I've got amazing stuff to tell about this issue, I mean mysterious stuff to make even the G-Man's neck and back hair stand straight up. I'm talking UFOs and aliens and claims of government cover-up, and our visit to the 1947 crash site of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico!
I talked the folks into taking just me on a week-end trip to Roswell, New Mexico, the UFO capital of the world, located some 350 miles southeast of our home in Albuquerque. Having the folks all to myself for an adventure was my treat for being a good big brother to `Wee Willie,' the new pup at our house. We left Nati and Willie to look after our GrandPersons at Girard while we took off in search of UFOs and adventure. For those of you not yet familiar with me and Great Scots Magazine, I'm Bonnie Wee Angus-- Gus, to my friends-- the seven year-old ramblin' Scottie at GSM who's in charge of this 'On the Road Again' travel page in the magazine.
 Our trips are always fun, but this one combined aesthetics and eerie adventure. I say eerie because we not only went on our own UFO expedition, but I met an alien named, Ralph, at the UFO Museum in downtown Roswell! Ralph showed Dad and me around. I'm dying to tell all the eerie stuff, but Dad says I have to do the aesthetic bit first.
What I love most about our trips is we never rush. Scotties, as you know, are eternally busy, but we abhor being rushed. We don't believe in the tyranny of the urgent-- unless, of course, it's part of our own agenda. We've trained the folks pretty well on this score, so on our trips we always choose what Dad calls `blue highways' and seek out routes less travelled. If we see something really interesting, we take a break and check it out. It's a good thing, too, `cause on this trip I was so wound up about going by myself, and all the UFO business, my stomach got what Dad calls, "the squirts," and since I was riding shotgun on his lap most of the way, he thought it was a real good idea for us to take frequent rest stops!
The beauty of this trip was worth lingering over, too. Out of Socorro we took highway 380 east which traverses the curious lava flats and winds through the Capitan Mountains, and took us within a few miles of the `Trinity Site,' where the world's first atomic bomb was exploded in July 1945. But on this outing it was the sky that was the real show. If you've never seen a brilliant sunset in New Mexico you can't know what we enjoyed. New Mexico has the most magnificent clouds anywhere on earth, and when the dust particles in the air are just right, and the cloud swirls are arranged in dramatic, colossal patterns, the sunset puts on a glorious rose-colored light show that is awesome. The spectacle was so majestic we all sat hypnotized by the wonder of the heavens.
In Roswell we found a `heavenly wonder' of a different kind. Roswell is the largest city in southeastern New Mexico, cited by national publications as one of the ten best small cities in the country for retirees. Home of the century-old New Mexico Military Institute, and one of the largest growers of pecans in the country, Roswell is a quiet, almost sleepy place with an extraordinary past. Roswell, you may recall, is the place where the U.S. military reported in July 1947 the crash of a mysterious "flying disc." That story made national headlines and got the whole country in a flap. The government later retracted their story, calling the mystery object a downed weather balloon, but that retraction only fueled the debate and fixed Roswell's place on the paranormal map at the center of mystery and UFO controversy.
Today folks around Roswell take UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters seriously. People like Walter Haut, that is, president of the International UFO Museum & Research Center located on Main Street. Haut was the public relations officer at the former Roswell Army Air Field in 1947 who made national headlines when he announced the army's recovery of a crashed flying saucer at a nearby ranch. Haut and other `true believers' insist that what was recovered in `47 was not only a space craft, but alien beings as well!
I did some homework before we left for Roswell, surfing the internet for UFO information. Wow! There's a whole out-of-this-world sub-culture out there that ranges from slightly-whacked to what looks like madness-of-the-third-kind! There's even a rental video out now called, "Alien Autopsy," claiming to be actual film footage of the top-secret medical examination of captured aliens filmed in Roswell during the military's investigation of the crash in `47.
Mom says it's not nice to stereotype, and that its cruel to mock anyone's convictions, but I'm sorry, this alien business is way out of hand. Sightings, abductions, animal mutilations, and, of course, sinister government conspiracies. It's enough to spook even a `ramblin' Scottie'-- not the stuff they're scaring everybody about, but worrying what these guys might do when someone bumps the metal plates in their heads!
I want to be fair about all this, `cause Dad says a Scottie should always keep an open mind. But, frankly, I just don't understand all the panic over "aliens." To Scotties, it doesn't make sense-- as I'll explain later.
Anyway, by the time we got to Roswell I was thoroughly wired. On the streets everyone looked to me like Rod Serling or Shirley McLaine. And then I started remembering `the pod people' and `body snatchers' and Sigourney Weaver's `alien' flicks, and all those Sci-Fi films I watched as a pup back when scaring myself silly was a thrill.
I know one thing: by the time we checked into the Scottie-friendly Best Western Sally Port Inn & Suites (1-800-528-1234) in Roswell, I was seeing `little men' around every corner! This was my first adventure away from home by myself, in a town where Sci-Fi is for real, and where one easily feels, well, `alien.' Doggies! That night when the folks closed the motel door behind them on their way to eat out, I learned in a hurry how much I missed Nati, and even my new kid brother back in Albuquerque. I like to think I'm a macho man, but sometimes a guy sure misses his mother!
I did OK, although the neighbors across the hall later told the folks I grumbled away a number of haints and demons.
Bright and early Saturday morning the folks and I drove out highway 285 about 16 miles to meet Sheila Corn for a
guided tour of the UFO crash site. Sheila and `Hub' Corn own the land where the crash is said to have occured. They're fourth generation tough-as-nails ranchers in the Roswell area who acquired the land a few years ago for grazing. They're too young to remember the crash in `47, but in 1994 they started noticing a lot of strangers driving around their property, apparently looking for something. A state patrolman friend investigated and found out to their surprise that new evidence published in 1993-94 by UFO researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt located the `47 crash site on the Corn's  land. It didn't take extraterrestrial powers for the Corns to recognize an opportunity looking them in the face, so they put up a sign on the highway and now conduct guided tours to the crash site at $15.00 per head. Seekers now come from all over the USA, Japan, Western Europe, South America, and at least three from Albuquerque, to ride with rancher Sheila Corn into the New Mexico boonies to hear the stories and see rocks.
We liked Sheila a lot-- with a job like hers and a name like `Corn,' who could resist her charm! Besides, she's a dog Person and made a fuss over me, and in my book there's nothing `corny' about that! Aliens or not, she's OK.
Mom and I climbed the rocks to check out the impact site up close and personal. Mom's not exactly a mountain goat, and we almost made our own `crash site' at one point, but I kept her on her feet and we gave the place a good sniff test.
Now verifying one way or the other whether extraterrestrials were actually at that site is beyond my olefactory powers, keen as they are. My nose went everywhere seeking out the slightest whif of `Zorlock of Malavia,' or whatever those little people were named who allegedly crashed there. I sniffed. I poked. I discerned. But it was just funky rocks to me, with odors of pilgrim feet and a delicious wisp of sheep aroma that got me in the mood to find my kind of `cologne' to roll in, and that got my folks nervous.
To tell the truth, I'm not sure what to make of the Roswell incident. Certainly something dramatic happened there in 1947, something significant enough to arrest world attention 50 years later! Dad says it's easier for him to believe the government was conducting crude and unspeakable radiation research on children in `47, than to believe in `little people' from outer space.
For my part, I just don't get all the panic over "aliens." After all, Scotties have learned to live rather well with our `aliens' ever since the first one invaded our primeval den to steal us off  to a life in his cave. We call our aliens, Persons. Trust me. Their ways are strange and alien to us, and sometimes they're known to be malevolent. And they have almost mystical power in their world-- powers over life and death.
When I hear talk of `abductions,' I say, so what? Scotties are abducted routinely by our aliens, and always when we're vulnerable pups. And `animal mutilations?' Our aliens call it "neutering." Probings and invasive alien research? Our aliens do it to dogs all the time-- they call it "Biomedical research."
All this is true of canine history with Persons. But despite its downside for us, our life with aliens has its upside, too. We've found that to love and be loved by these aliens is joy unspeakable.
That's why I don't understand awful-izing aliens. They're not so bad. Once you get past their awkward `un-Scottie-ness' they're interesting and often fun. In any case, we've gotten attached to these two-legged fur-less creatures, and sense-less as they are in even rudimentary doggie matters, we love `em and want to keep `em around.
Besides, my aliens know how to drive and that keeps this ramblin' Scottie `On the Road Again!'
*Reprinted from GSM, Vol. 2 No. 1 (Jan/Feb 1997). ©1997 Tartan Scottie. |
