on wednesday i drove from alamogordo back through the lincoln national forest (smokey the bear, remember?), and ended up in roswell, which is where i wanted to be. my first stop was the visitor's center, who's motto is 'visitors welcome.' haha? they were very helpful, and even took my picture being abducted by a couple of surprisingly civilian-looking aliens. i then proceeded to walk the few blocks from there to downtown roswell. first of all, for a city filled with sidewalks, it isn't very pedestrian friendly. secondly, the town is essentially a decent mix of a southwest cow town and...spaceships. everything in town is oriented towards one or the other. mcdonald's obviously leans towards aliens, as do the car dealerships and coke machines. most of the downtown caters
to tourism, selling junk aliens and tshirts with tacky/kitsch store names.including, of course, the ufo museum and research center, home to everything alien or government cover-up, including the so-called roswell incident. in case you are not familiar with this story, here it is. on july 4, 1947, a rancher outside of roswell noticed something crash land onto his fields. he went out, collected some samples, and took it into town when he went in the next day. he gave it to the sheriff, who gave it to the air force base, who then claimed that it was a weather balloon. in addition, they took the sheriff into custody as well as the rancher within the next few days, and cordoned off the 'crash site.' witnesses have since claimed that in addition to the strange metal, three small bodies in the now familiar alien shape were carted off to the base. all of this stuff was then sent to another base in dallas, but by the time it got there it 'mysteriously' turned into a weather balloon. since about the 6th, newspapers in roswell, and then around the country were reporting on the aliens crash and the government coverup. it went on for a while, with the military acting suspiciously, the government denying everything, and the media hyping up the alien theory.
since 1947, more witnesses have come forward, some of them anonymously, with statements confirming the alien idea. the museum also has information on everything from area 51, which is in nevada, to abductions and ufos. this status was outside the front of the museum. personally, i think these alien ideas are a bit far out, but it was interesting to see to what extent people will go to prove such things. that being said, i certainly do think the government is capable of cover-ups: i've been to the movies.after the museum i bought t-shirts from my dad and brother (get excited!), walked around a little more, and then went to a shop called the pecos valley winery. i sat down at the bar and saw a tap with an alien on top. turns out it was called the alien amber ale, so of course that was what i ordered. i spent the next two house talking to the bartender and the other customers who came in as they got off work. they were all great, and there is nothing like talking to a bunch of people when you're on the road by yourself. on my way back to my car at the visitor's center i noticed this mural on a half-block sized park in the middle of town--it's things like this that make me love small-town america. not that roswell is particuarly small.
(ten points to the first person who can guess--guess, not google, the movie the title of this blog is quoted from).
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