Roswell

By Rockwell P. Stonehenge

 

You know, I get a lot of people asking me to tell this story. It seems that it's become real popular among young folk these days, so I thought I'd write it up this time. It all started fifty years ago outside a small town called Roswell, New Mexico. It's strange, and a little hard to believe at times, but every word is true.

I was stationed at the air base south of Roswell, finishing out my hitch after coming back from the war. 1947 was a strange year. The US stopped trying to broker peace in China, everyone was blacklisting everyone in Hollywood for being Communists, a mine exploded in Illinois trapping a bunch of miners, tornado's were tearing up things all over Texas and Oklahoma, and New York finally retired it's last streetcar.

Okay, here it is, the true story of what happened that day, the best and strangest day of my life.

I had taken a days leave to go into town. I weren't married yet, but I was courtin' this fine little filly that worked at the hardware store. I had a dozen daisies that I picked myself (and almost got my leg chewed off by a dog that was guardin' the garden) that I was gonna give to Nadine and ask her if she wanted to be my girl. It was a simpler time back then don't you know.

On the way I bumped into a guy I knew, and we decided to head back to his place. He had a new rifle he wanted to show me because it jammed a lot, and I'm good at fixin' things. It took about ten minutes to find and fix the problem, and as I was about to take a test shot at an old milk jug, that dog from the garden ran up and bit me on the ankle. I guess he followed me the whole way here. I screamed in pain as the rifle went off straight into the air. The shot scared the dog away, so I gave the rifle back to my friend and limped over to my car.

As I rounded the bend in my "borrowed" jeep (a guy in the motor pool owed me a favor) I seen this glinting, shining thing in the sky. At first I thought it was glare off a low flyin' plane, but then I realized it was moving too slow to be a plane. It was kind of hovering, but sliding sideways at the same time. At least that was what it looked like to me. My next thought was that it might have been a weather balloon that had blown off course. Lately, all over the southwest, there had been a lot of weather balloon sightings. Some people had even taken pictures of them. It was quite an event. Some people were a little nervous, the whole "Balloon Invasion" theory and all, but I was pretty sure they was friendly.

Anyway, I decided to follow it over the ridge and see where it was going. As I came around a bend, I seen it clear as day ahead of me. It was wavering as it was flying lower, and I could tell that it wasn't going to clear the next rise. It was going to crash right in front of me, and I was going to be the only witness. I remember thinking that this was going to be the biggest and strangest thing to ever happen to me. Something I would tell my grandchildren about.

Now it was all spinning out of control, and I knew for sure it was going down. I could see smoke coming out of a small hole in the side of it, and some kind of strange green liquid pouring out. It must have been antifreeze or somethin', but it sure was leaking a lot of it. It crashed right into the side of the mountain, and I could see three little bodies come flying out. One of them looked like he was blown clear of the blast, and I could even see him twitching.

I jumped out of the jeep, and ran over to the twitching body. He was really small, and had weird looking eyes, musta been Asian. He was wearing a silvery looking jumpsuit, and my first thought was that he must be hot in that thing. I could tell he had lost a lot of blood just from the way his skin had gotten all gray and smooth. I seen a lot of trauma in the war, so I knew exactly what was going on.

There wasn't any explosion out of the balloon, so I figured I had a few moments to run up to it and check out the other bodies before it caught fire and did blow up. There were chunks of silver metal and tinfoil-looking material all around me. It was all really hot, and the whole place was quickly filling up with smoke.

The other two guys were definitely dead. They must have been bounced around pretty hard, but there weren't no blood. Just this gray ooze that looked kind of like hydraulic fluid. They was covered in it.

I looked into the weather balloon now that I was closer, and it looked a lot bigger inside it that it did from the outside. There was all sorts of strange writing covering it, both inside and out.

Well, a little while later a bunch of Army trucks showed up and closed off the area. They took me back to the base to be "debriefed." The Army decided they didn't want people to know it was a weather balloon, so they told everyone it was a UFO. I guess they figured no one would believe that story, so a few days later they admitted it was a balloon. They even showed pictures.

The Lieutenant Major told me not to tell anyone what I had seen, and told me over and over again that it was a weather balloon. It was like they was trying really hard to convince me. They gave me a shot to calm my nerves and then spent the next half hour describing to me what the weather balloon looked like. Hell, I seen it, I knew.

As I was leaving the office, I passed the Lieutenant Major's secretary, fell in love at first sight, gave her the daisies, and we were married in Vegas a week later.

There it is. The story you all wanted to hear. How I met my wife. I know it's a little odd, but my life has never been what you'd call normal. Nadine never did forgive me, but sometimes you have to break a few hearts to find true love.

 

-6/25/97

 

If you have any questions, E-Mail me. Spat@spat-nospam-cave.com