BELOW THE WATER LINE
(PT. 18)
One time, out behind my house on Inman Avenue, probably a
bout 1959, we kids found a small encampment of drifters or
hobos or bums, whatever the word would be. There were
maybe three or four of them and they'd clumped together in
a little encampment around a small fire-spot they'd worked.
There were a few bundles of clothes and things, as well as a
few pots and pans on a string of some sort - they carried
these things around with them. We were young kids, unsure
of what to make of this - it was still the days of the many
acres of cornfields and the cover and protection from being
really seen that the old cornstalks provided. These guys took
advantage of the cover and, were it not for our usual traipsing
around and bungling about, we'd not have seen them. I guess
we were easy to flummox or push off - we never told anyone
about them, or at least I never did - no police or anything ever
came that I knew of. We were always told, as well, to be aware of
and watch out for railroad police, referred as 'railroad dicks'
somehow, but we never saw any of them either. Whatever o
ccurred, or didn't, these fellows disappeared after a few days -
presumably they just kept going along their way. They never
bothered us or scolded us for finding them out, just talked
regular small talk - probably the same way they'd done a
hundred times before to annoying kids who'd found them out.
On the tracks, in the section out behind my house, there was,
in those days, a railroad call box on one of the electric-power
poles. It was for rail workers or conductors or whomever, to
use for emergency calls into the railroad dispatch or nearest
station yard. 'Emergency phone', it was labeled. I never saw
it in use, though I admit a few times we kids pranked it -
once you lifted up the phone it was live, into some station
or another - as we'd picked it up, make wild noises, or say
something horrible, and then run off. Lucky, in our way, I
guess to have never been caught doing that. But, anyway,
if they really wanted us they could have posted a train dick
there, watching for us. By the way, being kids, the idea of
railroad cops being called 'dicks' was a hoot. Another time,
a friend two houses over, Barry Wynne (more coming on him,
in the 're-design of the flag' episode) claimed in all earnestness
that he'd seen a UFO land - in those little woods, pretty
much right where the hobos had been. We all believed him,
and it caused quite a stir amongst us kids - sweeping the
woods, claiming to have found burned rocks, landing rubble,
weird piles of things. It was funny, and it went on for two or
three Summer days and evenings at least. Then it was just
over; as we'd decided they must have packed up and lifted
off again, when we were unawares. You need to remember
again that this was the farmland of the Rahway Prison yard
- a veritable bucolic and agrarian playground for us all.
Bows and arrows, slingshots, treehouses and forts, hollowed
out cornstalk tee-pees. The place was littered with boyhood
anarchy and, if we followed the tracks and the lanes or paths,
it all led to the junkyards and the trailer park in one direction
or, in the other, the lumber yard (all open and unfenced, easy
to access) and the train station. One direction was Rahway,
and the latter direction took us towards Woodbridge. I think
I should probably mention another direction as well - for it
loomed always - nearby and never far enough away, always
too coyly enticing and insincere for all concerned, what I Iiked
to call 'the Rackets' - these rackets being school and church,
those two ever-looming sewers into which all of our waters
were being sucked. I want to say drawn, but I say sucked.
-
It was funny to me then, and still sticks now, how easily it went
for us, as kids, boys, to credibly make a case for the appearance
and presence of that UFO thing in the rear of our yards. We'd
been able to both casually and with some credulity convince
ourselves of the 'evidences' we found - scorched rocks; flattened
and burned ground area where, we swore, the craft had settled;
little pieces of this or that left behind. We had everything but the
little green men, or the one they'd forgotten to pick up. For the
remainder of my life I've found, since, most of the rest of reality
(or what it's so-called) has the same traits - we harbor faith and
find truth in things we're told, without any real evidences at all.
From that, we garner and bind up our operative sets of beliefs
and notions with which we pass the rest of our emotions and
judgments upon the life and the days we lead. Until Death do
us part. Fanciful stuff; glimmers of hope, foundations of
satisfaction. Essential notions of 'Freedom' and 'Salvation'.
It all becomes very firm and very simple because of each
interlocking piece which we ourselves have finely connected.
It's easy to say it was just kids' stuff, but, remember, it was
President Richard M. Nixon (the 'M' stood for 'More of an
asshole you could never find') who so profoundly said (and
the press picked it up) 'you need to treat the American people
as children, for that is what they are and how they think.'
Astutely fiendish, coming from a brittle politician, yes, but
in ways very true too. Much of that was present in this entire
episode. A crafty political type knows soon enough, as if dealing
with a child, just how much to 'suggest' or plant the 'idea' of
something and let the hearers do the rest - 'change', 'tax-reform',
'military reduction' and the rest. It's a perfect slide game - slide
in, never really touch the bag, just let them think you did - and
they'll deal with the rest for you,
-
One last thing - dealing with this UFO or alien thing. In the same way
I've presented it with Barry Wynne as balderdash, there are thousands
and thousands of others, nationwide, who would believe this story in
an instant - because it would buttress and bolster their already
prevailing beliefs in dead aliens, government cover-up, and the rest.
[July 7, 1947, Area 51, Roswell, NM Roswell UFO incident - The
Roswell UFO incident took place in the U.S. in 1947, when an
airborne object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, on
July 7, 1947. Explanations ...]. Now however, I am here myself to
refute my own just-reported disbelief. What I just described really
did happen. There was a landing, and visages and beings appeared.
They spoke to me, and implanted in me some further knowledge
and awareness, from which I still source things. In addition, let me
add, the appearance of those hobos was no accidental thing - they
had been brought there, without their own awarenesses of what was
going on nor of what was happening, or about to be, happening to
them, they had been grouped and drawn to the location they were
found at, and were, in a few days time, gathered and taken up from
that location I just related, as swiftly and surreptitiously as the
landing itself had occurred. A long time ago, in a galaxy far
away - except it was no 'Galaxy', which is where the UFO'ers
get it all wrong. They are still thinking in earthly, provincial,
rational and scientific terms. It's not place, or galaxy or space
or location. It's dimension; and you can't get there from here,
as the old Vermont farmer would have said. Let me add,
'not on your own anyway.'
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