ROSWELL Part 1: Guns, Grays, and Greeting Cards

April 4, 2014
http://sittingnow.co.uk/2014/04/04/roswell-part-1-postcard-cowboys/
In July 1947, a flying saucer went skipping like a stone
across the New Mexico desert. Most people think the
ship crashed in Roswell, but it only hit the ground
before bouncing up and landing in Corona, says Pat
Jennings, ex-military UFO enthusiast and Mercenary
Genius Extraordinaire.
Our route into town was opposite of the flight path, my
wife and I barreling through the New Mexico desert at
65 miles per hour down US-285 from Clines Corners, a
hiccup of a town.
It was my birthday weekend, and when my wife asked
what I wanted to do, I just pulled out the itinerary Id
prepared and pointed to a map of Roswell.
It was like Mecca to a UFO freak like me, and Id
wanted to see it for myself since I was a kid.
I know its just a little town with nothing to really do,
but I bet I could get a funny article out of it. And
Carlsbad Caverns is just down the road, so we could go
check out some bats, too. Secretly, I was hoping that I
would somehow get to see a crashed UFO, or at least a
dead Gray, but I decided to keep that to myself.
From two miles back, I could see the first landmark: a Super Walmart with Welcome to Roswell
painted on the front window, surrounded in little green men.
I needed supplies before we dove in, so I stopped.
My initial human contact came in the form of a tooth-grinding redneck couple in the parking lot, skulls
grinning through their skins. The man was marching purposefully to their car, somehow managing to
keep from tripping over the hems of his ancient JNCOs (possibly the last remaining pair in existence).
He ignored his girlfriend as she scratched at an elbow so sharp it could cut a man in two.
Fuck that bitch. I already gave her ten dollars. She trippin on that bad bad.
Pay no attention. Just go inside, buy your beer and souvenir shot glass and pray that the ETs never saw
anything like this while they were compiling first impressions.
Of course, they probably had little time to check out the locals as their shipped clipped the Roswellian
farmland, leaving chunks of itself steaming in a lonely field.
(Pat would later tell me that the only reason we know about the debris left in Roswell is because the
Military was so busy with the actual wreckage up in Corona that they missed its first impact, giving the
Press time to get wind before a cover-up).

Believers say most of the debris looked similar to tin foil and had
memory properties, meaning it would automatically smooth itself
out if you crumpled it up, and would repair itself instantly if you tore
it apart. There were also supposed to have been metallic I-beams
with strange alien hieroglyphs set into them. Some other stuff, too,
probably.
And everybody knows that the Military took it all and locked it away
someplace (probably Wright Patterson), where it was reverse
engineered and put to work for America, giving us some of that
sweet forbidden knowledge.
Its where all our sexiest gadgets come from. Fiber optics, kevlar,
cell phones.
Plasma TVs.
But to really see the debris impact, you have to be creeping down
Main Street with the windows down and the tejano up, your dog in
the back seat, sniffing a six pack with a drunken alien on the label.
Everywhere you looked: the inescapable extraterrestrial influence.
The world-famous flying saucer McDonalds. Signs on every business bearing cute slogans like,
Aliens Welcome or Probing in Rear. I nearly crashed into a telephone pole, laughing and pointing
at a mailbox painted to look like R2D2.
The dog farted nervously and whined.
We found our motel, a slovenly charmer comfortably nestled between a quiet ER and a Whataburger.
Its one of about ten thousand motels along the eight mile stretch of Main. Lodging appears to be one
of the main money-makers in town. That and postcards.
Theres also Coveys Guns and Larrys Discount Gun
Shop on Main Street, two miles apart (Blounts
Firearms and Supplies and Colorado Shooters got the
shit end of the stick, with locations up to a full block
off of Main).
According to Wikipedia, one major manufacturer
here is Leprino Foods, a company that boasts the title
of the worlds largest mozzarella cheese producer.
The Roswell Correctional Center is also nearby. And
if the desert wind blowing in from the south is
anything to judge by, there is a decent chance that
cattle play a large part in something around here.
The smell was stifling, and we hurried into the front office, where a wisp of an elderly woman smiled
behind an ancient computer. On the window sill, some local art was displayed: a few cute little
sculptures of aliens made out of pipe cleaners and craft paint.
I gave the lady my name and while she looked up my reservation, I asked, Wheres all the UFO
stuff?

I expected her to be sick of that question, but she smiled and handed me a tourist map with a legend.
All the good spots are marked on here. And definitely stop at the UFO Museum. Its world-famous.
My wife had been eyeballing the little window gallery. Do you mind if I take a picture? she asked.
Sure, sweetie. Those were made by one of our guests. She was here for four months. Just locked in
her room, making crafts, I guess. Arent they cute?
I pictured a lonely housewife who had left her family behind to shave her head and join a UFO cult, but
to be honest, Id already had cults on the brain.
Id been fantasizing of stumbling into a dark barn to
piss, or something, where Id find a whole slew of
loonies in white robes and Nikes. They would invite
me to observe their bizarre rituals, and I would even
pretend to get converted (so I could get the story
from the inside).
Id been looking around street corners for trailing
robes the whole way into town, and had been
disappointed to find only cowboy boots and
sweatpants.
So it goes.
After checking in and unpacking our stuff, we lock
the dog in the room with an Orson Welles movie and
head out to the main strip.
I studied the map wed gotten. A glittery star sticker marked the motels location, as well as other
points of interest. Chamber of Commerce. Roswell High School. The New Mexico Military
Institute. No crash sites or secret Air Force bases to be found. In other words, useless.
Our first stop was the World-Famous International UFO Museum and Research Center. To get there,
we walked down a bustling street, passed street lamps that looked like alien heads. From the corner of
Main and 2nd Street, I could see four souvenir shops.
Every storefront sported its own little green man. Some had full-size dioramas. ETs playing poker. A
plywood cut-out alien rock band, the Pleiadians, play in the display window of the Ginsberg Music
Company. But most just had a cartoony alien painted on the front, wearing the appropriate attire for the
business. Little green waitresses and chefs.
My view was suddenly obscured by a 90s pickup, driven by a tatted-up vato blasting Eminem and
trying his damnedest to look gangsta. I was attempting to formulate a thug half-life joke when the
classy, old-fashioned theater marquee of the museum suddenly materialized next to me.
It was an iconic image that I had been familiar with for years, thanks to internet photo albums. A bright
blue sign with UFO in huge letters, and a stylized flying saucer hovering over it.
The museum has been in operation since 1991, and has since become a hub of UFO enthusiast culture.
It was the brain child of Glenn Dennis and Lt. Walter Haut, two big names in the Roswell incident.

Dennis gained a bit of notoriety after an interview

appeared in a book, UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin
D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt. He claimed to
have known a nurse working RAAFB hospital who
had told him that shed been involved in the autopsy
of three extraterrestrial bodies, recovered from the
crash. Dennis story has changed a number of times
over the years, and subsequently his claims have
been disregarded by some, if not most believers.
His buddy Haut was the Public Information Officer
at the Roswell base, and was the actual person who
drafted the infamous press release stating that the Air
Force had found a flying disc. He had originally
denied being a party to the recovery of the saucer,
but later claimed more involvement in the book
Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60 Year Cover-Up, which featured a signed affidavit in which he
told anyone who would listen that he had not only seen the debris, but bodies as well.
Not exactly the most trust-worthy witnesses, I know, but they sure do know how to put together a
shindig.
At only three dollars a ticket, the museum was well worth the visit. Along the perimeter, partitions had
been put up, separating different displays.
In the Roswell portion, there were blown-up reproductions of the original newspaper articles, audio
recordings of the first news reports, facsimiles of the debris, and numerous witness accounts.
The crash only took up about an eighth of the exhibits. There were spots dedicated to different
sightings, opposing theories, fan art, UFOs in Hollywood, and a
homemade movie theater that was playing Fire in the Sky the
whole time we were there.
But the pice de rsistance was a life-sized landing party of
Gray aliens, complete with a big badass saucer.
I was studying the anatomically correct buttocks of one of the
ETs when I overheard the sound of a little girl being sucked into
a lifetime of obsession with alien abduction stories.
Look, Dad. Its almost exactly the same as the other one!
Well, look at that. I think you may be right. I looked up to
see the girl staring intently at a display of photos featuring
supposed cigar-shaped UFOs, her brow knitting ferociously.
Behind her head, father winked at mother and stifled a grin.
If shes anything like I was at that age, shell spend the next few
years reading about Bigfoot and Mothman, suffering the
occasional bout of anxiety as she lays in bed, desperately
worried that this will be the night the Grays come and take her.
We left the museum, and I stood on the sidewalk, thinking about her.
4

I started to realize that I had been chasing the wrong

story, all along. Maybe there had never been a crash at
Roswell. Maybe there was no real debris. It didnt
matter. The idea of the crash had left psychic debris
that could still turn a six-year-old girl into an
investigator, and could still make a grown man get
excited about a trip to a backwater desert town.
It felt like I was on the brink of some incredibly
significant concept. Some essential idea that could
explain my entire life up to this point.
But then I spotted a trail of three-toed footprints leading
off into a side street.
It was early in the evening, and I still had some little
green men to catch.
-To Be Continued
Photos by J Rodriguez Grisham