March of
1995. We were on a road trip. It began strangely enough in Ransom, Kansas
where we attended a scholars’ bowl meeting.
Scholars’ bowl, being the new kid on the block, took back seat to
athletics, music, speech, and drama. The
state meet was on the first Saturday of spring break. We packed up, headed east, and took in the
scholars’ bowl meet, in which our eldest daughter was a participant.
Then we headed west. We over-nighted in
Amarillo, Texas and got on Route 66 headed for Tucson where we planned a few
days' stay with friends formerly from Limon.
We drove through Roswell, NM.
“UFO Museum” the
sign said. UFO museum? You’re kidding. Probably ranked right up there with the “See
Six States” Genoa tower. On we went.
This time, we
were headed to Tucson to pay a revisit to the RV Park where the sister-in-law
winters. We left a couple of days
early. Originally, I had thought we
might visit the Grand Canyon en route.
Politics interfered as our elected representatives quarreled over
priorities. The Grand Canyon remained
open, but with limited service under the government shutdown.
Carlsbad Cavern
closed. State and private museums
remained open. We left the cold clime of
Santa Fe and motored to Roswell. We went
to the UFO Museum.
Old geezers pay
$3 to get in. Two hours wasn’t enough to
take in everything. “Everything”
includes definitions: (My explanations may not be entirely accurate) UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), objects that have been experienced but
never explained by natural phenomena:
IFO (Identified Flying Objects), hoaxes or
things explained by natural phenomena (a collection of fake photographs such as
the saucer supposedly flying through air, but advanced techniques reveal a
monofilament line suspending the disk, or crop circles in England where hidden
cameras recorded folks with ropes and boards tromping through the fields).
Encounters of
the first kind, reported sightings with little or no supporting evidence.
Encounters of
the second kind, where there is some physical evidence left behind such as
marks or strange elements left in the soil.
A reported sighting in Kansas not too far from where we used to live is
documented through newspaper stories (lots of newspaper clippings in this
museum).
Encounters of
the third kind (yes, the movie), contact with alien beings, such as abductions, with
evidence. One such piece of evidence shows X-rays of a person’s hand with chips
like those implanted in pets. There is
no scar or no explanation of how the imbedded devices got there. Nobody professes to know what the little
nodules are.
The main thrust
of the museum documents an encounter of the third kind that took place in 1947
in the desert some miles from Roswell.
The story goes that a rancher found these strange-looking objects
scattered across the ground on a piece of his grassland where he was working
one day.
He had never seen
anything like it, so he picked up a few pieces and took him to a friend who ran
a kind of country store (I think—not sure).
The friend advised him to take them to the county sheriff, which he
did. The friend declined the invitation
to return to the site with the rancher, a decision he regretted for the rest of
his life.
The sheriff,
seeing how strange, alien, the things looked, called a friend of his, a
military officer on a nearby base. When
the military got involved, the action accelerated. A veil of secrecy soon covered all, but too
late for some.
The rancher had
been interviewed by the local paper and radio station. The story was out. But hold on.
In a few days, the rancher was back in the paper, a picture of him
holding fragments of a weather balloon.
He swore the pieces of a weather balloon was what he saw and took to the
sheriff’s office.
Except the rancher’s
first friend, the one he went to initially with the artifacts, saw the picture
in the paper and declared the stuff the rancher showed him were most definitely
not pieces of a weather balloon. All
these people had to be silenced, which the military did by using threats of
force, including death to the individual and his family.
There are copies
of affidavits by family members, children and grandchildren, but no eyewitnesses,
attesting to the threats. Those
threatened include the sheriff and his family.
After the
initial visit to the site, the military sealed off the area and allowed no one
in. A local funeral director reported
that he had a call for several child-size coffins, an order he was unable to
fill. (If there were dead bodies there, why didn't the rancher see them and report that to the sheriff?)
A nurse working
at the military base supposedly sketched what she saw as doctors performed
autopsies on bodies, which were moved from the site to the military base. She drew the sketch for the funeral director
who received the coffin orders. The
nurse immediately burned the sketch before anyone else could see it. From her sketch comes our image of the little
spacemen associated with the story.
The radio
station that reported the original story tried to pursue it. They encountered a threat of a different
kind. The banker called the station
owner and threatened to foreclose if the station didn’t drop the story. They dropped the story.
Others reported
there was a foul odor associated with the bodies, an odor of decaying
flesh. One alien supposedly survived the
crash that spread debris over the pasture.
No one was able to communicate with the creature before it succumbed to
its injuries and/or its foreign environment.
The event and the
cover-up all took place in July of 1947.
The sleuths and conspiracy nuts have been trying ever since to uncover
the real story. Part of the display was
a nonstop series of videos including the movie Roswell with Martin Sheen.
We watched the last 30 minutes of that.
There are three or four other flicks, one showing interviews with those
still living who were associated with the story.
We didn’t take the time to watch any more
videos. We wanted to head down the
road. Our visit to the museum did stir
some memories. When I was still in
college, a certain Dr. Edward Condon came up to Greeley from Boulder where he
was a professor of physics. He had been
appointed by some government agency to investigate UFO’s.
Brother John and
I attended the lecture. It was held in
one of the science lecture halls. The
seats were stacked in rows like an amphitheater. We sat on the steps toward the top row. I remember not being too impressed with Dr.
Condon’s presentation. That must have
been in 1966 or ’67.
A couple of years later, Condon’s committee issued
the official report on UFO’s. No such
thing as a UFO. That was pretty much the
last word by Uncle Sam. Now, you put
your sanity up for inspection if you report seeing a UFO.
I’m not sure
when the military abandoned the Roswell site.
Sometime around 2006, a group led by archaeologists went in and did a
dig as if it were an ancient civilization.
They found stuff, but I’m not sure what.
It wasn’t pieces of a weather balloon, I’m pretty sure.
After visiting
the UFO Museum, I’m not sure what I fear more, aliens, or our government. Don’t tell anybody I said that.
