Growing Up With Flying Saucers…

“If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from . . .”
(Luke Skywalker from the 20th Century Fox motion picture, STAR WARS.)

I could fully appreciate the lonely sentiment of a galactic farm boy from ‘long, long ago and far, far away’. I was born a post-war ‘baby boomer’ to the flatlands of northwestern Ohio; raised to provincial, middle-class, small-town sensibilities. Our humble village was a convergence of state roads and rail lines—an island of humanity lost in a sea of cornfields, wheat fields and soybeans. Life there was bland work-a-day tedium. The most excitement my rural kid-hood had to offer was watching the weeds grow.

So you can guess just how electrifying the notion of ‘flying saucers’ visiting from outer space was to the festering, pre-adolescent imagination of an Ohio hayseed like myself! Of course, I never actually saw one, but just the same they were a big deal back in the ‘Fifties’, and somehow I knew they were REAL!

In those days tantalizing tales were popping up all over of people seeing Unidentified Flying Objects. One celebrated case from California was of a man named George Adamski who claimed to be hobnobbing with men from Venus who tooled around the solar system in little bell-shaped saucers. In fact the phenomenon was so widespread it became as much a popular fad of the era as Elvis and hula-hoops.

 Television and movies helped fan the enthusiasm with frothy science fiction adventures like Space Patrol, Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, and Captain Midnight. Films like War of the Worlds, Forbidden Planet and Earth vs. Flying Saucers all furnished rich sustenance for my hungry young imagination languishing in a cultural ‘death valley’. At school I gleaned the Frank Edwards tabloid-pulp paperbacks from my Weekly Reader book-club selections. Edwards was the ‘Art Bell’ of his day who collected bizarre tales of the paranormal and UFOs in books like, Stranger than Science, Strangest of All, and Flying Saucers–Serious Business. There was a palpable, imminent thrill that the secrets behind the UFO mystery would, at any moment, be revealed. I thrived on such stuff in junior high. The idea of beings from other galaxies dropping in to have a look at the natives of planet Earth seemed no more outlandish to me than an expedition of anthropologists dropping-in on tribes of Pigmies in Africa. Science fiction and the notion that we shared the universe with other intelligent forms of life was a fancy as easy to cozy-up with as my stuffed teddy bear.

So, imagine this kid’s thrill, when early in the ‘Sixties’ President John F. Kennedy announced the riveting mandate that within the decade the United States would launch men to the moon! Wow! Within my lifetime, a centuries-old dream of the human race—to actually set foot on another world—would, at last, be realized! What a time to be alive. Science fiction transformed to living, breathing reality! This was mind-boggling. We can do anything! Who knew, before long I could be tooling around the solar system in a rocket of my own!

For ‘one brief, shining moment’ we rode the wave of euphoria–mankind’s first sail-setting venture into the vast, uncharted sea of space—a daring new generation of ‘Magellans’ seeking new worlds. At last, perhaps humanity would find a collective endeavor more meaningful, uplifting and rewarding than . . . war! Possibly we might join those other mysterious space-faring beings voyaging out there in the unknown . . . and perhaps discover secrets to unravel the riddle of our own existence. Well, so much for the boundless idealism of youth . . .

More than thirty years now since the Apollo astronauts left the first human footprints in the lunar dust, it would seem, in truth, the loftiest achievement of western civilization was invented . . . WAL-MART! Space travel was a ‘bust’! Striding forth into the new millennium we discover the human species by far prefers web-surfing, ‘reality’ TV, and cell phones.

Maybe it’s just as well we’re confined to this little speck of cosmic dust.
(“Everywhere I look, in fact, nothin’ but undeveloped, un-evolved, barely conscious pond scum. Totally convinced of their own superiority as they scurry about their short, pointless lives . . .” Commentary of ‘Edgar/Bug’ from the Columbia motion picture, Men in Black.)

Well, after more than half a century of kicking around on ‘third rock from the sun’, I guess I’ve grown a shade more cynical about the two-legged inhabitants that infest and dominate this world. What has become of us?

The optimism died. John Kennedy never lived to see the culmination of his stirring mandate to land on the moon. Following his murder in the streets of Dallas much of America’s gross national product–funding that could have advanced space exploration—was squandered on meaningless carnage in the Vietnam War. And yes, NASA did successfully achieve a manned lunar landing by 1969, but by the time Apollo 13 was launched a bored American public was already demanding TV soap operas instead. Is the rest of the universe really ready for us anyway? Would any self-respecting, extra-terrestrial race abide these wanton, Earth hooligans trashing their neighborhood?

Flying Saucers—the faded ‘Fifties’ fad that seemed so full of promise, just got lost in the shuffle. The U.S. Government launched a dour ridicule campaign to debunk the whole outlandish issue. Air Force “Project Blue Book”, the ‘Robertson Panel’, and the ‘Condon Report’ all officially concluded UFOs were ‘temperature inversions’, ‘swamp gas’, or the planet Venus . . . foolish fancies of gullible ‘kooks’ or ignorant bumpkins–more pressing issues diverted public attention, like Vietnam, the Cold War and civil rights unrest. And, of course we had our own NASA rocketry to upstage any nosy aliens.

Still, the UFO phenomenon persisted. Over the decades that followed, the enigma simply compounded and not just benign sightings, more and more stories were surfacing of ‘alien abductions’, strange ‘crop circles’ and even cattle mutilations—none of which could be satisfactorily accounted for. The mystery became more complex while definitive answers slipped further out of reach. The thrill of imminent solution, either by accident or design, was gone–dulled to apathy by endless, frustrating confusion.

In 1968—just one year before the first actual lunar landing—film maker Stanley Kubrick joined talents with writer Arthur C. Clarke to produce the science fiction epic of the decade, 2001: A Space Odyssey. An inspired vision of space travel, which would set the Hollywood standard for all cinematic space adventures to come. Originally released in sweeping Cinerama, Kubrick sought to capture the dynamic visual experience and awesome grace of space flight. But, in this movie he also revealed just how politically ‘sensitive’ the issue of disclosing an extra-terrestrial ‘reality’ would be for the government. As it turned out, this was more than just Hollywood fiction.

The movie scenario deals with the discovery of an ‘alien’ artifact—an imposing black monolith—on the moon’s surface, and the social dilemma that such a finding presented to federal agencies. The public at-large was deemed unready to face the reality of life from other worlds, and the truth of the monolith was covered-up. 2001 was lending keen insight into the real attitudes and policies our national leaders harbored toward disclosing the possible discovery of extra-terrestrial life.

As a school-kid I’d been taught to believe that mankind, over countless eons, had wriggled-up out of the fetid, primal ooze to become evolution’s unparalleled pinnacle of living intellect, wasn’t it obvious? And at the very apex of human intelligence was American technological ingenuity and know-how. The mighty Apollo rockets hurling men into space poised at the tip of thunder and fire seemed undeniable proof that, indeed, human ingenuity was unsurpassed.

Well, after closer scrutiny, perhaps the human species was not as altogether enlightened as it might have fancied. In 1960, just as the fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration—NASA—prepared to initiate manned rocket launches, a government study concluded that despite our technological advances, the rank-and-file of the public at large was not ready to face the potential discovery of extra-terrestrial life—an inherent risk of space exploration.

A panel of scientists and sociologists at the Brookings Institution filed a report, Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, which suggested the human race was, as yet, still too medieval, primitive and reactionary, to deal with space ‘aliens’. Exposure to an ‘off-world’ culture relatively more advanced than ours could possibly precipitate the ‘disintegration’ of our social structures. Most vulnerable to the negative impact of an ‘alien’ reality were fundamentalist religions and the science community. A striking paradox! Though we possessed the technology to set foot on other worlds, we lacked the emotional capacity to cope with meeting our kin from across the cosmos! The government study recommended against public disclosure of possible extra-terrestrial discoveries. Perhaps Kubrick’s paranoid computer, HAL, was acting wisely after all in 2001 when he eliminated his ship’s crew. Maybe emotionally erratic ‘human’ has become obsolete.

“This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”
(HAL the computer from the M-G-M motion picture, 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Considering this mind-set of the Brookings Institution report, the ‘official’ policies of denial, confusion and obfuscation with regard to the UFO issue suddenly made perfect sense.

Former Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the CIA, Victor Marchetti (1979) states very blatantly the official posture toward ETs in this quote from Above Top Secret, an investigative report by British researcher Timothy Good . . .
“ . . . We have, indeed, been contacted—perhaps even visited by—extra-terrestrial beings, and the U.S. Government, in collusion with other national powers of the earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public. The purpose of the international conspiracy is to maintain a working stability between the nations of the world, and for them, in turn, to retain institutional control over their respective populations.

Thus, for these governments to admit that there are beings from outer space . . . with mentalities and technological capabilities obviously far superior to ours, could, once fully perceived by the average person, erode the foundations of the earth’s traditional power structures.

Political and legal systems, religious, economic and social institutions could all soon become meaningless in the mind of the general public. The national oligarchical establishments, even civilization as we know it, could collapse into anarchy.
Such extreme conclusions are not necessarily valid, but they probably accurately reflect the fears of the ‘ruling classes’ of the major nations, whose leaders (particularly those in the intelligence business) have always advocated excessive government secrecy as being necessary to preserve ‘national security’.”

Alas, my electrifying kid-hood thrill, anticipating that the ‘flying-saucer’ secrets would at any moment be revealed, was a notion doomed from the start. Very likely those ‘secrets’ are jealously held by a cabal of privileged elite carefully cloistered in the highest echelons of the inter-connected labyrinth of government, defense and corporate agencies—an elite that quite possibly has on-going interaction with one or more extra-terrestrial races—but then, we’ll never really know.

And yet, does earth human really want to know? My youthful idealism, a nostalgic remnant of the ‘Fifties’, innocently assumed everyone would want to learn all about the staggering reality of beings from outer space. But now I’m not so sure. I think my fellow creatures are far happier with their Wal-Marts, their ball games, their Disneylands and their predictable little lives. ETs might be an entertaining notion so long as they don’t disrupt earth human’s daily grubbing for paychecks and creature comforts. If you can’t spend it, eat it or have sex with it—what damn good is it?

The ‘flying saucer’ fad amounts to a fifty year legacy of circumstantial evidence, crammed with endless anecdotal, eyewitness accounts—which sadly amount to no proof at all. There’s still no rock-hard, indisputable evidence or hot-smoking gun facts—only a murky quagmire of conjecture, controversy and confusion. Ergo: UFOs do not exist!

So, after all these many years I’ve some to the sobering, weary conclusion my exuberant youthful anticipation to learn the ‘truth’ about UFOs will likely never be realized—but at least I finally know . . . why!

Jones: “Humans for the most part don’t have a clue. They don’t want
one or need one either. They’re happy. They think they have a good bead on things.”

Smith: “Uh, why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.”

Jones: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. 1500 years ago everybody knew the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago everybody knew the earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago you knew people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow!”

(From the Columbia motion picture, Men in Black.) JHN

Copyright 2001 James H. Nichols. All rights reserved.

“Dreamland” by James Nichols