Back in the 1970s, hardly anyone would dare admit to having seen a UFO, lest they’d be ostracized as a “nut case” and lose the respect of their peers, friends, and even family. This was especially true of airline pilots, who would likely be grounded first, and then secondly lose their cherished careers. It really happened.
This little clip from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind dramatically illustrates that professional dilemma. Today, in 2024, airline authorities have eased up on their restrictions, and pilots are generally allowed to make their reports without fear.
Click and enjoy…
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Of course, there are those who’d like nothing better than to have a close encounter of the extraterrestrial kind. For instance, here’s a ‘friendly’ old geezer, also from the Close Encounters film. Apparently when word got out that his city was getting inundated with UFO sightings, he decided to start hanging out most nights in a reported UFO hotspot, high up on a hill overlooking the cityscape. And he wasn’t alone for long…
FIRST, A RECAP OF PART I’s CONCLUSION:
(Jack Rogers’s speaking): “I mean, I didn’t drive all the way out here just to be lied to. OK? So let’s have it. What was it I saw last night?! What’s going on here?”
Silence.
“Well…? I want an answer.”
The boy looked up at him with imploring eyes, and then his gaze dropped back down to the toes of his shoes again. In the saddest, softest little voice you could ever imagine, he confessed.
“Uhmmm… we’re not allowed to talk about it…”
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PART II
“You’re not ALLOWED to…?! What the…?! Whatta you mean you’re not allowed to talk about it? Who’s not allowing it, for cryin’ out loud?!”
Silence. Then a mousey “… my dad.”
“Oh yeah? And why would he not allow you to talk about it…?”
“’Cause… he don’ wanna get in trouble.”
“Oh, really!?”
So this is where I butted in. “Son? Believe me. We’re not here to get anybody in trouble. Not your dad, not you, or anyone else, I swear. We’re only here because well, my… friend here saw something in the sky last night, OK? And see, it made him really really... curious, you know? And it’s been bugging him all day. So all we’re here for is to try to find… an answer. Just, you know, only the knowledge about what it was, nothing else. I promise. Just… knowing.”
“And I don’t want to get me in trouble, either, like him getting mad at me ‘cause I told.”
“OK OK, I get that. We get that. And no, of course not. That’s the exact last thing in the world we want, too.”
“‘Cause Dad’s a Forest Ranger.”
“Oh… Ah.” That was a lot to take in. “Hmmm. I see. OK then. So here’s what’s let’s do. You tell us what it was my friend saw up there in the air last night, and poof! we’ll disappear, just like that. We’ll get right out of your hair. He and I, we’ll get in the Jeep right how and go right back to our homes. It’s almost past our bedtimes anyway. OK? Nobody gets in trouble or anything. How’s that?”
“Uhmmm, I dunno.”
“Please, son?”
“… Oh, OK. I guess.”
“Aw, great. So. Just what was this curious thing?”
“Well, Dad makes’em.”
The two of us let that sink in for a moment. “So. You say he makes… them, eh? So… he’s made more than one, I take it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“OK. That’s cool. Yeah. And your dad. He does this… why?”
The boy thinks for a moment and says, all matter-of-fact, “For fun.”
“Wow. Yeah. I can see that would be kinda fun. Kinda a hobby, I guess. You know what? I think your dad and I maybe have a lot in common.”
“OK.”
“And what does he call them? I mean, does he have a name for these things?”
“Oh, just… UFOs.”
“Just UFO’s. And so, he does this because… well, I know you said for fun but, if I may ask, exactly where’s the fun in that, mostly, d’you think?”
“Well. There’s no such thing as UFOs. Not really. But Dad says a lot of people around here actually believe there are. Which is silly. And so he makes’em, and flies’em at night. So that the next day or two, somebody’ll probably call him on the phone to report seeing a flying saucer, because he’s a Ranger.. But he’s the guy who made it. And so he’ll says stuff like, Oh my! That’s scary! Tell ya what. I’ll get right on it. I’ll keep my eyes peeled on my night patrol. Stuff like that. And when he hangs up the phone, boy does he ever laugh and laugh. And he’s got a very funny laugh, too. It always makes Mum and me laugh right along too.”
“Wow. Sounds like your dad’s a funny guy. One good ol’ boy fun-loving guy, too.”
“Oh he is, he is! He says it gives’em a little… spice in their life. That’s the way he says it.”
“Well yeah. All he’s doing is just giving them something to think about. Just making life a little more interesting for’em, I’d say.”
“Yup.”
“Hey, you know what that reminds me of?”
“Uhmmm, no. What?”
“Halloween. You know how much fun Halloween is. The one day of the year everybody’s lovin’ the fun of being spooked and freaked out? Well, sounds to me all he’s doing’s just spreading Halloween fun around, off and on, other times in the year. And good for him, I say. There’s no harm in that.”
“Uh huh.”
“I mean, they might not be getting actual little kids all dressed up in scary costumes knockin’ on their doors, calling out, Trick or Treat. But what they do get, after they see one of your dad’s ‘UFOs’ go by overhead, is something that gives’em that same spooky fun, right? For a few days they’ll be peering out their windows at night, a little spooked and hopin’ they don’t come face-to-face with a bunch of little green men peering right back at’im, right?”
“Hah! Little green men! Yeah. That’s funny, ’cause that’s exactly what Dad calls’em too. The little green men!”
“Your dad sounds like a very likable guy. A lot like myself. But OK, you know what?”
“Nope.”
“I just want to say thank-you very much for telling us what it was my buddy here saw last night, to put his mind at ease.”
“OK.”
“And whatta you, Jackie ol’ boy, have to say to our little friend here?”
“What? Oh! Yeah, thank you very much, son.”
“You’re welcome, Jackie.”
“Thanks to you, kid, Ol’ Jackie here will be able to get some much-needed peaceful sleep tonight.”
“OK.”
“Now, one more last question before we go. OK?”
“Uhmmm, I guess…”
“Your dad. How exactly does he make these UFOs anyway. Only asking because, being sorta like your dad, I’m thinking I might like to make one or two of these myself, you know?”
“With straws!”
“Straws? Ummm, whattaya mean, straws?”
“Drinking straws. Plus his plastic bags. And a candle.”
“Drinking straws? You mean like, plastic drinking straws? Really?”
“Yep. We got a whole box of them.”
“Oh. OK. So that’s what he uses to make them. But, like, how does he… you know, put’em all together?”
“Oh sure. He sticks the straws together, kinda like Tinker Toys. And next, he starts by building… well, what he calls ‘a cage’ with’em. It’s kinda like when we was puttin’ that box kite together we built last year.”
“Oh yeah. A box kite. Sure. That’d sorta explain why it might have that top-of-a-tower look about it. So, he’s using the straws he sticks together instead of, like, your kite’s… long, wooden sticks?”
“Yeah. ‘Cause they don’t weigh nothin’. Cause it’s gotta be like… light, you know? And then he bends the bottoms of the straws over into the middle. And tapes them all up with the candle, all together. Yuh, right in the middle.”
“Ah. The candle. Heat supply! And a.k.a., the flickering light, yes!”
“’Course, the last thing: he pulls the bag down over it.”
“Uhmmm… what kind of bag does he use, by the way.?”
“The bags his uniform comes in.”
“You mean… when he buys his uniforms, they come in a bag?”
“No. The plastic bag when it comes back from the cleaners. And that’s only his dress uniform. Mom washes all his regular uniforms.”
“Oh. I get it. You’re talking plastic dry cleaner bags. Right! They have no weight whatsoever.”
“Yup. That’s why.”
“OK, little man. I can’t tell you enough how helpful you’ve been. And I really apologize that we probably made you feel a little nervous at first, a coupla big adult guys like us just pulling up into your driveway and banging on the door like we did. Well… like he did,” I say, frowning at Jack. “But this whole evening’s been very… educational. For the both of us. But…
“Oh well… it’s getting late, isn’t it. So, time to say adios, I guess. But I gotta tell ya son, and we both mean this: you… are one good man, Charlie Brown.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A couple of minutes later we were tooling back down those pitch-dark, spooky, Deliverance roads, back toward our safe little-green men-free lives…
But: an ‘interesting’ evening was had by all.
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Now, I don’t know if any of you’ve gathered this from many of my previous posts, but… I suspect there’s probably something… a little weird (?) about me here. Well OK, a lot of things. I mean, what better a ‘for instance’ than this? Go figure:
(A) I’d serendipitously been treated to a nice, late-evening, Unsolved Cosmic Mystery Ride in a Jeep— great entertainment;
(B) the mystery had been solved— Robert Stack, eat your heart out;
(C) I’d gained yet one more “adventure” to write about in this blog;
and (D) Jack Rogers could now sleep soundly at night knowing that his world (and ours) was not under at least an immediate threat of an extraterrestrial invasion.
Quite a day, right? So, wouldn’t you think that would be enough? For anybody? Well surprise. It wasn’t. Not for me. Because I was one of those people for whom enough is never enough. Right. I guess you could say that maybe I… had a “problem?”
“(ahem) Hi. I’m Tom. And I’m a prankster…?”
Church basement Pranksters Anonymous Gathering responds (in unison): “Hi, Tom! So. Go ahead. Talk to us about your problem.”
“OK. The first prank I remember pulling was the time I screwed the cover off a brand new, previously untouched jar of peanut butter, fresh from Ma’s grocery shopping. I was in fourth grade. You know how flawlessly smooth the peanut butter’s surface always is when you first get that cover off?
“Well guys, I don’t know what devil or demon must’ve whispered in my ear to get me to do this, but with the pointy end of a toothpick, I actually etched the following message into that smooth surface: “RAT POISON.”
Then not only did I screw the cap back on tight, but with a couple of Dad’s tools from his workroom, I managed to screw it on so tight that there would be no question whatsoever that the jar must’ve been tampered with before leaving the food processing plant.
“Hey, I don’t know why I did that. Bad genes, I suspect. Plus… I was only nine and I thought, you know, it’d be funny. And it was the 50s, right?
But oh, didn’t the family just go nuts over that one. Of course I obviously confessed to the crime before, you know, they called the police. Anyway, after the scalding scolding I got and everybody’d calmed back down, I realized I felt hungry. So I made myself a fluffernutter sandwich.
“No surprise: Harold and Maude has been one of my top ten favorite films ever since I first saw it.”
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With all that in mind, you should know that I came away from that flyjing saucer episode with Jack with what people colloquially call “a bee in my bonnet.” I came away from that episode with sugar plums of straws and plastic bags and candles dancing in my head. And I was chomping at the bit.
So I began chatting up my colleagues as to whether or not they happened to have any dry cleaning bags in their closets that they could part with. Didn’t actually tell’em why. Just that it was a project I was working on. And then (duh!) I checked my own closet, and it turned out there were a couple in there “protecting” sport jackets I hadn’t worn or even seen for a decade or more.
So: dry cleaning bags: check!
And of course the drinking straws and a candle? No problem. Grocery store: check! and check!
Oh yeah. I was locked and loaded!
But here’s the thing. In those days I was always more of a dreamer than a doer. Plus as I’ve attested in previous posts, laziness was definitely another one of my character flaws back then. So, as fun as the idea seemed (you know, to simulate a War of the Worlds attack on the population of Rumford, Maine), time just kept on slipping by. (yawn) And slipping by…
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But then eventually, it just so happened that Bruce (my kid brother, twelve years my junior) came to stay with us during a good part of the annual school summer vacation. Which put the onus on me to find something entertaining for us to do together.
One thing I came up with was taking him camping over night up in the woods in a place called Moody Mountain. I was in the Army National Guard at the time, so I raided the armory for the pup tent, canteens, and other supplies. That day or two remains in my memory as a fun, idyllic, little adventure.
That, plus having him stay at our house for an extended period of time gave me an opportunity to really bond with him. And I’m grateful to this day for that.
Anyway, later it dawned on me that Bruce would be a great partner in crime for my War of the World dream. I mean, he and I both were the biggest fans of the comical and popular late-night, radio-talk-show host, Jean Shepherd, who entertained his listening audiences throughout the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s with humorous and bizarre stories based on his own life.
(Now you may claim to not know who the heck Jean Shepherd was, but… I believe you do have a connection.
He’s the one who both wrote the story of that perennial favorite holiday movie, A Christmas Story, was based on, and performed the narrated voice-overs throughout the film. You know— that story of little Ralphie who nearly shot his eye out with his new Red Ryder BB gun. (Man, I can think of few fictional characters with whom I identify more than that kid.)
But I only mention this because Bruce and I were both inspired by one particular episode from his radio show, set back in his college dormitory days. A bunch of the frat boys supposedly decided to prank New York City with a Halloween UFO scare. Here was their recipe for chaos:
(1) First collect some of those black, Glad, 39-gallon lawn and leaf bags and then, with scissors, cut some of the bags up into long strips
(2) With a flat iron set on a not-too-hot setting, hot-iron the strips together to eventually form a hot-air balloon ‘envelope’
(3) Fashion the plastic ‘sheets’ together as a ‘balloon,’ so that the balloon you’re making has an approximate golf-ball-size hole at the top and a softball-size one at the base
(4) Then with aluminum foil, fashion a little, light-weight, open-topped ‘tray’
(5) Attach the ‘tray’ to the base of the hot-air balloon
(6) Inflate the balloon with hot air from a hair dryer
(7) Push each inflated balloon outside your 15th-story dormitory room window and hold onto it
(8) Fill the tray with a generous measure of lighter fluid
(9) Ignite the lighter fluid, and let the balloon go!
Bombs Away!
Now Shepherd claimed that he and a bunch of other students (most likely drunken frat brothers) actually did this on one dark and windy Halloween night. Thus around the witching hour of midnight, several silent, evil-black ‘drones’ beset the city like a squadron of flying monkeys. And because it was a windy night, according to him the balloons were prone to swaying back and forth at times. And when this happened, some of the flaming lighter fluid sloshed out of the aluminum trays, dropping fiery driblets down toward the city below. Consequently, calls started coming into precinct headquarters from all over, with terrified citizens reporting dark UFOs shooting flaming death rays down upon the unprotected citizenry!
A silly story to be sure, and very likely 95% exaggeration, but inspirational nonetheless…
So anyway, Bruce and I went to work. We had the bags, straws, and candle. And if I remember correctly, we were planning to use one of those tiny little birthday candles because of its weightlessness. And English-teacher-me thinking, How hard could it be to recreate the thing Jack Rogers had witnessed that night up in the sky?
So down we went to work on our knees on my living room floor.
OK. I challenge you, dear reader— just try to build yourself a usable, five-foot-high, cage-like framework out of drinking straws sometime. I mean without going mad. Surprise— straws are not like is Tinker Toys! Each one was virtually refusing to allow itself to be inserted into its fellow to form a longer strut. And we were probably going to need five or six five-foot-long or longer struts to build said frame, down over which we would then slip the dry cleaner bag. And oh yeah, if you do ever manage that, then try to figure out a way to bend all the bottom straw-ends into the center and… connect them in such a way, with tape perhaps, that an upright birthday candle can be mounted firmly there!
I was no engineer. And we had no manual, only that kid’s list of the main ‘ingredients’ his dad used, along with that inspirational Shepherd broadcast to go on. And me? I was that frickin’ useless English teacher!
Great Idea #1: never ask an English teacher for practical help. Unless it’s for something like diagramming a frickin’ sentence.
By the time I was just about ready to scream and give up…
I actually gave up. Well, I rationalized it in my mind thinking, We do have the bag. Maybe we should take a little break, run a test first, and check it for leaks or something…
At least that sounded do-able. So I confiscated Phyllis’ hair drier from the bathroom, plugged it in, and began inflating the bag. And up she ballooned, like a breaching Moby Dick bumping and nudging its head against the ceiling! The hair drier heat was so hot I worried that the sheer, cobwebby plastic would go all Hindenburg on me at any second. So I was quick to switch the dryer back off and then I tied a string around the bottom of the bag.
Now here’s the thing. A Chinese lantern (which is what, in reality, this contraption is technically classified as), is supposed to look like this:
or this:
Our “thing,” however, looked discouragingly like this:
So I had to come to terms with the facts. With my skills (diagramming sentences, etc.) this big bag of hot air was never going to get its upright candle secured firmly in place and, therefore, would never be visible if flown at night.
Disheartened, I threw in the towel. “To hell with it. Let’s just take her outside and fly her now. As is.”
The only thing was though, the balloon was not floating in either a vertical, or a horizontal, posture. It looked wounded, tilting up there against the ceiling at a 45 degree diagonal, like the minute-hand of a clock pointed at the ‘2.’ I felt it would look less embarrassing (heaven knew why) if it were at least to launch from my house floating straight up and down. So we needed some ballast, and for that we ended up hanging a small plastic sandwich bag of coins from her. Turned out a quarter, dime, nickel, and a couple of pennies were just heavy enough to keep her floating upright. Yup. 42 cents.
We opened her up for one last infusion of hot, hair-dryer air; cinched her back up once again, at the base; and escorted her outside. It was a perfect sunny, blue-sky day outside.
As soon as we let her go, it became immediately obvious that she was practically invisible, being of such gossamer, see-through material, but up she rose, as upright as a chimney., a shimmery gleaming thing in the sun. It looked at first like she’d be piercing the stratosphere in no time, but she leveled off in a minute and then was being carried by the wind toward downtown Rumford.
Bruce and I trotted along beneath her. We could see her up there because we knew right where to look, but it was doubtful that anyone else would be likely to. She was spectacularly unnoticeable. And then she started moving faster, so we had to keep up with a spirited jog. Eventually we were crossing the big bridge that leads over the Androscoggin River and into the downtown business section of Rumford.
The bridge actually had a lot ot traffic on it, pedestrian and four-wheeled traffic (unlike in this picture).
So what did we do? Why, we hitched our wagon to a fast-paced group of five or so walkers and theatrically (shamefully theatrically) began looking up! Pointing up! And loudly and inanely asking each, other back and forth, “What in the heck is that thing up there, in the sky” “My goodness! Gee, I dunno! Never saw anything like that! How ‘bout you?” Et cetera…
But did anyone pay any attention to our not so well thought-out ‘dialogue?’ Did anyone else, besides us, even look to the sky for a single second in wonder? Catch even a frickin’ glimpse of our transparent, ridiculously invisible UFO?
Of course not. Not a one. They were all too wrapped up in their own, much more realistic and apparently more interesting, worlds and lively conversations to notice a couple of babbling crazies who didn’t seem to belong in that picture at all. Two guys who didn’t amount to much more than the shadowy flash of a transparent glitch in the matrix?
I mean… how rude!
So then we tried butterfly-netting the equally elusive attention of people passing by in the opposite direction, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that for some reason we we’d somehow become as transparent as that hot-air bag quickly dwindling in size as it continued its flight path following the river down below it.
No, it was just not in the cards for that day to be one wherein we were gonna get to garner even a minute of fame. It was a classic Wile E. Coyote failure.
So what could we do?
Well, all we ended up doing was leaning ourselves up against the concrete sidewalk guardrail to watch… what? Our Unidentified Flying Bag?
PLUS 42 CENTS
(Hmmm. Can something be said to be unidentified if absolutely no one ever saw it even? To you know, unidentify it?)
Anyway, we watched the deflating bag gradually banking to the left, heading for the taller shoreline trees. We watched it alight, like a faraway eagle, among the uppermost branches of one of the taller ones. And by squinting, we could actually make it out from time to time hanging up, way over there, especially when the breezes fluttered the bag because then it glinted in the sun.
What could you say but… oh well!
Except maybe “not with a bang but a whimper.”
Sometimes I imagine, hundreds of years from now, some extraterrestrial archeologist doing a dig along the sides of the mighty Androscoggin (who knows what its name might be then?) and becoming excited when they come across a tiny little pocket-lump of five ancient coins.
I hope they’ll still be in good shape.
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