it. We all were aware of the endless scrutiny we could face if we tried to file a report. Although we never told anyone, there were soon widespread reports of UFO's floating around the base and the town of Mountain Home itself.
It was in 1976 that I had my second real encounter. This one was flat-dab in the middle of Las Vegas. I was working part-time for good friends, Bernie and Peg. They operated a small convenience store, called Stop N Go, in the northeast Las Vegas valley. I worked weekends, and it was nearing 11:00 PM on a Sunday night, almost closing time.
I was outside in the parking lot and hosing it down. Two kids who lived in the mobile home park nearby, were walking onto the parking area from the street when one of them jumped up and down and hollered, "Holy SHIT! Look at that!"
I looked straight up to where they were pointing. I can say that I could not see any stars in the night due to the bright lights from the city and from the store. What I did see was a circular object with both white and slightly orange lights at the perimeter that were flashing in such a sequence as to make it appear that there was an organized rotating light around the circumference. There was absolutely no noise or indication of motive power.
From my position directly below, there was no way that I could see whether or not there was a dome on top of the object. It appeared to me that the circle interior was dark. It was traveling from west to east about 3,000 feet above the ground and at a speed of approximately 75 mph. I watched it go over the store and then I walked to the side of the store so I could see it continue. It abruptly stopped, reversed itself and flew to the west and directly over us at an extremely high rate of speed.
A police officer showed up in the parking lot seconds later. He yelled out of his cruiser window and wanted to know if I had just seen a really strange object in the sky, which I confirmed. Two days later, the local newspaper carried an article tucked into one of the obscure areas of section C or D. It was a one or two paragraph story of "a few" local citizens seeing strange lights in the sky. Nearby Nellis Air Force Base was stating that the sighting was not on radar and there were no scheduled flights in the area at the time.
Another time I saw a flying saucer was in Las Vegas in 1979. I had just offered some congratulatory remarks to my then wife about having made a terrific dinner and, "Was that frozen, or did you make it from scratch?" This particular flying saucer came at me at astronomically high speed and from nowhere. I know for certain that it was a UFO from outer space because I never saw her throw it.
Anyway, I did give you something to think about. Wanna hear some tales about my days collecting gambling debts? Grab the next issue.
(Next Wednesday).
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