UFO

    Some stories can’t be told.  They haven’t crawled out of the vault containing those stories too painful to share into the realm of amusing.

     On the flip side are the stories that spend little or no time in the painful category.  One such story began on a Friday evening.

     Friday evenings highlight the working person’s week.  With retirement, Friday evening joy has disappeared.  That is partially compensated by Monday morning’s disappearance.

      This particular Friday evening was a late fall evening.  Maybe football season was finished, or it was an out-of-town game.  My presence to either take tickets or run the concession stand was not required.

      I was helping to get supper on the table when the phone rang.  “Let’s go to the movie,” the voice on the phone said.

      “OK!” the Goodwife said.

     “Oh no, please no,” I muttered.  Movie-watching is not my long suit.  Many movies are trite, hackneyed, predictable.   Many times, I pay the price of admission in order to take a nap.

      A lot of Friday evenings, I wanted to get away from everything, to have a little private time away from the noise and bustle.  We had the perfect place for that, on the hill two miles out of town, the nearest neighbor a mile away.  The last thing I wanted to do was go sit in a theater filled with my students and former students.  Not that I disliked them.   I loved them all right.  I just needed a break.

     As the Goodwife hurried about to get supper on the table so we could get to the movie on time, I prevailed upon her to make my excuses to our friends and spare me an unenjoyable evening. Her enthusiasm diminished a little, she hurried through supper, primped a little, threw on her jacket, grabbed purse and keys and headed out the door.

      I earned my reprieve by gathering up soiled dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, scrubbing skillet, pots, and pans, wiping table and counters.  I had already decided that a shower and a book were next on the docket. 

     One of the advantages of living on a hilltop in the country, plains country, was the ability to see everywhere.  Bathrobe and clean underwear in hand, I idled by the south window in the dusk.  It was misty, almost foggy.  Visibility was limited.  But wait, what was that red light in the distance?  I had never seen that before.  Probably an airplane or something.

     Returning from the shower, this time wearing the bathrobe, I checked out the south window again.  The solid, unblinking red light was still there.  It didn’t go away all evening.  I got out the binoculars.  They brought the light closer, but no more details appeared in the cloudy mist.

     A couple of things lurking in the back of my mind came to the forefront.  Late summer, early fall, a family a few miles south, a respected family, the county sheriff’s family reported a UFO sighting in their territory.  Ironically, the other thing that came to mind was a movie I liked, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  “Dah dah dah dah dum.”  The five theme notes flicked through my head.

      I studied the light again.  It appeared to move, but it didn’t go anywhere. 

      I was under standing orders to call Bill any time day or night if I saw either of two events, a tornado, or a UFO.  He wanted to see those things for himself, not just movies or videos of them.

     This was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call him immediately.  When the Goodwife’s headlights flahed on the wall, I knew the movie was over.  I picked up the phone and punched the button on the speed dial labeled “Uncle Bill.”

      “Hey Bill, listen, there’s this weird red light up here.”

      “Red lght?”

      “Yes a red light in the sky south of us.”   Click.  He was on his way.  I had exchanged bathrobe for jeans and shirt.  I pointed the phenomenon out to the Goodwife.  She agreed the light had never been there before.  She agreed it was weird hanging there in the midst.

     Bill arrived.  He had seen the light as he came up the road.  We consulted.  He called his wife and ordered her to bring the van pronto.  The other movie-going couple was notified.  Soon six of us were standing in the yard eyeing the red light that none of us had seen before. 

     We all piled in Bill’s van and headed south.  Belonging to the van’s six occupants were eight bachelor’s degrees and four master’s degrees. 

     We didn’t have far to go, four or five miles.  The closer we got, the less the mist and haze interfered with our view. 

     Somewhere about a half mile away from the UFO, we could all see:  the legs and cross braces of the tower.  What had been obscured in the mist, even to the binocular’s scrutiny, was now easily visible in the light’s red glow.

     Bill pulled the van onto the fill that bridged the highway ditch and granted access to the pasture.  We got out and looked.  One doubting Thomas among us slipped the chain on the swinging gate and hurried up the trail for the hundred yards or so to the tower site.  She laid hands on the metal tower rungs and returned to where the other five sat waiting in the van.

    “Yup.  It’s a tower all right.”

     What to do?  There was no question that this adventure would get out. We would be the laughing stock.  It couldn’t be covered up.  It would do no good to swear each other to secrecy.  “Three may keep a secret, if two are dead,” Poor Richard wrote.  Somebody would blab.

      Besides, as the van headed back north, we began to laugh.  The absurdity of it all caught up with us.  It crossed my mind that the blame fell mostly on me.  I sounded the alarm.  But one of the ladies who drove that road twice a day to and from work in Colby confessed that she had not noticed that tower going up.

     Far from covering up our adventure, we all told somebody.  They laughed, we laughed.

     Another acquaintance, when they heard our story, related theirs.  They had gone to Colby in the afternoon, had spent the evening there, dined, shopped, visited friends and headed home in the dark.  They saw the light.  The driver far exceeded the speed limit in the attempt to get there before the UFO departed.  They too saw the tower as they got close enough to clear the mist.  They laughed, too.

     Since that night, we have traveled down that road in the company of our friends several times, going to this meeting or that concert.  It doesn’t happen every time, but every once in a while, somebody will say, “Look, there’s our UFO.”  We laugh.